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Reasons why I think Prime Minister Abiy deserves to receive the Nobel Peace Prize

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By Hiwot Teferra

Once again, His Excellency Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed made us fall in love with our country, Ethiopia.
Ever since he took office, his actions have been remarkable, the type one can simply not ignore.
It started with his inaugural speech where he mentioned Ethiopia so many times, he evoked so much love for the country and showed so much respect to his predecessor, H.E. Hailemariam Dessalegn that right from the beginning, Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed touched our hearts.
It needs to be stated right away that Dr. Abiy’s speeches are generally mind-blowing and one has to have full control of his or her emotion while listening, in order not to cry. His words are moving and tend to bring people at the heart of the Ethiopian issue.
As far as prioritizing Peace in concerned, it was obvious since Dr. Abiy took office that he wanted to tighten and reinforce diplomatic ties with neighboring countries. In fact, within a few weeks of his premiership, Dr. Abiy started visiting each one of them.
This by itself was exceptional because customarily in Africa, premiers tend to spend more energy and time on domestic affairs rather than on international relations. This is of course not to say that Dr. Abiy did not focus on internal issues. He definitely did. In fact, he went to most regions to address the issues our people had. Yet, the fact that he gave equally an importance on foreign affairs was for me respectable and a clear indication that our Prime Minister came on board with a global vision.
In this initiative, what surprised me the most is when in June 2018, Dr. Abiy not only visited Egypt which is probably not the easiest country to tie diplomatic relations with due to the Nile issues, but after a successful meeting with President El-Sisi, Dr. Abiy got Ethiopian Prisoners in Egypt freed and brought them back to Ethiopia in the same flight he took to come back to Ethiopia. This was an unimaginable event, an action only a blessed person would take.
That same month, precisely on June 23, 2018, Dr. Abiy made a heart-touching speech in Meskel square, emphasizing on the concept of ‘Medemer’, the need for all of Ethiopians to work together for a better Ethiopia tomorrow. There again, he brought our emotions together, preaching love for our country and the possibility of building a better Ethiopia, in unity. When he finished his speech, he bowed down 90 degrees to the thousands of Ethiopians who were listening to his speech, showing a great length of respect for the people. This was never seen from a leader before and so, it was very much appreciated. Unfortunately, this same day, a bomb exploded at Meskel Square and sadly we had a few victims. The same day, not only Dr. Abiy went to the hospital to see the wounded, he also donated blood the very next day, thereby activating a blood donation program nationwide, on a voluntary basis.
Again in June 2019, Dr. Abiy initiated a peace deal with President Issayas Afeworki, restoring diplomatic ties with Eritrea after two decades. The rest is history, as the reunification of Ethiopia and Eritrea helped bring peace between the two nations, it reunited families who were separated for years yet had so much love for one another, and this saved thousands of dollars spent at the boarder for peacekeeping.
