World News, Africa

Analysis – daring a long journey just to be across borders

The number of young Ethiopians trying to leave the country at any cost via the eastern part of Ethiopia shows no decline

 
Kalkidan Yibeltal

 
Harar- Inside the compound of the Harari Regional Police Commission’s Headquarters in eastern Ethiopia sit an assemblage of some one hundred young men and women waiting for buses to take them back to where they came from – their home villages in the Northern part of the country. They have resemblances transcending their disheveled appearances and deranged gazes. Many of them are in their early twenties; while some are not well past their teens. They all have one thing in common: they have taken the long journey from their home towns and villages just to cross the Eastern border and enter Somalia. But their final destination and hope is not in Somalia, but somewhere Gulf States.

World News, Africa

No ordinary year in Ethiopia; drought a ‘code red’

John Graham

We cannot turn our backs on Ethiopia – we must learn from the region’s history books

On the dusty plains outside Erer in Ethiopia’s east, the rotting carcasses of cows, goats, donkeys and camels bake under the hot African sun, fodder for hungry vultures and stealthy hyenas.

Until recently 40-year-old Jama and his family called these lands home, and had done for generations.