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Africa

Our Art and Entertainment Editor Zela Gayle shares with us the life of  Aron Mitu, an Ethiopian born dancer, model and actress with an ambition to close the gap between her culture and an all European environment

Aron Mitu remembers feeling sad and confused upon leaving Ethiopia when she was just ten years old. Growing up in Slovakia where her parents migrated for work and study, little Aron was forced to accept her importance as the only Ethiopian in her school. There she realized how fortunate she was to have spent the first ten years of her life in Ethiopia, the country of her Birth, because everywhere she went people stared; classes were often disrupted because pupils could only concentrate on detecting her difference. Later on this was to set a pattern of visibility for Aron as she rejected her parent’s desires for her future as an academic and went on fulfilling her inner dreams of becoming a professional dancer & choreographer.

Hardcore economists believe the mystique power of the ‘invisible hand’ in the market, first conceived by Adam Smith, essentially creates a self-equilibrating market. But our columnist Taye Negussie (PhD) argues such characterization of the market, particularly when it comes to utilization and preservation of natural resources, misses the subtlety of the actual market exchange processes  

  A late August negotiations in Addis Ababa between the Somali government and representatives of the Jubaland administration have given birth to the creation of an ‘Interim Juba Administration’ in Southern Somalia to be led by Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed Islam, a.k.a Sheikh Madobe, who was once a senior member of the Union of Islamic Courts and who spent time in Ethiopian prison. A recent report by the UN called him a “spoiler”, and some within the Somali federal government allege a possible resurgent of a relationship between al-Shabab and  Sheikh Madobe, our editor-in-chief  Tsedale Lemma says that poses a greater security threat to Ethiopia