Mail & Guardian -- Anug Shah is a happy man. He makes bed nets at his factory in Tanzania and business is booming. Production at the A to Z Textiles plant has increased tenfold in the past 18 months and a new factory is needed for a further trebling of output by the end of the year. The workforce of 3 200 -- 90% of them women -- will double.
A to Z Textiles is an African success story. It is evidence that it can break out of a reliance on primary commodities and compete with Asia in low-cost manufacturing. That's the good news. The bad news is that Shah is a rarity. There are not enough firms like his to generate a big leap forward to the next stage of development, and in some countries the giant global shadow cast by China means things are getting worse not better.
Shah's family has been in business in Arusha for 40 years, but the big breakthrough came with the launch of a joint venture with Japanese firm Sumitomo to make bed nets impregnated with insecticide. These ward off mosquitoes for five years and A to Z is the only company in Africa making them.
The company is upbeat about its prospects. "In the 21st century it is up to Africa to find a solution to Africa's problems. This is the continent that has the problem with malaria. This is the continent that should get the jobs." He plans five or six satellite plants across the continent.
He admits the company has needed a big helping hand along the way. The potential of the bed nets to combat malaria came to the attention of the international community, which saw that the $7 price for each net put them out of the range of most of the people who needed them. Bodies such as the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria have acted as guaranteed buyers for everything A to Z can produce. The nets are then either given away free or sold at heavily subsidised rates.
Less promising
"We rely heavily on the donor community," Shah said. "If we increase capacity we have to know whether there is going to be continued support for Africa."
Cash flow from the bed nets has allowed Mr Shah to branch out. He has invested in new American machinery to improve the quality of his T-shirts and polo shirts and is convinced that with the right marketing partner he can take on the Chinese in the United States. "But we need to have big enough economies of scale. If you talk about 100 000 units, people laugh at you. They want you to be producing 20-million or 30-million."
Elsewhere, the outlook is far less promising. Textiles and clothing account for one-fifth of Africa's manufactured exports (and in a country such as Lesotho, well more than 90%), but competition has intensified since the scrapping of the multi-fibre agreement (MFA) in 2005 removing the quotas that had limited China's exports.
While countries such as Lesotho, Madagascar and Kenya have been affected, a study by Raphael Kaplinsky, of the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex University, and Mike Morris, of the University of Cape Town, concluded that the impact had not been as bad as it might have been.
Many African countries have been helped by the US's willingness under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) to allow firms in the poorest nations to import raw materials from the lowest-cost sources. Those countries not handed preferential treatment -- such as South Africa -- have seen production of textiles halved.
"This rate of subsidy is required for Agoa clothing producers to compete in the US market," Kaplinsky and Morris said. "This is because scales [of production] are low in sub-Saharan African plants, and many producers suffer from poor bureaucratic and physical infrastructure. But there is pervasive evidence that many SSA plants suffer from low levels of productivity arising out of organisational procedures, low levels of skill and inadequate management within plants."
All these factors are evident in Mali, one of Africa's biggest producers of cotton, which -- in theory -- could turn the raw material into finished garments. Yet Mali is one of the poorest 10 countries in the world. At a ginning factory an hour's drive south of the capital, Bamako, 97% of the cotton is exported to be turned into clothes. Marks & Spencer arrives next week to look at the potential for sourcing organic cotton from Mali, but will almost certainly take the raw material out of the country for processing.
Over-production
The country, according to Sally Baden of Oxfam, has multiple problems that would deter any potential investors. Its basic infrastructure -- water, roads, electricity -- is primitive. Fewer than half its children are in school, and there is a dire lack of industrial skills and know-how.
She pinpoints three other factors. The first is that Washington's subsidies to US cotton producers mean over-production that keeps the world price low. Estimates suggest that eliminating the US handouts -- a main demand by West African cotton producers in the present trade round -- would raise the price by 12%, giving Mali extra revenue to invest in physical and human capital.
Secondly, the structural adjustment programmes foisted on Mali exposed its fragile clothing firms -- producing almost entirely for the domestic market -- to foreign competition. Finally, since the end of the MFA there has been the China effect. This has less of an impact on Mali, where production was low, but has accelerated the decline in West Africa's three biggest clothing manufacturers -- Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
Halting Africa's relative decline as a manufacturing force will not be easy. Skills, management and industrial organisation are all lacking; the boom in commodity prices has mainly benefited foreign investors and in countries such as South Africa pushed up the exchange rate, making industrial goods less competitive. Most countries are too vulnerable to make it on their own.
Jamie Drummond, director of Debt Aids Trade Africa, the campaign organisation co-founded by U2 singer Bono, said African countries might need to band together in blocks to promote regional champions that would have a chance of exploiting economies of scale.
Bono is hopeful that Motorola will set up a plant in Africa, perhaps in Rwanda, to take advantage of Africa's boom in cellphone usage. That would be a coup. But just like Shah's bed nets, it would represent the winning of a skirmish in a long, long war.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The 96-Cent Daily Grind
Globe and Mail -- Perhaps you're reading this over a cup of coffee. Maybe a Starbucks coffee. Maybe you even paid extra for Shirkina beans, a fair-trade variety that sells for the conscience-soothing premium price of $10 (U.S.) a pound in North America.
The employees of Ethiopia's largest coffee processing factory and the small family farmers — all 86,762 of them — who grew the Shirkina beans would like to thank you.
Here in one of the poorest countries in the world, coffee is responsible for a quarter of the gross national product, and 55 per cent of all export revenue. More than a third of the 78 million people in Ethiopia earn their livelihood from some phase of coffee production.
And in recent years, the lustre of organic certification and fair-trade agreements — long more common in coffee-producing nations in Latin America — have made it to Ethiopia, offering the promise of additional earnings for a commodity priced at just 40 per cent of what it was a decade ago. Two weeks ago, for example, the Rainforest Alliance certified 678 small coffee farms; their beans can be sold at a premium price because their production is being done in a way that conserves forest ecosystems and puts profits into schools and clinics.
But Ethiopia's coffee industry provides a blunt reminder that while fair trade and conservation products may make Western consumers feel better, all things are relative.
The women who sort the Shirkina beans, for example, earn 7.5 birr for each nine-hour day in the dim, clamouring factory — that's 96 cents (Canadian). The men who load the sacks of hulled beans on to trucks for export to North America earn $2. And while the bean-picking ladies are glad to report that their wages are up from 5 birr a day two years ago, and they're very glad to have a job, they would like you to know it's really not very much money. “I'd do anything else,” said one sorter, a high-school graduate in her 20s. “If there was anything else.”
The farmers, meanwhile, are earning a premium for their fair-trade green beans — $1.60 (U.S.) a pound for green beans, compared with 60 cents a pound if they were selling without the fair-trade agreement.
“The fair-trade market is making a difference for coffee communities: Comparatively the fair-trade buyers are paying a better price, especially when the market is down — fair trade means a minimum guaranteed price that will at least cover your cost of production,” said Asnake Bekele, general manager of the Sidamo Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union.
