By Solomomn Dawit
Until the opening of the Pandora’s Box – Europe breaking out of its shell – Africa had all its natural wealth under its jurisdiction – a “dark continent” on its own. No alien force in command of African resources, before the coming of the horde of European plunderers, is told in traditional history of the continent. All the land, the forests, and the waters of the continent belonged to the owners, the original inhabitants. Africans, as indigenous populations, had cultures, languages, and ethical and esthetic standards of their own. Otherwise, facts about the recent past of the continent reminiscence the marks of the recent past – colonial plunder and slavery, a backlog on African shoulders in the struggle in the making of a new continent.
Such as this prevailed: Many Ethiopians have a bad memory about the time they saw, on a TV screen, the behavior of Europeans when the leader of their county in exile, representing his nation, in the then League of Nations faced them, in search of assistance, to drive out colonial Italy from its occupations.
Through time, when Africans suffer from natural and manmade calamities, the reaction from elsewhere, Europe and keen is, “What else is expected of Africa?” What about when the continent seems to gather its momentum, with determination, uphill to grab the lost territory in economic development and consciousness? It’s then the future of the planet is “threatened,” – the butterflies and other insects are “lost” for the tourists and inhabitants of selected sites for development. As countries collaborate to work together against backwardness and poverty, they are trapped in a maze of sabotage and ridicule. You would find at least one – a media agency, an NGO, a parliamentarian or an “environmentalist” – “highly concerned” about some trees or grass photographed in his/her digital camera, instead of supporting positive effort to change the economic situation for the better.
The writer of this article had, in the past, some days with a high caliber European immeasurably proficient in his profession, but archaic with his attitude in matters of current affairs about Africa. The latter was asked whether he had ever visited Ethiopia. There was no need to say much about the time he had been in the country. He said he was already acquainted to many in the government structures across subsequent governments in the country. He was politely asked, when the opportunity availed, to visit the country once again. But when ideas about new developments in the country casually entered the course of every day conversation, he felt some hidden discomfort, readable in his facial expression but without words. We had been together enough on our common assignment.
After the end of our program, at an airport lounge, we had to have dinner after which we would take different routes – to Africa, and Europe.
At dinner, he was unusually at ease with himself. He knows our country. He had shuttled many times between Europe and Africa, on most occasions Ethiopia his entry to the rest of the continent. The material about Ethiopia we had sporadically touched at lunch and dinner on previous days was raised once again, in a relaxed atmosphere free of any mental and physical exhaustion. The Ethiopian side had to convince its guest, “that there is a lot to see afresh in the country and feel something about the present in contrast to the past.” It was about a sweeping educational program in the country, and about the infrastructure, agriculture and the health sector. He didn’t seem new to everything raised as a matter of new developments.
We were all for the watch, flight-time approaching for our departure.
The man smiled as lightly as ever, but he sucked more air, and asked what for Ethiopia needed so many roads, so many hydropower plants, airports, universities, and all that. Probably out of his honesty? Some good gestures would suffice in place of words.
He had a story to tell. He continued about “a big project” he had had labored studying since inception up to completion of final design and all other construction documents. He said he was disappointed when another alternative joining the two countries overwhelmed his “effort to be shelved”.
His last story was more amazing. It was in the nature of confession. In a way, it is considered a sin in the context of professional dignity, and not less in religious beliefs.
An African country had asked financial loan, for a project, from his government. The responsible department in his government had given the document to him to get his advice on the issue. He said he had no interest for a glimpse at any page in the document. His written opinion to the government body was that no plan was included in the document. Following the story about his bias on the issue, he said he did it in response to a contract he had expected to win in the country asking for the loan, but unfortunately failed in the contest.
This is probably an incident in a myriad of loan or assistance requests, from African countries, falling in the hands of predators satisfying their ego to undermine the progress of African nations.
There are occasions where your expectations of an agenda are broadly positive even if you lack the imagination of the details.
I was once fortunate to be one among people waiting to listen to a study by a foreign consultant. It must have been one of rare occasions in the life of an individual like me.