Dr. Abiy’s efforts to restore peace did not end there. In July 2018, he traveled to the USA and visited the most important cities where Ethiopians reside and addressed our people’s issues in North America. These people were to a great extent dissatisfied with the previous Ethiopian Government. It was therefore important to approach them and create peace. Hence, the largest halls were booked in various cities for this purpose. There, Dr. Abiy met most of the opposition leaders and started a peace and reconciliation process. He courageously apologized for all the wrong actions previously taken. He used this opportunity to invite Ethiopians to come and help build their country, which was well accepted. This proved to be very successful. A few days later, many opposition leaders who had not returned to Ethiopia for a long time came back and were received colorfully.
Over and above this matter, despite not being an Orthodox himself, Dr. Abiy took on the responsibility of bringing unity within the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which was divided into two between the USA and Ethiopia. Upon returning from the USA, the Prime Minister brought in his plane senior leaders of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church who were exiled in the USA for years. Within a couple of days in Aug 2018, a celebration at the millennium hall marked the Reconciliation, Peace and Unity of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
October 2018 was a historic month for Ethiopia. First because that month, the ministerial cabinet saw for the first time, 50% of its ministers being women. Moreover, the country saw for the first time a Ministry of Peace with at its head, a woman, the remarkable He.E. Ms. Muferiat Kamil, the right person in my opinion to head this ministry.
On Oct 28, with the full support of PM Dr. Abiy, Ambassador Sahle-Work Zewde became the first female president of F.D.R. of Ethiopia. Again, this was the right choice because Ambassador Sahle-Work Zewde had been a diplomat for a very long time and she has a wide range of experience and exposure abroad including with the United Nations.
This move helped young girls and women, including me to unleash our potential and envision a bigger picture of ourselves, the sense that we too could reach the top if we work for it.
In November 2018, under PM Dr. Abiy’s leadership, Honorable Ms. Birtukan Mideksa who was imprisoned and tortured under the previous regime came back from the USA where she was exiled and became the Chairperson of the Ethiopian Electoral Board, a position never taken by a woman before.
In Feb 2019 at the opening of the yearly held AU Summit, the statue of the Emperor Haileselassie, one of the fore founders of OAU was inaugurated at the AU compound, whereas our previous government had obviously not lobbied for this to happen when the statue of Kwame Nkrumah had been there since 2012.
When is April 2019, a photo exhibition was organized at the Millennium Hall depicting H.E. Dr. Abiy Ahmed’s performance as Prime Minister of Ethiopia from April 2018 to April 2019, it was obvious that he had accomplished a number of things within one year and beyond anyone’s imagination.
The opening of the Unity Park in Sep. 2019 was another great achievement, for the outcome was outstanding. What made it even more unique is that when it was inaugurated, free access was given to elders, the physically challenged and the homeless before it was opened to the public…
Dr. Abiy’s achievements are many, way too many. Some of them are unique in nature and simple at the same time. I say simple because clearly some of them are based on his simple and uncomplicated core values which are LOVE for Ethiopia, PEACE for all & UNITY. His love for the non-privileged, his respect for the elders and religious leaders, his proven humility are the essence of his actions. Hence, the Nobel Peace Prize is a very well deserved award and a honor for Ethiopia.
Dear Nobel Laureate, Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed, Thank you! May you have a Long Life. May God Bless you and your family.

