Unrest in Ethiopia: The showcase of a country seething – FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The First thing that got to see Marc Mace Mans of the riots, were thick black columns of smoke, on the grounds of the ascents neighboring farm. “I was paralyzed,” recalled the Dutchman to these 3. October. A day earlier, Ethiopian security forces is a slaughter among the participants of the traditional harvest festival of the ethnic group, the Oromo, the alleged several hundred people died.

author: Thomas Scheen, a Political correspondent for Africa, based in Nairobi. consequences:

The Oromo people went to foreign companies in their Region, by making them responsible for their own plight. As the neighboring farm Africa Juice came up finally in flames, was for the flower breeders club Mans clear that his Farm will be next.

in Front of the gate appeared several hundred men, with sticks, stones, and also fire weapons in the hands. The operation will be flared off, they let the Dutch know. “We were all scared stiff,” recalls Mace Mans, whose real Name should not appear, for security reasons, in the newspaper, “we all, the Management, the workers”. One of his workers had been killed the day before by the police in the massacre in the town of Bishoftu.

More about

“it was like in the war,” says Mace Mans some of the worst hours of his life. His flower breeding is still owes club Mans the village elders, who “showed up like the cavalry in literally the last Minute,” and the mostly young demonstrators were able to calm down.

Ethiopia was considered to be the secret Star

For many other companies, but came in the five days after the massacre of Bishoftu to. The number of severely damaged or completely destroyed farms in the Oromo country is supposed to be far more than 100, including the cement factory of the Nigerian billionaire Dangote. An American biologist, who worked for a Dutch agricultural company, came by a stone’s throw killed.

For the economies in Ethiopia, since then there are two invoices: one in front of the 2. October and after. Before that fateful day in October, the country with almost 100 million people in the Horn of Africa as the secret Star among the emerging Nations of Africa. The economy grows by 10 per cent in the year, and the resistant for almost a decade. The International monetary Fund, Ethiopia is one of the five fastest-growing economies in the world.

China as a model government

The growth is mainly due to the agriculture, 48 percent to the gross domestic product and 85 percent of export earnings, contributes. Ethiopia has large areas of agricultural land. Are grown coffee, Maize, Teff, wheat, legumes, potatoes, sugar cane and vegetables. Add to this a great cut flower plantations, which produce mainly for the Dutch wholesale trade, and of the 75 million animals, the largest livestock population on the continent, which, in turn, provides the large Shoe industry in the country with leather.

In the capital, Addis Ababa, operates as a Symbol of progress recently, modern Chinese tram. The Chinese are a strong presence of the authoritarian development model, the left-leaning Ethiopian government is taking an example.