[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yGkJsR7-HY] The Guardian’s John Vidal reports from Ethiopia’s remote Gambella region where in the last 10 years “1.1 million hectares, nearly a quarter of its best farmland” have been sold or leased to foreign companies by the Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian government says 36 countries including India, China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have leased farm […]

A post about Ethiopia that is not about Meles Zenawi’s regime. Next week (Tuesday 7 till Sunday 12 December 2010) the inaugural Addis Photo Fest, featuring a group of African and African diaspora photographers, takes over the Ethiopian capital. (The festival is curated by the young, photographer Aida Muluneh). One of the highlights is a […]

This may yet become a weekly award on AIAC. The inaugural Waka Waka Award–name in honor of Shakira–goes to Jack Burkman, “GOP strategist,” who recently decided to insult Ethiopians and Nigerians in a Fox Business News studio “discussion” about closing the United States Post Office–work that out. Watch it here.

I can’t say I was completely bowled over by Dinaw Mengistu’s first novel, “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears,” about an Ethiopian immigrant in gentrifying Washington D.C. (Some of my friends loved it though and most literary elites here raved about it: The New York Times Book Review, for example, deemed it one of “the […]

Sean Jacobs Earlier this week the Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi addressed a public lecture on “leadership” at Columbia. Meles is in town for the UN’s talk fest slash summit on the Millennium Development Goals this week. Meles has been in power since 1991, wins elections with 99% of the vote, fills his jails with […]