The co-operative grows beans for Starbucks' fair-trade products. “But we don't deserve this price: Fair trade is better than conventional but I can't say fair trade is fair.”
Coming out of years of socialist dictatorship in the late 1990s, Ethiopia relaxed the rules governing coffee production, and allowed farmers to organize into co-operatives and make their own deals for exports, instead of selling all production to the state. Co-ops such as Sidamo, in turn, have allowed farmers to bypass the export middlemen and seek out their own international markets, especially those willing to pay the fair-trade premium.
And they're feeling the effect: “It contributes — they improve their flow of income,” Mr. Bekele said. School enrolment is up among children of the fair-trade coffee growers; they spend the extra money on food and clothes.
Nevertheless, a typical Ethiopian coffee farmer still receives less than 1 per cent of what Canadian consumers pay for their lattes. (The farmers sell red cherries for 1 birr, or 11 cents per kg, it takes six kg of cherries to make one kg of green beans, 1.2 kg of green beans to make 1 kg of roasted beans, and each kilo of roasted beans makes 60 cups, sold for an average of $3 each, or $180.) And unlike the other main African producers (Ivory Coast, Uganda and Kenya), the vast majority of Ethiopian coffee is grown by small farmers.
“They are selling below the level of production costs because they don't count family labour,” Mr. Bekele explained. Farmers' children do much of the picking; there is no line item in the accounts for their wages.
Mr. Bekele figures that only a price at $2 a pound of beans or above would cover real production costs, and maybe allow a little profit. But fair-trade prices are moving the other way. Two years ago, the Fairtrade Labelling Organization paid $1.26 a pound when the conventional market was offering 60 cents a pound — but last year when the market hit $1.30 a pound, fair-trade buyers still insisted on $1.26, he said, claiming: “We are you friend in bad times and you have to do us a favour.”
Coffee growers here are earning 10 cents a pound above the conventional price for organic beans. In truth, most Ethiopian coffee production is organic — the family farmers who grow most of the beans can't afford agrochemicals — but the process of getting certified costs about $2,600 and is beyond the reach of small producers.
Ethiopia has a storied love affair with coffee — this is the country where the tree was first domesticated, and a third of the production is consumed domestically, making this the biggest coffee-drinking nation in Africa. But the government realizes that the country's dependence on the bean is a problem, and is pushing diversification into other agricultural exports such as cut flowers and pulses. The government also wants to see more coffee processing done at home — in 2003, for example, Ethiopia exported 126,100 tons of beans, but just 115 tons of that was roasted and milled coffee.
Yet grabbing more of the value-added agroprocessing industry is easier said than done: Foreign investment remains virtually non-existent here, in large part because the government maintains an impenetrable bureaucratic environment. There is not a single foreign-owned bank in Ethiopia, for example.
“Things are better,” Mr. Bekele said, standing amid thousands and thousands of 62-kg burlap sacks of beans from his co-operative and the tangy smell of green coffee. “They're definitely better. But there is still a very long way to go.”
The employees of Ethiopia's largest coffee processing factory and the small family farmers — all 86,762 of them — who grew the Shirkina beans would like to thank you.
Here in one of the poorest countries in the world, coffee is responsible for a quarter of the gross national product, and 55 per cent of all export revenue. More than a third of the 78 million people in Ethiopia earn their livelihood from some phase of coffee production.
And in recent years, the lustre of organic certification and fair-trade agreements — long more common in coffee-producing nations in Latin America — have made it to Ethiopia, offering the promise of additional earnings for a commodity priced at just 40 per cent of what it was a decade ago. Two weeks ago, for example, the Rainforest Alliance certified 678 small coffee farms; their beans can be sold at a premium price because their production is being done in a way that conserves forest ecosystems and puts profits into schools and clinics.
But Ethiopia's coffee industry provides a blunt reminder that while fair trade and conservation products may make Western consumers feel better, all things are relative.
The women who sort the Shirkina beans, for example, earn 7.5 birr for each nine-hour day in the dim, clamouring factory — that's 96 cents (Canadian). The men who load the sacks of hulled beans on to trucks for export to North America earn $2. And while the bean-picking ladies are glad to report that their wages are up from 5 birr a day two years ago, and they're very glad to have a job, they would like you to know it's really not very much money. “I'd do anything else,” said one sorter, a high-school graduate in her 20s. “If there was anything else.”
The farmers, meanwhile, are earning a premium for their fair-trade green beans — $1.60 (U.S.) a pound for green beans, compared with 60 cents a pound if they were selling without the fair-trade agreement.
“The fair-trade market is making a difference for coffee communities: Comparatively the fair-trade buyers are paying a better price, especially when the market is down — fair trade means a minimum guaranteed price that will at least cover your cost of production,” said Asnake Bekele, general manager of the Sidamo Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union.
The co-operative grows beans for Starbucks' fair-trade products. “But we don't deserve this price: Fair trade is better than conventional but I can't say fair trade is fair.”
Coming out of years of socialist dictatorship in the late 1990s, Ethiopia relaxed the rules governing coffee production, and allowed farmers to organize into co-operatives and make their own deals for exports, instead of selling all production to the state. Co-ops such as Sidamo, in turn, have allowed farmers to bypass the export middlemen and seek out their own international markets, especially those willing to pay the fair-trade premium.
And they're feeling the effect: “It contributes — they improve their flow of income,” Mr. Bekele said. School enrolment is up among children of the fair-trade coffee growers; they spend the extra money on food and clothes.
Nevertheless, a typical Ethiopian coffee farmer still receives less than 1 per cent of what Canadian consumers pay for their lattes. (The farmers sell red cherries for 1 birr, or 11 cents per kg, it takes six kg of cherries to make one kg of green beans, 1.2 kg of green beans to make 1 kg of roasted beans, and each kilo of roasted beans makes 60 cups, sold for an average of $3 each, or $180.) And unlike the other main African producers (Ivory Coast, Uganda and Kenya), the vast majority of Ethiopian coffee is grown by small farmers.
“They are selling below the level of production costs because they don't count family labour,” Mr. Bekele explained. Farmers' children do much of the picking; there is no line item in the accounts for their wages.
Mr. Bekele figures that only a price at $2 a pound of beans or above would cover real production costs, and maybe allow a little profit. But fair-trade prices are moving the other way. Two years ago, the Fairtrade Labelling Organization paid $1.26 a pound when the conventional market was offering 60 cents a pound — but last year when the market hit $1.30 a pound, fair-trade buyers still insisted on $1.26, he said, claiming: “We are you friend in bad times and you have to do us a favour.”
Coffee growers here are earning 10 cents a pound above the conventional price for organic beans. In truth, most Ethiopian coffee production is organic — the family farmers who grow most of the beans can't afford agrochemicals — but the process of getting certified costs about $2,600 and is beyond the reach of small producers.
Ethiopia has a storied love affair with coffee — this is the country where the tree was first domesticated, and a third of the production is consumed domestically, making this the biggest coffee-drinking nation in Africa. But the government realizes that the country's dependence on the bean is a problem, and is pushing diversification into other agricultural exports such as cut flowers and pulses. The government also wants to see more coffee processing done at home — in 2003, for example, Ethiopia exported 126,100 tons of beans, but just 115 tons of that was roasted and milled coffee.