Hiwot Teferra can be reached at hiwotteferralobo@gmail.com

Free trade and developing countries

Alazar Kebede
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Cogent criticisms have been made about the ability of the doctrine of comparative advantage to deal with the obvious global disadvantage of developing countries. The concern here is that ‘in a world of uneven development free trade, or even trade per se, may be inherently unequalising. There is a range of economic arguments that explain why the doctrine of comparative advantage may be unable to deliver its promised welfare benefits to developing countries.
One of the important general arguments in this context is that comparative advantage is created and cumulative, rather than natural, being based on historical development processes, acquired skills, cultivated industry patterns or “first mover” benefits, so it can change over time, can be shaped by governments or industry leaders and can decay through neglect. If this is so, then the cumulative comparative advantage of developed countries will ensure either that inequalities remain or that they take an unacceptably long time to disappear.
Another important school of economic thought postulates perpetual inequalities as a consequence of free trade. According to this argument, where there is low elasticity in demand for the exports of a country but high elasticity in domestic demand for imports, then export prices relative to import prices will result in a continuous trade deficit. As this tends to describe the terms upon which at least some developing countries export their primary products and import manufactured products, it is argued that under free trade conditions these developing countries will remain trapped in a trade deficit preventing them from realising the welfare gains promised by free trade doctrine.
These are not, of course, the only explanations for the current trade deficit and retarded economic development suffered by developing countries. It is certainly the case that the adverse economic position of developing countries has been exacerbated by the fact that they have been denied comparative advantages that they might have otherwise enjoyed. In this respect two factors, in particular, are worthy of note.
The first is that the requirements for the global protection of intellectual property rights, the large scale benefits of which are overwhelmingly enjoyed by undertakings based in the developed world, deny to developing countries any comparative advantage that they may have accrued in the processes or imitation of certain manufactured goods and in incremental innovation. To place this in context, it is essential to understand that many of today’s developed countries once placed extensive economic reliance on the unfettered ability to copy manufactured goods emanating from other more developed economies.
Secondly, the trading position of many developing countries is adversely affected by the fact that developed countries have continued to protect their domestic markets for certain primary products and manufactured goods exported from developing countries. However, the extent to which the opening of developed country markets to such exports would alleviate the trade deficits of developing countries remains a matter of debate amongst economists.
The protectionism of developed countries is a response to what is perceived as a potential flood of ‘cheap imports’ from the developing world. It is not uncommon for industries in developed countries to argue that, in order to survive, they need protection from such imports, which are made on the back of low labour costs in developing countries. From the free trade point of view, this argument denies to developing countries their legitimate comparative advantage. In economic terms, some questions have been raised about the validity of this free trade argument given that many of the employers of low- cost labour in the developing world are multinational corporate interests, which marry high technology with low cost labour in order to achieve an advantage that gives little in the way of welfare benefits to the host developing country.
In addition to this, it is not clear that the developed world market for cheap manufactured imports from developing countries functions in quite the way that classical free trade economists postulate. Theoretically, the comparative advantage of the developing country will be realised when developed world consumers purchase the cheaper imports rather than more expensive domestic products.
However, increasing numbers of consumers in the developed world eschew the products of low-cost labour on ethical grounds. This not only shows the limits of economic theory but also indicates that the debate about free trade should transcend arguments about the validity in solely economic terms of the doctrine of comparative advantage.
Ethical concerns about the exploitation of labour, whether by multinational corporate interests or by domestically based interests, are one of a number of non- economic arguments that may be made about an unfettered free trade regime. What these arguments have in common is the rejection of wealth maximisation as the ultimate measure of human happiness and attainment.
As Keynes famously wrote: “If it were true that we should be a little richer, provided that the whole country and all the workers in it were to specialise on half- a dozen mass-produced products, each individual doing nothing and having no hopes of doing anything except one minute, unskilled repetitive act all his life long, should we all cry out for the immediate destruction of the endless variety of trades and crafts and employments which stand in the way of the glorious attainment of this maximum degree of specialised cheapness? Of course we should not – and that is enough to prove the case for free trade . . . has left something out. Our task is to redress the balance of the argument”.
The critique of free trade based upon the rejection of wealth maximization draws stark attention to the difficulty in attempting to divide the political and the economic. The decision to embrace a free trade regime is not, and can never be, a purely economic one. Rather, it is a political choice involving, amongst other things, economic considerations. Joseph Stiglitz underlines the significance of this point: “There are important disagreements about economic and social policy in our democracies. Some of these disagreements are about values, how concerned should we be about our environment (how much environmental degradation should we tolerate, if it allows us to have a higher GDP); how concerned should we be about the poor (how much sacrifice in our total income should we be willing to make, if it allows some of the poor to move out of poverty, or to be slightly better off ); or how concerned should we be about democracy”.
Overall, the debate on the non-economic merits and de-merits of the comparative advantage doctrine is one that even the most thoughtful modern proponents of free trade. In this, as in so much else, modern free trade theorists appear to be embracing a type of intellectual foreclosure that dates back to the work of Adam Smith. Adam Smith postulated non-economic effects of free trade, both positive and negative. On the positive side, both he and Ricardo cited cosmopolitanism and international harmony as a non- economic benefit of free trade. However, Smith saw that the pursuit of material wealth had less desirable effects.

European Green Deal

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By Von der Leyen, European Commission President

