Drone Attack & more – 28th Dec 2023

Salaam salaam from BA! This is the Rorshok Ethiopia Update from the 28th of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Ethiopia.

Because the peace talks between the federal government and the Oromo Liberation Army (or OLA) fell through a couple of weeks ago, fighting has resumed. Residents of the Kombolcha district told the media that a drone strike on a Full Gospel Church in the area killed eight and severely injured three civilians on Monday, the 25th. Adding salt to the wound, villagers were not allowed to attend the funeral of the deceased. Even though it is not certain who carried out these attacks, government forces usually make such drone strikes.

We’ve told you recently that the African Development Bank has decided to withdraw its staff from Ethiopia following an incident in which two of its employees were assaulted and detained. The withdrawal stems from the unfulfilled promise of the Ethiopian government to conduct an investigation on the crimes.

Well, the Bank isn’t the only one demanding accountability surrounding the 31st of October incident. The US, through its embassy in Addis, expressed its concerns and called for those responsible to be held accountable. The Embassy also said it highlights the importance of all nations observing and protecting the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to ensure diplomats around the world can carry out their missions safely..

Moving on, the Public-Private Partnership Department called on resourceful real estate developers to build almost eighty thousand housing units for government employees. According to the Department, developers will have to design, build, administer, and maintain the units. In return, the government will pay them from the money it collects from the dwellers. Developers who intend to work on this have been called on to compete in a tender. Foreign developers can also participate. The first few thousand units completed through this project will be handed to employees of the Federal Housing Corporation and the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.

Next up, drunk driving has been a major cause of accidents, mainly in the capital, Addis Ababa. About eight years ago, the government decided to deploy breathalyzers to catch drunk drivers and take them off the road. According to a report, the measure showed significant improvements in road safety with drunk driving nose-diving to one percent from almost ten percent within a span of four years— from twenty fifteen to twenty nineteen. But in twenty twenty, the government decided to stop using breathalyzers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, on Monday the 25th, the city’s traffic management authority announced that breathalyzer tests are set to resume next week, on Monday the 1st of January twenty twenty-four. The Authority’s director told state media outlet Ethiopian News Agency that the government had procured test devices worth seventy-five million bir or one million and three hundred thousand US dollars, saying that the breathalyzers would be more effective this time around.

In other news, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission called on the government to resume registration for migrants in the country. Registration has been paused for the past three years. The Commission said that because these migrants (especially Eritreans) haven’t been registered, their right to freedom of movement has been restricted. Some have been arrested, and over two hundred have returned to Eritrea, where their lives are at risk. The Commission made this call when it revealed its first-ever report on the human rights of migrants and asylum seekers. According to the document, numerous Eritreans have entered the country, following the peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The Ombudsman Institution announced that it has begun accepting claims against private institutions. The Institution was previously unable to take or follow up on complaints against private institutions; it was only able to investigate government entities. The institution’s head told a news outlet that a newly approved law broadens the powers of the institution, including the investigation of private entities. He also said that the complaints against private institutions that the Ombudsman has received so far mainly concern undue termination of employment contracts and inadequate compensation.

Two weeks ago, we told you about Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s various projects to modify and refine tourist destinations through a fundraiser, which has been successful so far. On Saturday the 23rd, the inauguration of the second destination developed under the ‘Dine for Ethiopia’ initiative took place. This destination is the Chebera Elephant Paw Lodge, located in the South West region. The lodge is built in the Chebera Churchura National Park, which houses various wild animals (some endangered), like the African Elephant, the buffalo, wild boar, deer, among others.

The day before, on Friday the 22nd, Abiy visited another project in the South West Region - the Koysha hydropower project. He said that the project’s completion rate has reached over sixty percent. Upon its full completion, the dam will be the second largest next to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and will have taken about a hundred and forty billion birr or two and half billion US dollars. PM Abiy also said that the dam will have a capacity of a thousand and eight hundred megawatts. Even though investment in energy has been amped up, electricity demand sits a long way from being fulfilled, with an electricity access deficit rate of fifty percent.

In some sports news, since the African Football Confederation announced that Ethiopia doesn’t have a stadium that fulfills international and continental standards, the national football team has been forced to play its home games in other African countries. One of the local stadiums predicted to fulfill the Confederation’s standards will be the Bahir Dar Stadium, once it is completed. Midroc Construction, the contractor, was supposed to have finished the second phase of construction early last month. However, the Amhara region’s youth and sports bureau explained that the company was unable to finish construction on time due to foreign currency shortage and the conflict in the region. The bureau announced that it has granted an additional hundred days to the company to complete the second phase. This phase sees the construction of a swimming pool, roads, fields, and lighting. The bureau said the third round will be roofing.

Ando to close this edition -the last one of this year- this Friday the 29th, the annual St. Gabriel holiday commemorates the miracles He performed, according to the Bible and other religious texts. There’s a special celebration at the Qulbi St. Gabriel Church in Dire Dawa and in the St. Gabriel Church in Hawassa. Since thousands of Orthodox Christians flock to the Church every year, peace and security task forces have to be deployed. They have banned heavy trucks from entering nearby roads from Wednesday the 27th until celebrations are complete. A temporary court has been set up to deal with suspects quickly, and temporary police stations have been put in place to combat petty crimes.

Aaand that's it for this week!

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Ciao!