Ethiopian History

Transboundary river basins are under increasing pressure due to population growth, agricultural and industrial developments, and climate change, as well as river pollution. Water scarcity is on the increase due to the increasing gap between water demands and supply. This will result in more tensions, disputes, conflicts, and deadlocks in negotiations over water distribution, length of time it takes to fill the eservoir, and allocation. Ethiopia is building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile River with a hydropower capacity of 6,000 MW. The total estimated cost of the project is US$ 4.8 Billion and will be the largest dam in Africa, which is much larger than the Aswan Dam in Egypt. Regional controversies have risen over the construction of the dam between Ethiopia and the downstream countries (Sudan and Egypt). The Blue Nile River is a source of around 85% of the Nile River water. Egypt claims that GERD will reduce flow of water in the Nile River between 11 and 19 billion m3(BCM) which will affect 2 million people and will also interrupt electricity supplies 25 to 40%. The real scale of the environmental impacts of GERD, under construction upstream of the Nile River, together with the rising sea levels, due to climate change, leading to saltwater intrusion downstream, are still not clear. But for Ethiopians GERD is empowering development and contribution to their future. With the Nile, no longer Egyptian birthright, and the Nile Delta gradually disappearing into the Mediterranean sea, millions of Egypt’s people will inevitably need to look elsewhere for a livable future. The crises, therefore, necessities the adaptation of a more effective institutional arrangement, such as through Rowland-Ostrom Framework, for common pool shared water resource management and cooperative approach to address and resolve present and future problems, including on other common transboundary resources (forest, oil/gas and minerals).The need for expanding traditional integrated water resources management to better include the cultural, social and political complexity of the GERD is the key factor to reconcile the contrasting concepts of “nationalism” and “regional hydro solidarity”. Connecting Nile and Congo water system, through diverting water by digging a 600-km canal together with pumping stations and other massive infrastructure to transport water from the Congo Basin to the Nile Basin has been suggested as an alternative way of ensuring Egypt’s water security. As part of mitigation measures, Egypt needs to invest in desalinization for fresh water, water-saving drip irrigation, and come up with an Aquifer Storage Recovery (ASR) scheme, artificial recharge and scheduled water extraction, to minimize the cumulative effect of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and seawater intrusion downstream along the Mediterranean coast.

Published in: Gérard PRUNIER and Eloi FICQUET, editors, 2015, Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Monarchy, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi. London: Hurst: 63-91.

Abstract: For centuries the Christian Orthodox Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia was considered the dominant framework through which Ethiopia could be understood. Today Orthodox Christians represent more or less one half of the Ethiopian population, concentrated in the northwest but also widely disseminated throughout the urban networks of the state structure. Without going far back into history, this chapter starts at the end of the nineteenth century to show that the Church was instrumental in the unification of the kingdom andits dependencies around a common reinstated Christian identity. But quite quickly it became clear that without organisational changes in the clergy and the Church’s complete submission to secular political authority, it could not continue playing this role. Therefore, the nationalization of the Ethiopian Church was its main challenge in the first half of the twentieth century. After the cutting of its historical umbilical cord to the Egyptian Coptic Church, the Ethiopian Church was forced to follow and adapt to political changes in Ethiopia. The Derg incarcerated and executed a Patriarch and nominated a new higher clergy who accepted revolutionary ideas. In turn, the EPRDF arrested the Derg’s Patriarch, who fled into exile and was replaced by a new head who shared a common origin with the new secular leaders. These unceasing government interferences into clerical affairs led to the development of reformist movements that became a shelter for conservative opposition.

Editors: Gérad PRUNIER and Eloi FICQUET.
Publisher: Hurst, London, 2015.
Contributors: Stéphane ANCEL; Shiferaw BEKELE; Giulia BONACCI; Christopher CLAPHAM; Dereje FEYISSA DORI; Perrine DUROYAUME; Emanuele FANTINI; Patrick GILKES; René LEFORT; Medhane TADESSE; Sarha VAUGHAN.

When we think of Ethiopia we tend to think in cliches: Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the Falasha Jews, the epic reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, the Communist Revolution, famine and civil war. Among the countries of Africa it has a high profile yet is poorly known. How- ever all cliches contain within them a kernel of truth, and occlude much more. Today's Ethiopia (and its painfully liberated sister state of Eritrea) are largely obscured by these mythical views and a secondary literature that is partial or propagandist. Moreover there have been few attempts to offer readers a comprehensive overview of the country's recent history, politics and culture that goes beyond the usual guidebook fare. Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia seeks to do just that, presenting a measured, detailed and systematic analysis of the main features of this unique country, now building on the foundations of a magical and tumultuous past as it struggles to emerge in the modern world on its own terms.

This article presents a single fragmentary folio that was recently uncovered in excavations at the Monastery of St Antony (Egypt). This folio was discovered in a secondary deposit below the foundations of a church which was in all likelihood constructed in the 1230s. A radiocarbon dating of the folio has returned a date of 1160-1265. Together, these two data make this fragmentary folio the earliest securely datable specimen of an Ethiopic manuscript. This find, thus, provides a new foundation for the analysis of the paleography of the earliest Ethiopic manuscripts, including the gospel manuscripts from Ǝnda Abba Gärima, which contain paleographic features that seem to predate this fragmentary folio. In addition, this find has implications for the regnant periodization of Ethiopic literature and more specifically the history of Ethiopic monastic literature, especially the Zena Abäw. Finally, this folio is among the earliest surviving Aethiopica for the entirety of Egypt and thus provides new information on the relationship between Ethiopic and Coptic Christianity.