Yet grabbing more of the value-added agroprocessing industry is easier said than done: Foreign investment remains virtually non-existent here, in large part because the government maintains an impenetrable bureaucratic environment. There is not a single foreign-owned bank in Ethiopia, for example.
“Things are better,” Mr. Bekele said, standing amid thousands and thousands of 62-kg burlap sacks of beans from his co-operative and the tangy smell of green coffee. “They're definitely better. But there is still a very long way to go.”
U.S. Backing Use of DDT in Africa
World Peace Herald -- U.S. government officials are enthusiastically endorsing and funding the use of DDT in sub-Saharan Africa after years of resisting calls from scientists who said the insecticide would be the best weapon for fighting malaria, despite lingering objections by some environmentalists.
"We're really pretty aggressive" about supporting DDT use against the mosquitoes that spread malaria, said Michael Miller, deputy assistant administrator of the Bureau of Global Health for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Added Richard Green, director of the Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition in USAID's global health bureau: "We think DDT is an excellent insecticide and that, in some circumstances, it has some advantages over some other insecticides that are available."
The insecticide credited with eliminating malaria in the Western world years ago was outlawed in the United States in 1972 and is banned in most countries because of environmental concerns and unsubstantiated fears it can harm humans.
"We think DDT is safe when used correctly and are not aware of any human health risks," Mr. Green said.
USAID is the federal government's lead agency in efforts to help African countries find ways to battle the continent's deadliest disease, which kills about a million Africans yearly, most of them young children and pregnant women. DDT is generally cheaper and more effective than other insecticides in preventing household bites.
Later this year, Mr. Miller said, USAID will begin using DDT as part of malaria-control efforts in three nations -- Mozambique, Ethiopia and Zambia. Nearly $10 million in federal funds has been allocated this year for "indoor residual spraying" in those three countries.
DDT will be one of 12 different insecticides employed in the effort, which officials hope to start in December, and it will be the one used in most of the spraying in Mozambique, Mr. Green said. Mozambique's interest in DDT is significant, because it had long ignored pleas by its neighbor, South Africa, to use it. South Africa became a DDT booster in 2003, after using it to end a malaria epidemic in the eastern part of the country.
Of the $99 million that USAID is spending on malaria control this year, $20 million is being used for indoor spraying with DDT or one of the other 11 insecticides authorized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as malaria preventives, Mr. Green noted.
About one-third of USAID's total budget for malaria is financing the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), which seeks to reduce malaria deaths by 50 percent in 15 African countries by 2010 and will spend $1.2 billion to that end. This year, PMI is doing indoor spraying in hundreds of thousands of homes in three countries -- Uganda, Angola and Tanzania -- using insecticides other than DDT.
"Between 1 million and 1.5 million people will be protected," Mr. Green said.
Mr. Miller said DDT may be used in Uganda next year.
Mr. Green added that Angola's government is considering waiving its DDT ban to allow its use in an area along its southern border with Namibia, where there are severe malaria problems. Trenton Ruebush, malaria adviser with USAID, said DDT spraying under PMI "could possibly begin this year" in that section of Angola. "Right now, they are looking at studies on the duration of effectiveness of DDT versus other insecticides."
No one at USAID is calling for exclusive use of DDT for indoor spraying.
"WHO recommends planned rotation of insecticides to avoid" problems of mosquitoes becoming resistant to the products, Mr. Green said.
He acknowledged that using DDT has some drawbacks. Some households remove it because it streaks when sprayed on painted surfaces.
"And while DDT is generally cheaper than other insecticides, it has higher logistical costs, especially when used in rural areas, because it is so much bulkier," Mr. Green said.
But some environmentalists are disturbed by the U.S. government's change of heart concerning DDT.
Kristin Schafer, program coordinator for the San Francisco-based Pesticide Action Network North America said, "DDT is not a silver bullet for malaria control in Africa. We strongly support the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which has been ratified by 122 nations, which calls for the [eventual] elimination of DDT."
Acknowledging that the Stockholm Convention "made country-by-country exemptions" for use of DDT in malaria control, Ms. Schafer pointed out that the global pact "urged mobilization of resources to find alternatives to DDT."
"We need healthy, safe alternatives for malaria control," she said in a telephone interview.
Environmentalists liked things as they were previously, when USAID's malaria-prevention efforts focused primarily on handing out drug treatments and insecticide-treated bed netting to people living in areas at risk for heavy mosquito infestation.
The agency is still involved in those efforts, Mr. Green said, but indoor residual spraying is a "much bigger" component than in the past.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Activities Underway to Improve Fodder Provision
Ethiopia Herald -- Various activities are in progress in a bid to improve provision of animal fodder and animal products in Benshangul-Gumuz State, the state Agriculture Bureau said.
An expert with the bureau, Adamu Teferi, told WIC Friday that 156 hectares of land was covered with various animal fodder seeds with a view to scaling up the produces farmers get from their livestock this harvest season.
He added that 5,419 kilograms of improved fodder seed and 3,200 fodder seedlings were distributed to farmers.
Some 2,000 farmers have participated in fodder development this fiscal year as they have become aware of the benefits of fodder, the expert said, adding that the number of beneficiary farmers has therefore exceeded that of last year by 900.
Adamu also said that series of awareness raising training are being offered to the farmers since the 447 hectares of land, which is the main source of animal fodder, is getting depleted.
An expert with the bureau, Adamu Teferi, told WIC Friday that 156 hectares of land was covered with various animal fodder seeds with a view to scaling up the produces farmers get from their livestock this harvest season.
He added that 5,419 kilograms of improved fodder seed and 3,200 fodder seedlings were distributed to farmers.
Some 2,000 farmers have participated in fodder development this fiscal year as they have become aware of the benefits of fodder, the expert said, adding that the number of beneficiary farmers has therefore exceeded that of last year by 900.
Adamu also said that series of awareness raising training are being offered to the farmers since the 447 hectares of land, which is the main source of animal fodder, is getting depleted.
***
GM Food: Who Will Benefit?
The main beneficiaries of GM will be the large agribusiness companies which promote it. GM food has not been found to be more nutritious or better tasting, and it seems unlikely that it will help assuage global hunger. Research and development has focused on commodity crops for animal feed and processed foods such as soya and maize, designed for intensive farming systems used by farmers in the west. Technologies such as the “terminator seed” which are engineered to respond to particular fertilizers patented by companies and do not produce fertile seeds (ending the ancient practice of saving seeds for replanting) threaten the autonomy of small farmers by forcing them to spend more money on seeds and pushing them into debt. FoE groups maintain that the question of hunger is not question of production capacity: producers today battle surpluses so great they receive subsidies not to produce at capacity and still have silos full of product leftover to rot. The question is one of economics and political will, something GMOs cannot change.
Source: Friends of Earth
GM Food: Who Will Benefit?
