Home2012 (Page 46)

May 2012

How an interim report about poverty alarmingly omits the poor from its index and declares a decline in poverty.

 Hone Mandefro

 With the start of the new millennium in the year 2000, the World Bank and IMF replaced the decades-old Structural Adjustment Programs with Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) as the basis for their lending. It was part of the effort to mitigate the negative consequences of poverty reduction policies in countries struggling to sustain a sound economic development.

Since then more than a dozen developing countries have written different rounds of poverty reduction strategy papers followed by monitoring and evaluation system of their implementations.

Dear editor,

I came across with you rather unique and fascinating magazine for the first time by a sheer coincides. I would like to extend my appreciation to the professional work accomplished by the team of writers on your magazine. Having said so, I would like to comment on your cover page story (What now?, April 2012). While you are undoubtedly right on highlighting the true side of the government in Eritrea, you recklessly mentioned containing the evils that President Esaias Afeworki is unleashing upon the entire region “doesn’t necessarily make Ethiopia the Good Samaritan trying to rescue Eritrea from the tyranny of Isaisas Afeworki.”

24 is the number of countries scheduled to conduct national elections in the year 2012. Plenty of reasons to shed tears; tears of euphoria and of sadness alike.

Selahadin Eshetu Getahun

We live in a complicated global system that gives us plenty of reasons to shed tears. I know I am not inclined to cry but there have been a couple of times when I found myself weeping uncontrollably, in the immediate aftermath of the third (and historic) Ethiopian national election in 2005, for instance.