The report was “well designed” – to tell the “truth” about the effort encored on the study. There were surprises as is always the case with agenda touching on the future of a country. The projection of the study that “electric power generation in Ethiopia will reach 900 MW in twenty five years,” was not accepted. But in the absence of another scenario, only questions for clarification can be posed.
After all the reporting supported by Power Point figures and snapshot texts, hands were raised.
Some questions were around the assumptions for the study. But most were about Ethiopia’s electrification reaching 900 MW in twenty five years since “hence”. This was before about twelve years. The answers to the questions were brief and to the point. “The figures are from your ministry officials. They are indications of your country’s rate of economic development. That is the basis of the study, and our assumptions revolve around those figures. About your surprises your country reaching only 900MW in twenty five years, you cannot go beyond that because you have no money.”
As per his contract, this consultant was paid in millions of the strongest currency on the planet. Was he really duty bound? He rather extracted a lot of money from our ignorance of the subject matter.
Taking this as a background, the following is about the major challenges Africans are facing in the process trying to change the status quo – a continent lagging behind the rest of the continents on the planet.
Africa has had no opportunity – for long – to use its natural, social, cultural, and manmade resources for development. Dwelling on answering the question “why” will divert our attention off current events.
A genuine question as What is the energy capacity of our continent, not in comparison but in contrast to other continents would help us to understand why others are worried, following us keenly if we dare to start, and continue with our efforts taming our waterways, mineral and oilfields, and agriculture. For the purpose of this article, a sample of development projects in the Horn would adequately reflect the reality.
Ethiopia is one of East African countries in the Horn. It is, like any country, unique in the history of mankind. Traditional history puts it in the remotest past when others had no identifiable location along the train of human development.
Unfortunately, when others, joining it in the race, compensated their prior nonexistence, doubling their strides, it through time lagged behind them. The very recent span of time of about a thousand years was a slow process of decadence culminating in loss of mental energy and otherwise that had been a mark of Ethiopian identity unique among contenders in shaping the fate of the planet. It became victim to natural and manmade adversity, partly of its own. Changes inevitably tested its existence. Nothing of the past – save the gallantry inherent in the nature of all generations – was feasible to guarantee its survival. For this reason, Ethiopians had to be on either side of history – with or against the flow of events. So now, and not later on, it is time for the country to escape from the past. It is no easy a run against the backlog of assignments, the odds – all probabilities of success to the better side of history. There is no alternative.
The challenges are not easy. The figure may not be available. But the country might have lost millions of people to changes in the natural environmental. We have learned in the history of the animal kingdom that nature’s adversity – changing its behavior against life – has caused diminution of the species. So, fighting the environment is a matter of survival for us, Ethiopians. Otherwise, we are, as usual, to be overwhelmed by the enemy, and as a consequence we die. That has frequently been a moment of truth.
What is regrettable about our country is that its resources were, for long, graveyards for its daughters and sons. The fertile soil lacking rain, or irrigation channels served to bury the dead. For lack of bridges, the rivers isolated parts of our country. Untamed rivers carried the fertile soil elsewhere where it is lost forever. The absence of road-and-railway transportation system has, throughout our history, disabled our interactions and economic change.
There is no limit to good advice, but to indulgent condemnation and censorship about what you think and do good at home. With the vast experience we have about our past, we must be egger to accept when others underpin our positive initiative with their ideas. But we are not bound to obey any miscalculations to derail our intentions for change.
Why is it necessary that we touch upon the past – good or bad? It is for one to see how good or painful time-line we have covered and felt the pinch of it all. That is why telling a short story, still about us, is good. That helps us to bitterly regret our past, and think and act fo a better future. It also tells to friends and otherwise that we will never tolerate our past anymore.
While chatting among relatives, our attention was recently taken up by a television-news item. It was from the BBC, one of the few authoritative channels in the news media. It was about distribution of aid among Ethiopians in draught-affected part of the country. The reporter was an old man who – he said – had entered the country as a tourist. If his report had been to inform the world about the food distribution, and aired his advice that people should think to supplement to what is already in stock, we could have appreciated his message. But, listening to his political rhetoric on the issue, somebody among us raised the role the clandestine BBC reporters illegally entering Zimbabwe, during the elections, played in the internal politics of that African country. The old man was followed by a woman of his age from BBC-headquarters. Her ignorance about Ethiopian politics and personalities made her more daring. She was happy inserting a wedge between brothers with political differences about their country.