The main beneficiaries of GM will be the large agribusiness companies which promote it. GM food has not been found to be more nutritious or better tasting, and it seems unlikely that it will help assuage global hunger. Research and development has focused on commodity crops for animal feed and processed foods such as soya and maize, designed for intensive farming systems used by farmers in the west. Technologies such as the “terminator seed” which are engineered to respond to particular fertilizers patented by companies and do not produce fertile seeds (ending the ancient practice of saving seeds for replanting) threaten the autonomy of small farmers by forcing them to spend more money on seeds and pushing them into debt. FoE groups maintain that the question of hunger is not question of production capacity: producers today battle surpluses so great they receive subsidies not to produce at capacity and still have silos full of product leftover to rot. The question is one of economics and political will, something GMOs cannot change.
Source: Friends of Earth
Over 22, 000 ha. To Be Covered with Seed
Ethiopian Herald -- The Gambella State Agriculture and Rural Development Coordination bureau said that it has plans to cover over 22,000 hectares with various seeds in the coming agricultural season.
Head of the bureau Engineer Ulero Opio told ENA that the volume of land that would be developed this year exceeds that of last year same period by 4,487 hectares, adding over 240,000 quintals of products is expected to be collected.
Currently the preparation of land gets underway.
Ulero said over 450 quintals of select seed of maize, sorghum, sesame, ground nut and rice is being distributed to 5,300 farmers who participate in the programme.
The head said over 189,500 quintals of products had been collected from 18,228 of land developed last year.
Head of the bureau Engineer Ulero Opio told ENA that the volume of land that would be developed this year exceeds that of last year same period by 4,487 hectares, adding over 240,000 quintals of products is expected to be collected.
Currently the preparation of land gets underway.
Ulero said over 450 quintals of select seed of maize, sorghum, sesame, ground nut and rice is being distributed to 5,300 farmers who participate in the programme.
The head said over 189,500 quintals of products had been collected from 18,228 of land developed last year.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Ethiopia: Ecological Foot Prints; New Rankings
allAfrica.com -- You may find it hard to figure out, but the United States, a large nation as well as the dream export target of every country and Bangladesh, a midget by comparison are on a par when it comes to the sins they commit on the world environment. But if new criteria set by organizations like the Californian based, Redefining Progress which is devoted to ecological footprint analysis, is accepted, we might as well accept that.
But first, what is ecological footprint? How and why do countries get to be classified as good guys and villains by the new set of standard? According to NewScientist 8 April 2006, the scheme which is new and the brainchild of Aubrey Meyer, of the UK, is increasingly getting wide acceptance despite the upset it causes in the conventional ways of ranking countries as environmentally friendly or unfriendly.
Its gist, "The idea of measuring the ecological footprint of nations has become increasingly popular as a way of holding countries to account for their environment impacts. The footprint is an estimate of the land used to sustain a population." " Its main components are land directly build upon: the fields, forestry and mines employed at home and abroad to meet consumer needs and the notional amount of land needed to absorb pollutants like carbon dioxide." In other words each country has its own biocapacity level. A level usually drawn upon the basis of each nation's total footprint divided by its population. A small nation with a high population and a lot of consumer items to go around could easily flunk the test.
Take a small country like Singapore, for instance, which is actually a city-state, as you know. It has a huge population relative to its size. It has managed to give its citizens a high standard of living and made them the envy of many a country in Asia. That means material consumption is as high as anywhere.
Don't be fooled though by the tidiness of its beautiful streets. A lot of litter gets generated everyday of every year. The litter gets whisked away in time all right, unlike the garbage in many developing countries that sits for what looks like ages. Carbon dioxide from its bumper-to-bumper vehicles that guzzle so much oil is substantial. Both of these instances are footprints on the environment and their impacts cross boundaries.
Singapore, therefore, has low biocapacity. It may be a top Asian Tiger when it comes to economic and export-oriented growth. But despite that or because of it, its environmental foot prints are high. Its biocapacity, on the flipside is low.
Ethiopia's biocapacity is on the low side too. Why? Although the country's size is considerably large, and that should be one thing going for it, the rest of the criteria that make countries the "good guys" of the environmental endeavor are absent and the reverse is unfortunately true.
For one thing, the vegetation covers of forests and grasslands have been going down throughout the years and decades. So it follows that the land's carbon absorption capacity is at the minimum.
Secondly, the large amount of soil being eroded by water erosion results in less and less capacity of carbon absorption by the cultivated fields. The effect of this is double loss: deprivation of fertility to the soil arising from loss of carbon and more carbon released to the atmosphere resulting in the build up of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
By the measure of the new scheme, the countries that have high biocapacity (the good guys) are those that have large land mass, rich natural resources and reasonably low population density. The more agricultural lands, large swaths of forests, parks and bigger numbers of rivers and lakes, wild open spaces, the better.
The logic of such assessment is that such countries have more natural vegetation to absorb pollution and more fields and forests to provide natural resources for the world. What it amounts to is that the good guys are those rich in natural resources and not necessarily those who happen to be smart.
Where does that leave countries like China and India that have wowed the world with their galloping growth rate in the last few years? At the bottom of the list, unfortunately. That is because they have too large population numbers and all their successful attempts at improving the lives of their peoples leave indelible footprints on the environment.
But first, what is ecological footprint? How and why do countries get to be classified as good guys and villains by the new set of standard? According to NewScientist 8 April 2006, the scheme which is new and the brainchild of Aubrey Meyer, of the UK, is increasingly getting wide acceptance despite the upset it causes in the conventional ways of ranking countries as environmentally friendly or unfriendly.
Its gist, "The idea of measuring the ecological footprint of nations has become increasingly popular as a way of holding countries to account for their environment impacts. The footprint is an estimate of the land used to sustain a population." " Its main components are land directly build upon: the fields, forestry and mines employed at home and abroad to meet consumer needs and the notional amount of land needed to absorb pollutants like carbon dioxide." In other words each country has its own biocapacity level. A level usually drawn upon the basis of each nation's total footprint divided by its population. A small nation with a high population and a lot of consumer items to go around could easily flunk the test.
Take a small country like Singapore, for instance, which is actually a city-state, as you know. It has a huge population relative to its size. It has managed to give its citizens a high standard of living and made them the envy of many a country in Asia. That means material consumption is as high as anywhere.
Don't be fooled though by the tidiness of its beautiful streets. A lot of litter gets generated everyday of every year. The litter gets whisked away in time all right, unlike the garbage in many developing countries that sits for what looks like ages. Carbon dioxide from its bumper-to-bumper vehicles that guzzle so much oil is substantial. Both of these instances are footprints on the environment and their impacts cross boundaries.
Singapore, therefore, has low biocapacity. It may be a top Asian Tiger when it comes to economic and export-oriented growth. But despite that or because of it, its environmental foot prints are high. Its biocapacity, on the flipside is low.
Ethiopia's biocapacity is on the low side too. Why? Although the country's size is considerably large, and that should be one thing going for it, the rest of the criteria that make countries the "good guys" of the environmental endeavor are absent and the reverse is unfortunately true.
