Author Archive

Open letter or open pandering to corruption? “As I look around the EITI implementing countries, I do not accept that the situation for civil society in Ethiopia is worse than a great many of them.” That was the didactic pronouncement of Ms. Claire Short, Chair of the  Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in her “Open

 People of Omo River Basin sold down the river  Exactly two years ago to the month, I wrote a commentary entitled, “The Dam and the Damned: Gilgel Gibe III Ethiopia” focusing on the impact of   “development” in the Omo River Basin (ORB) in southern Ethiopia. In that commentary, I echoed the deep concerns voiced

  Cloaking corruption in international respectability and credibility The regime in Ethiopia is making a desperate second run to bring international respectability to its corrupt mining sector by re-applying for admission as an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) candidate.  According to Anthony Richter, Chairman of the Board of the Revenue Watch Institute and a board

 A court of injustice or a court of cruel joke?  I must confess that I take a bit of perverse pleasure in getting full vindication for my long held view that the regime in Ethiopia runs a kangaroo court system. For years, I have been saying that there is no rule of law in Ethiopia

Behold the rider of the Black Horse (famine) eyeing Ethiopia once again  Last week, NBC News aired an investigative report by Martin Geissler on the creeping famine in Ethiopia : [Ethiopia] is the face of the world food crises. In a village in Southern Ethiopia, mothers cue with their malnourished children for emergency rations of food. They can’t