She was excited to be invited by our professor of a different political inclination for his country. Whether the BBC personnel were worth to report the material is better left for his judgment, when he assesses it later on. The woman brought, to the screen, an old man – an Ethiopian – once a politician who seems to have quitted overt politics; except his covert moves behind the scene. She should have respected him as a “former politician” and not a human rights activist – which he has never genuinely been. This is the tip of the story.
There is some more to come. After the Italians were devastatingly crushed in the Battle of Adwa, they were determined to come back and try again. They did come back well prepared, with poison gas – prohibited in war – as their main weapon (Ofcourse, it was once again used by the British against the Woyanies – in Tigray – in 1941). By then, the Italians were “civilized”. Electricity was part of their logistics. It was then Italian generators landed in Ethiopia. Being less shrewd than their brothers in Europe – successfully liquidating whole populations in the Americas and elsewhere – they lost the opportunity embedded in their plan to settle a big part of Italian population in occupied Ethiopia. But they left, behind, trickles of handicraft, and electricity which must have had given light to a palace and its auxiliaries. Otherwise, after they were dismissed out of the country, before more than sixty years, there was less than three hundred mega watt of installed power in the country until about ten years ago. It was against a population soaring to 80,000,000.
Under the circumstances, is it possible to plan industrialization and irrigation systems? The answer is inevitably NO! It is then the resources that enable the development of agriculture, industry, trade, and the services sector come to the picture fully. The main ingredients for development in our country are obviously the people, our land, our water – the rivers and lakes – and our landscape. None of these was new to the eyes and pride of hundreds of Ethiopian generations. But, those resources were idle for millennia, hardly any of them reaching to rescue when millions were overwhelmed by disastrous natural forces.
Now, it is the order of the day that no Ethiopians die from shortage or lack of rain; that the land lacking in rain water, and so barren for thousands of years will not remain dry. It is time that we generate power from our rivers to industrialize our country; and what is more, raise its benefits in full collaboration with neighborly African brothers.
But there are people who have been deciding on the life of others with whom they hardly have any acquaintance. They know them from figures produced elsewhere. They also have other fragments of information about those “others”. But they burden them with decisions perceived by the latter when they find themselves entangled in a maze of difficulties imposing upon their livelihood.
The electric energy on board in Ethiopia is a fraction of the demand side for development. To keep abreast of what Ethiopians need from the economy, tenfold of what is in hand will still be much below the mark. But there is “news” or, rather rumor that is let on air or circulated to deprive us of electric energy from the GibeIII. It is said that even the UN with its millennium targets of development in its hands has said something against us – Kenya and Ethiopia – benefitting from timely completion of the project. Is it true? For both countries, no other resource is equivalent to energy at the moment. They are in dire need of energy in all their spheres of their economies. And there is no time for procrastination on the issue. While the order of economic development will have to be kept intact, there will be crush-programs to cope up for the losses of the past. All that cannot be done without the resources, mainly without energy.
The critical path for the realization of the economic revitalization in East Africa, and, for that matter, for the whole continent of Africa, will unmistakably traverse energy.
While economic trajectory is a long term strategy, the “wise” tell us to sacrifice it for “colorful” butterflies in the Gilgel Gibe basin, and they try to measure our heart beats for conformation. But our experience with misery has a different indicator out of it. The production of energy in Africa, in contrast to the West’s is infinitely insignificant. The continent cannot break the muscular spine of poverty with the capacity of the energy sector we have at the moment; neither will develop without the requisite development of the sector.
Surprisingly, the whole world is watching both sides – we trying to break out of the hard shell of poverty and the hard way, and others trying to give us blows at the most delicate spot where a threat on our survival instinct is painfully felt. It is there where the presence of the layers of conspiracy is agonizingly scathing.