For one thing, the vegetation covers of forests and grasslands have been going down throughout the years and decades. So it follows that the land's carbon absorption capacity is at the minimum.
Secondly, the large amount of soil being eroded by water erosion results in less and less capacity of carbon absorption by the cultivated fields. The effect of this is double loss: deprivation of fertility to the soil arising from loss of carbon and more carbon released to the atmosphere resulting in the build up of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
By the measure of the new scheme, the countries that have high biocapacity (the good guys) are those that have large land mass, rich natural resources and reasonably low population density. The more agricultural lands, large swaths of forests, parks and bigger numbers of rivers and lakes, wild open spaces, the better.
The logic of such assessment is that such countries have more natural vegetation to absorb pollution and more fields and forests to provide natural resources for the world. What it amounts to is that the good guys are those rich in natural resources and not necessarily those who happen to be smart.
Where does that leave countries like China and India that have wowed the world with their galloping growth rate in the last few years? At the bottom of the list, unfortunately. That is because they have too large population numbers and all their successful attempts at improving the lives of their peoples leave indelible footprints on the environment.
Opposition Websites And Blogs Go Down in Ethiopia
allAfrica.com -- Reporters Without Borders has called on Ethiopia's information and culture minister, Hailu Berhan, to explain why several websites critical of the government have been inaccessible in the country since 17 May 2006.
Ethiopians have also seen all publications hosted by http://www.blogspot.com disappear from the Internet.
Even though the authorities have made no announcement, it is likely that the disappearance of the sites is the result of political censorship and not technical problems.
"We would like to know if your government has deliberately blocked access to online publications, a list of which we enclose, thus taking the course of filtering the Internet," the press freedom organisation asked Hailu Berhan in a letter.
"The Ethiopian Internet is dynamic and has seen the development of an extremely active blogging community. It is your responsibility to ensure that all opinions can be expressed online, even when some Internet users directly criticise government action."
"Preventing debate and controlling news and information circulating online will only aggravate an already very tense political climate," it said.
"We also wish to draw to your attention the consequences of filtering a blog tool such as http://www.blogspot.com, which is currently inaccessible in Ethiopia. Blocking access to this service has the effect of censoring all publications which it hosts, the vast majority of which do not deal with politics or with Ethiopia."
A non exhaustive list of websites and blogs inaccessible in Ethiopia:
- http://www.ethiopianreview.com
- http://www.tensae.net
- http://www.quatero.net
- http://www.cyberethiopia.com
- http://www.ethioforum.org
- http://www.ethiopianpolitics.blogspot.com
- http://www.enset.blogspot.com
- http://www.ethiopundit.blogspot.com
- http://www.seminawork.blogspot.com
- http://www.weichegud.blogspot.com
For technical ways to get around censorship, see the "Guide for bloggers and cyber-dissidents": http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542
Some 15 newspaper editors and the leadership of the main opposition coalition were arrested in November 2005, after protest demonstrations against the results of contested legislative elections on 15 May.
They have been charged with "high treason" and "genocide" and accused of taking part in an "armed uprising." Several journalists working for the independent press were also arrested and sentenced at the start of 2006 for defamation cases going back to the end of the 1990s.
To date, 21 journalists are currently in prison in the country, making Ethiopia Africa's biggest prison for journalists.
Ethiopians have also seen all publications hosted by http://www.blogspot.com disappear from the Internet.
Even though the authorities have made no announcement, it is likely that the disappearance of the sites is the result of political censorship and not technical problems.
"We would like to know if your government has deliberately blocked access to online publications, a list of which we enclose, thus taking the course of filtering the Internet," the press freedom organisation asked Hailu Berhan in a letter.
"The Ethiopian Internet is dynamic and has seen the development of an extremely active blogging community. It is your responsibility to ensure that all opinions can be expressed online, even when some Internet users directly criticise government action."
"Preventing debate and controlling news and information circulating online will only aggravate an already very tense political climate," it said.
"We also wish to draw to your attention the consequences of filtering a blog tool such as http://www.blogspot.com, which is currently inaccessible in Ethiopia. Blocking access to this service has the effect of censoring all publications which it hosts, the vast majority of which do not deal with politics or with Ethiopia."
A non exhaustive list of websites and blogs inaccessible in Ethiopia:
- http://www.ethiopianreview.com
- http://www.tensae.net
- http://www.quatero.net
- http://www.cyberethiopia.com
- http://www.ethioforum.org
- http://www.ethiopianpolitics.blogspot.com
- http://www.enset.blogspot.com
- http://www.ethiopundit.blogspot.com
- http://www.seminawork.blogspot.com
- http://www.weichegud.blogspot.com
For technical ways to get around censorship, see the "Guide for bloggers and cyber-dissidents": http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542
Some 15 newspaper editors and the leadership of the main opposition coalition were arrested in November 2005, after protest demonstrations against the results of contested legislative elections on 15 May.
They have been charged with "high treason" and "genocide" and accused of taking part in an "armed uprising." Several journalists working for the independent press were also arrested and sentenced at the start of 2006 for defamation cases going back to the end of the 1990s.
To date, 21 journalists are currently in prison in the country, making Ethiopia Africa's biggest prison for journalists.
Flower Farming Blooms in Ethiopia
The flower industry is blooming in Ethiopia
BBC News -- Rows and rows of rose cuttings fill a vast warehouse in Alem Gena, a small town about 30km from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
They are being grown into small plants ready to be sold on.
Ethioplants is owned by Dutch flower grower Felix Steeghs who moved here in September.
He saw the potential in Ethiopia's new flower market and was sick of the violence that he and his colleagues faced in Kenya - Africa's current biggest flower producer - where he had worked for eight years.
"We were living in Naivasha - if you count all the Europeans you might get 150 to 200 people, and I think within 12 months there were 10 attacks on white people of which 5 were fatal," he says.
Felix started off in Ethiopia with 5,000 square metres, but he hopes to have doubled that by August, and says there is plenty more room for growth.
British businessman Ryaz Shamji agrees: "I'm actually convinced Ethiopia has tremendous potential," says Ryaz, who started production at his flower farm, Golden Rose, in 2000.
He now produces 24 million roses a year but wants to increase that to 36 million.
"The industry has grown from 40 hectares productive to 250 hectares productive in the last three years, and is likely to hit 400 hectares productive by the end of this year," he says.
Ecological worries
Floriculture already earns Ethiopia $20m a year.
But environmentalists are concerned that growers are using chemicals which are damaging the environment and making workers ill.
"The major concerns are social concerns - working rights and decent working conditions and environmental concerns," says Negusu Aklilu, co-ordinator of Ethiopia's Forum for the Environment.
"For example, if you take the pesticide issue, pesticides are about workers' conditions and also about the environment."
The Ethiopian government is keen to encourage investors, offering them a five-year tax holiday and duty-free import of machinery.
The government is also working with the environmentalists. Dr Tewolde Birhan, head of Ethiopia's Environmental Protection Agency, says the government has introduced a new law.
"The intention is to control pollution and it has three steps, as in all countries," Dr Tewolde says.
"Environmental impact assessment before you start your job; environmental auditing regularly to make sure you aren't polluting the environment; and if you are unable to prevent pollution, you close down."
Players in the industry like Felix Steeghs and Ryaz Shamji support these measures, realising that having everything regulated and above board can ensure Ethiopia's flower industry a blooming future.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Bay Area Ethiopians Remember Elections
Inside Bay Area -- When it comes to the month of May, many Bay Area residents of Ethiopian origin have mixed emotions.
On the one hand, they are proud of a historic day — May 15, 2005 — when more than 25 million people in their native Ethiopia went out to vote in the national parliamentary elections.
But on the other hand, they are angry about the civilians who were killed and detained by the government since then.
"I was happy for the people (who were able) to exercise their democratic rights, but their dream for hope changed into a nightmare in just a few days," said Araya "Zuzu" Asfaw of Oakland.
In June and November last year, thousands of demonstrators filled streets in the capital city, Addis Ababa, and in other regions of the country.
The masses opposed election results for being rigged to keep the current ruling party, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, and its leader, Meles Zenawi, in power.
They believed their votes for the Coalition for Unity and Democratic Party and its leader, Hailu Shawel, were not accounted for at the polls.
More than 80 demonstrators were shot dead during post-election protests, according to a recent Amnesty International news release.
The U.S. State Department report on HumanRights Practices in Countries released in March states that: "(Ethiopian) authorities arbitrarily detained, beat and killed opposition members, ethnic minorities, NGO workers and members of the press." There were also reports of disappearances and tortures.
More than 100 Coalition members and their supporters have been held prisoners since November. The prisoners include Shawel, an engineer; Birtukan Mideksa, a female former judge; Berahnu Nega, Addis Ababa's elected mayor; and Mesfin W/Mariam, 76, a professor and veteran human rights activist. A trial began early this month in which charges of treason, among others, could lead to the death sentence.
But additional reports show that thousands more civilians have been detained outside the capital city.
"To date, unknown numbers of prisoners are languishing in prisons under abhorrent conditions," said Abebe Hailu, spokesperson for San Jose-based Ethiopian Americans Council.
The council, a grass-roots organization with members across the nation, is pushing for a U.S. congressional bill asking the Ethiopian government to unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience.
So far, 20 members of Congress have co-sponsored HR 4423, authored by Rep. Christopher Smith, R-New Jersey. The bill is called "Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Act of 2006."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose is one of the co-sponsors. Hailu said they are working to get the support of other California leaders, including Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Tom Lantos of San Mateo.
In Oakland, more than 300 residents from the greater Bay Area attended a fundraiser May 13 to commemorate the historically large turnout at the polls in Ethiopia.
Organized by the Oakland-based Coalition for Unity and Democracy, the event featured speakers and well-known local artists, as well as artists popular within Ethiopian communities worldwide, including Bezawork Asfaw, Tamagne Beyene, Adugnaw Worku and Tesfaye Sima.
During the fundraiser, organizers received a congressional plaque and letters from Lee and former Congressman Ron Dellums recognizing the historic event.
Between laughs, the audience also shed some tears as Tamagne Beyene, a popular comedian, talked of the loss of young and old people and showed images of bleeding demonstrators and mothers crying over coffins of their children's bodies.
"This is not about politics," he said. "This is a human rights issue."
Both he and the event's keynote speaker, Solomon Bekele, a high-ranking official of the Coalition in Washington, D.C., are among a number of people wanted by the ruling party in Ethiopia mainly for treason.
Last year, Beyene released a video, which included mock interviews with the current leader Zenawi and the previous leader Mengistu Haile Mariam.
When asked to describe his comedy style during an interview, he said it is a combination of Bill Maher and Jay Leno. But his comedy came at a price, which prevents him from rejoining his family and the crowd of which he is a product, he said.
Beyene moved to the United States in 1996 after he was tortured and beaten in jail for making comic portrayals of government members under the current regime, which has been in power since 1991.
Among those in prison, the former judge, Mideksa, is a single mother, said Getahun Bekele of Oakland.
She is only able to see her less-than-a-year-old daughter once a week for an hour but has vowed to continue her struggle until the people are free, said Getahun Bekele, who recently received a message from her family.
As next-door neighbors, the children in the Bekele and Mideksa families grew up together, he said.
Asfaw, who has family ties to Shawel, said he participated in several protests in the Bay Area since the massacres began in Ethiopia.
"We will win our freedom by any means," he said, adding that he lives in a free country, but as long as the Ethiopian people are in captivity, he is captive as well.
On the one hand, they are proud of a historic day — May 15, 2005 — when more than 25 million people in their native Ethiopia went out to vote in the national parliamentary elections.
But on the other hand, they are angry about the civilians who were killed and detained by the government since then.
"I was happy for the people (who were able) to exercise their democratic rights, but their dream for hope changed into a nightmare in just a few days," said Araya "Zuzu" Asfaw of Oakland.
In June and November last year, thousands of demonstrators filled streets in the capital city, Addis Ababa, and in other regions of the country.
The masses opposed election results for being rigged to keep the current ruling party, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, and its leader, Meles Zenawi, in power.
They believed their votes for the Coalition for Unity and Democratic Party and its leader, Hailu Shawel, were not accounted for at the polls.
More than 80 demonstrators were shot dead during post-election protests, according to a recent Amnesty International news release.
The U.S. State Department report on HumanRights Practices in Countries released in March states that: "(Ethiopian) authorities arbitrarily detained, beat and killed opposition members, ethnic minorities, NGO workers and members of the press." There were also reports of disappearances and tortures.
More than 100 Coalition members and their supporters have been held prisoners since November. The prisoners include Shawel, an engineer; Birtukan Mideksa, a female former judge; Berahnu Nega, Addis Ababa's elected mayor; and Mesfin W/Mariam, 76, a professor and veteran human rights activist. A trial began early this month in which charges of treason, among others, could lead to the death sentence.
But additional reports show that thousands more civilians have been detained outside the capital city.
"To date, unknown numbers of prisoners are languishing in prisons under abhorrent conditions," said Abebe Hailu, spokesperson for San Jose-based Ethiopian Americans Council.
The council, a grass-roots organization with members across the nation, is pushing for a U.S. congressional bill asking the Ethiopian government to unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience.
So far, 20 members of Congress have co-sponsored HR 4423, authored by Rep. Christopher Smith, R-New Jersey. The bill is called "Ethiopia Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Act of 2006."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San Jose is one of the co-sponsors. Hailu said they are working to get the support of other California leaders, including Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Tom Lantos of San Mateo.
In Oakland, more than 300 residents from the greater Bay Area attended a fundraiser May 13 to commemorate the historically large turnout at the polls in Ethiopia.
Organized by the Oakland-based Coalition for Unity and Democracy, the event featured speakers and well-known local artists, as well as artists popular within Ethiopian communities worldwide, including Bezawork Asfaw, Tamagne Beyene, Adugnaw Worku and Tesfaye Sima.
During the fundraiser, organizers received a congressional plaque and letters from Lee and former Congressman Ron Dellums recognizing the historic event.
Between laughs, the audience also shed some tears as Tamagne Beyene, a popular comedian, talked of the loss of young and old people and showed images of bleeding demonstrators and mothers crying over coffins of their children's bodies.
"This is not about politics," he said. "This is a human rights issue."
Both he and the event's keynote speaker, Solomon Bekele, a high-ranking official of the Coalition in Washington, D.C., are among a number of people wanted by the ruling party in Ethiopia mainly for treason.
Last year, Beyene released a video, which included mock interviews with the current leader Zenawi and the previous leader Mengistu Haile Mariam.
When asked to describe his comedy style during an interview, he said it is a combination of Bill Maher and Jay Leno. But his comedy came at a price, which prevents him from rejoining his family and the crowd of which he is a product, he said.
Beyene moved to the United States in 1996 after he was tortured and beaten in jail for making comic portrayals of government members under the current regime, which has been in power since 1991.
Among those in prison, the former judge, Mideksa, is a single mother, said Getahun Bekele of Oakland.
She is only able to see her less-than-a-year-old daughter once a week for an hour but has vowed to continue her struggle until the people are free, said Getahun Bekele, who recently received a message from her family.
As next-door neighbors, the children in the Bekele and Mideksa families grew up together, he said.
Asfaw, who has family ties to Shawel, said he participated in several protests in the Bay Area since the massacres began in Ethiopia.
"We will win our freedom by any means," he said, adding that he lives in a free country, but as long as the Ethiopian people are in captivity, he is captive as well.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
The Waters Of Life
Photo Credit: JD DALLET / ARABIAN EYE
Time Europe Magazine -- Twice a year the monks and priests of the Church of Narga Selassie on Dek Island in northern Ethiopia gather to bless an urn of water scooped from the lake that surrounds them. They pray over the water for three days and ask God to sanctify it in the name of Jesus. Then, in a small stone alcove, the head monk pours the water over a silver cross, its detailed engravings worn almost smooth with centuries of polishing, and onto the heads of believers who come in their dozens to be baptized. For the rest of the year the waters of Lake Tana, the eastern source of the Nile, are important to the holy men for more prosaic reasons. They drink it and water their crops with it, wash in its muddy shallows and scrub their laundry on the rocks that necklace the lakeshore. After every sorghum harvest they draw the water in buckets and mix it with grain and hops to make pungent beer. "Our life depends on the lake," says Father Meseret Moges, 53, a priest who has lived in the monastery on the island for almost three decades.
That sentiment is shared by the millions of people who live along the 6,695 km of the world's longest river. From its origins in Ethiopia and in the rolling green hills around Lake Victoria in central Africa, the Nile and its many tributaries loop through 10 countries across half the length of the continent. Egypt, which has viewed the Nile as something like its private possession for centuries, has long drawn far more from the river than its southern neighbors. But ambitious new development schemes are beginning to change that. Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda are all either building or planning to build new dams, and a regional grouping of Nile states is working on proposals for new hydroelectric plants and massive irrigation schemes. To the plans' backers, the Nile is an engine of economic growth. But environmentalists fear a development boom will destroy ecosystems, force people from their homes, and reduce the river to a trickle. "We're definitely at a turning point," says Kinfe Abraham, head of the government-linked think tank Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development in Addis Ababa, and author of three books on the Nile. "The question is what way we go."
For centuries, suspicion and mistrust have flowed as freely as water in the Nile. So dependent is Egypt on the river that rulers since the Pharaohs have regularly cajoled and threatened upstream nations to ensure that their tampering did not leave Egyptians dry and hungry. In 1270, the Orthodox Church in Cairo exercised its control over Ethiopia and the Blue Nile by refusing to send a bishop to anoint an Ethiopian King. In the 20th century, Egypt signed a treaty with Britain that essentially gave Cairo full control over the Nile's waters. Much to its neighbors' disgust, Egypt held them to the pact even after they gained independence from Britain. As recently as the 1970s, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat warned that "any action that would endanger the waters of the Blue Nile will be faced with a firm reaction on the part of Egypt, even if that action should lead to war."
It's easy to understand Egypt's motives: the Nile is a lifeline for the country's 74 million people, over 90% of whom live along a thin strip of fertile land that hugs the river's banks. The Nile also feeds a vast network of Egyptian irrigation canals that nourish the plots of peasant farmers such as Mohammed Sorour, 43, father of seven. "All the time, we have water," smiles Sorour, who plants molokhiyya, a leafy vegetable Egyptians cook into a stew, on the east bank of the river near El Saff, 50 km south of Cairo. "If the Ethiopians ever tried to stop the Nile," Sorour says, only half joking as he fires off rounds from an imaginary machine gun, "Egyptians will attack them and kill all the Ethiopians."
Such threats, as well as grinding poverty and civil wars in Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan — whose capital is built where the Blue Nile meets the White — have stifled development along the upper river for decades. Dam and irrigation projects have been blocked. That, say regional leaders, has kept millions of people poor. "While Egypt is taking the Nile water to transform the Sahara into something green, we in Ethiopia — which is the source of 85% of that water — are denied the possibility of using it to feed ourselves. And we are being forced to beg for food every year," Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the bbc last year. The imbalance is shocking: Egypt uses the Nile's waters to help it produce more than double the power generated in the nine upriver nations combined. It also irrigates millions of acres of farmland even as its neighbors remain among the thirstiest and poorest nations on the planet.
Recently, however, things have begun to change. The end of the cold war eased many of the tensions between Egypt and its southern neighbors as the global powers no longer saw African nations as useful proxies in their own disputes. The ensuing political and economic reforms in Africa have pushed up demand for electricity in places such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As new hydroelectric projects have started over the past few years — Sudan's Merowe Dam is due for completion in less than four years; Ethiopia is building or planning to build a series of dams in its highlands; and Uganda will start work on a new World Bank–backed dam just north of Lake Victoria in the next few years — Egypt has realized that development along the Upper Nile is inevitable. Cairo's leaders now know that it makes more sense for them to get involved than to carp from the sidelines. Moreover, those Egyptian politicians, journalists and other opinion makers who have visited neighbors such as Ethiopia have seen just how far behind such countries are. "We realized that we cannot stop the countries of the Upper Nile from developing the water," Egyptian Minister for Water Resources and Irrigation Mahmoud Abu-Zeid told Time. "We understand each other now. We realize the need for the development of each country."
The new sense of cooperation is enshrined in the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). The grouping of nine nations (Eritrea is still only an observer) was founded in 1999 with the aim of coordinating development along the Nile, boosting local economies, and helping to feed the millions of people in the region who regularly face starvation. Patrick Kahangire, executive director of the NBI secretariat and former head of Uganda's national water department, says that Nile development should help all the countries that share the river. There are still many hurdles. Egypt, for instance, is meeting resistance over its demands that it be given an effective veto over all proposed development. It also wants to be allowed to keep the historic agreements that assure it a minimum quantity of Nile water, which other countries question. "These issues could take many years," says Abdel Fattah Metawie, chairman of Egypt's Nile Water Sector, a department of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (his business card jokingly credits his ministry with being in operation "since 4241 B.C."), "but we will reach agreement, even if it takes many years. There is plenty of water. The problem is managing it."
The grand vision of the NBI goes something like this: large dams along the Blue Nile in Ethiopia will generate power for the region and even for export to Europe. In Sudan and Uganda, where the soil is much richer than in Egypt, vast tracts of irrigated land will grow food. That will help sustain Egypt's population and enable the north African nation to expand its role as the region's manufacturing powerhouse. Each country would invest in the projects, and each country would profit. The scheme's proponents at the NBI point out its benefits: water stored in Ethiopian dams, built into deep ravines, would evaporate more slowly than it does in Egyptian dams with their much greater surface areas; it would take a lot less water to grow crops such as sugar, bananas and rice in Sudan than in Egypt; and a series of projects shared by all the Nile countries would help end devastating seasonal flooding while also promoting peace and stability by tying together the fates of the riverine nations. "It could transform the region completely," says David Grey, the World Bank's senior water resources adviser for Africa and a longtime promoter of Nile development to boost the region's fortunes.
Yes, but the impacts of such development will be immense, ranging from the destruction of wildlife habitat to the loss of sediment transfer — the natural movement of soil downstream to create alluvial floodplains that farmers have relied upon for centuries. Thousands of villagers would have to be relocated to make room for dams and reservoirs, and many would still not benefit directly from new power production because most of the electricity would be used in cities, not in rural areas. Environmentalists are also skeptical that the ambitious integrated scheme would ever work. "It's pie-in-the-sky stuff," says Lori Pottinger, director of the Africa program at the International Rivers Network (IRN), an environmental group based in California. "It assumes that a lot of things are going to go very well, and history shows us with big projects like these, big dams, that it won't."
Exhibit A for both sides of the debate is the unbuilt Bujagali Dam in Uganda. Planned before the NBI even began, Bujagali was put on hold four years ago after one of its contractors was involved in allegations of corruption. The dam, which will generate around 200 MW of much-needed power for Uganda when it is eventually built, will also drown a series of large rapids that roil the Nile and have become one of Uganda's biggest tourist attractions. Hitesh Vora, manager of Equator Rafts and the Speke Camp, which overlooks the falls, is in two minds about the dam. "We definitely need more power," he says. "But perhaps there are other sites further down the river." Others are even less upbeat. "I don't support it because I will no longer be able to work as I have been," says Mohammed Kasango, 16, who lives in a local village and swims the rapids for tourist tips. "I have nothing to gain from the electricity. I do not have it at my home."
Those opposed to dams say projects such as Bujagali are misguided. Frank Muramuzi, executive director of Uganda's National Association of Professional Environmentalists, says that Nile governments should be looking at geothermal and solar-power generation. "We run the risk of building these huge white elephants that benefit factories and cities but not the people who need [power]," he says.
That is precisely what locals in Tis Abay, a town next to the Blue Nile Falls in Ethiopia, believe happened when a new power station was opened three years ago. Water from the Nile is now diverted away from the falls to generators, most of whose power is exported to the nearby regional capital and into the national power grid. The diversion of the river has reduced the once powerful falls to little more than a trickle. Local tourist operators complain that their livelihoods have been destroyed. "Now there is nothing," says Gedefe Fetene, 40, a local farmer. "The beauty is gone."
So it may be. But proponents of more development say big projects are the only way to generate enough power to kick-start the region's economy. The NBI's Kahangire, the World Bank's Grey and other backers of a grand Nile project say that desperately poor countries like Uganda and Ethiopia need the chance to build dams and develop just as the rich world did a century ago. Rapid population growth in such countries — according to the United Nations, Ethiopia's population of 77 million people is expected to more than double to 170 million by 2050, while Uganda's 29 million people will grow to 127 million in the same period — are adding to problems like hunger and soil erosion. Building dams to power factories and houses, say the dams' advocates, is a quicker way to reduce poverty than pursuing small-scale geothermal or solar projects, or keeping the river for tourists. "We value the [Bujagali] falls, but development is about making options and choices," says Kahangire from his office overlooking Lake Victoria in Entebbe, Uganda.
Some in the rich world agree. In his 2004 book, The World's Banker, on former World Bank president James Wolfensohn, journalist Sebastian Mallaby argues that NGOs often do more harm than good to the world's poor. Uganda's National Association of Professional Environmentalists, he wrote, was a tiny single-issue group that, with the backing of Western NGOs (including the IRN), was able to halt a project that could help millions. "This story is a tragedy for Uganda. Clinics and factories are being deprived of electricity by Californians whose idea of an electricity crisis is a handful of summer blackouts," wrote Mallaby in an article based on his book.
Nonetheless, the environmental debate is certain to continue. A recent IRN report says half the dramatic drop in Lake Victoria's water level is caused by Uganda taking more water than it agreed to. Kenya and Tanzania claim the drop has reduced hydropower generation, causing outages. Mohammed Kassas, a Nile expert at Cairo University, questions whether the Nile Basin countries can be trusted to protect the environment in their quest for rapid development. "If it is done in the framework of sustainable development, then it would be O.K.," he says. "But if every country goes ahead, doing as it likes, natural systems tend to kick back."
The World Bank's Grey says that coordinating development through the NBI will actually help the environment. If each country went its own way, he says, the inevitable duplication would damage the river a lot more than one region-wide scheme. The World Bank, he says, is "unequivocally" back in the game of financing large dams. Grey says the Bank has learned from earlier mistakes, when dams benefited big investors and not the rural poor they were supposed to help — a point many environmentalists dispute. "It's arrogant to say that we've learned from the past," says Liane Greeff, who works for a South African NGO called the Environmental Monitoring Group and is highly critical of World Bank–backed dams in Africa. "We may have learned a little bit, but not enough to make things better for average people."
The IRN's Pottinger says the dam lobby often labels concerned environmentalists — incorrectly — as antidevelopment. "Calling us anti-poor is a very easy way to dismiss our concerns," she says. "But all we're doing is looking for ways to help poor people that don't have so many destructive elements." Grey says that Westerners criticizing poor countries trying to develop are applying double standards: "Either those Western countries [and environmentalists against developing the Nile] are saying that developing countries do not have the capacity to develop their resources, or they are saying that they do not deserve to develop their resources."
Development is on the minds of the priests of the Church of Narga Selassie. Standing inside the round building, its walls covered in vividly colored paintings of Bible stories, its air filled with a heady mix of burning frankincense and the fresh straw thatch used in the roof, Father Moges says he would like the government to buy the priests a faster boat so more tourists could visit their church. Electricity, he says, would be a miracle. "We learn from our grandfather and our father that this river crosses many countries," he says slowly. "But even they do not own it. God made it and it belongs to God. Nobody can call it their own." Whether it is owned by God or man, the next few years will determine the future of the river that spills from the lake a few kilometers away.
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