Do we, humans, want to continue living well and safely on this planet? Humanity faces an existential threat – the whole world is beginning to see. Forests burn from America to Australia. Deserts are advancing across Africa and Asia. Rising sea levels threaten our European cities as well as Pacific islands. Mankind has seen such phenomena before, but never at this speed. In addition to climate-induced drought often witnessed, currently, Ethiopia is experiencing untimely rain which compromises its harvesting season Science tells us that we can still stop this epidemic, but we are running out of time. The new European Commission is wasting no time. Today, less than two weeks into our mandate, we present our roadmap for a European Green Deal.
Our goal is to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, slowing down global warming and mitigating its effects. This is a task for our generation and the next, but change must begin right now – and we know we can do it.
The European Green Deal that we present today is Europe’s new growth strategy. It will cut emissions while also creating jobs and improving our quality of life.
It is the green thread that will run through all our policies – from transport to taxation, from food to farming, from industry to infrastructure. With our Green Deal we want to invest in clean energy and extend emission trading, but we will also boost the circular economy and preserve Europe’s biodiversity.
The European Green Deal is not just a necessity: it will be a driver of new economic opportunities. Many European firms are already going green. They are cutting their carbon footprint and discovering the clean technologies. They understand that there are planetary boundaries: European companies of all sizes understand that everyone has to take care of our common home. They also know that if they discover the sustainable solutions of tomorrow, this will give them first mover advantage.
What businesses and change-makers need from us is easy access to financing. To pull this off, we will deliver a Sustainable Europe Investment Plan. It will support one trillion euros of investment over the next decade. We will work hand in hand with the European Investment Bank, Europe’s climate bank.
Next March, we will propose the first-ever European Climate Law to chart the way ahead and make it irreversible: investors, innovators and entrepreneurs need clear rules to plan their long-term investments.
While we will promote transformation in how we produce and consume, live and work, we must also protect and accompany those who risk being hit harder by such change. This transition must work for all or it will not work at all. I will propose to set up a Just Transition Fund – and I want it to mobilise, together with the leverage of the European Investment Bank and private money, one hundred billion euros in investment over the next seven years. We will make sure that we help those European regions who will have to take a bigger step, so that we leave no one behind.
Across Europe, people young and old are not only asking for climate action. They are already changing their lifestyle: think of the commuters who take the bike or public transport, parents who choose reusable diapers, companies that renounce single-use plastics and bring sustainable alternatives to the market. Many of us are part of this European and global movement for climate. Last year, Ethiopia reported to have planted more than 350 million trees in 12 hours beating world record and a comprehensive 4 billion trees during the year.
Nine European citizens out of ten ask for decisive climate action. Our children rely on us. Europeans want their Union to act at home and lead abroad. In these very days, the whole world has gathered in Madrid for the United Nations’ conference on climate, to discuss collective action against global warming.
The European Green Deal is Europe’s response to our people’s call. It is a deal by Europe, for Europe and a contribution for a better world. Every European can be part of the change.

CROSSROADS OF SYMBOLS AND SUBSTANCE

Dr. Desta Meghoo
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“The art of building peace is a synergistic process to change hearts, minds, beliefs and attitudes, that never ceases.” H.E. Prime Minister, Dr. Abiyi Ahmed
One of the most compelling international exhibitions, filled with photos that capture a sampling of a country’s cultural, social and political accomplishments and aspirations, opened to the public on December 12th in Oslo, Norway entitled CROSSROADS ETHIOPIA. In honor of Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Laureate, His Excellency Prime Minister Dr. Abiyi Ahmed, the exhibition was created by the Nobel Peace Center, with the intention to curate a ‘portrait of the Laureate himself…a close-up on change, hope and challenges in his country.’ The exhibition, which remains open through November 2020, features photographs commissioned by Nobel Peace Center from British-Canadian photographer, Finbarr O’Rilley, who traveled to Ethiopia to create a series of photographs of the young Leader and his country. O’Riley said in an interview with Scandinavian Daily, “I had very limited time with the Laureate – just a few minutes to make a handful of portraits. So, I focused on documenting some of the political changes implemented by the Laureate, and how he has positioned himself to lead his country as it heads towards elections scheduled for next year.” The Center’s Program Director, Toril Rokseth, also said, “It is exciting to create an exhibition about an ongoing process. Abiy Ahmed has great ambitions, but he also faces great challenges. Through this exhibition, we want to show how complex and time consuming the road to peace and democracy is, and also the risks involved.”
CROSSOROADS ETHIOPIA was co-curated by the Nobel Peace Center’s Asle Olsen and Liv Astrid Sverdrup, with part of the exhibition equally co-curated by Addis Photo Fest (AFF) Founder and photographer, Queen of Ethiopian Photography, Aida Muluneh. AFF archives provided a supplement to O’Reilly’s visual record on the “political changes” with a narrative of cultural and social actualities seen through the lens of Ethiopians. The photos of AFF alum, emerging photographers, Mulugeta Ayene, Abinet Teshome, Aron Simeneh, Naod Lemma, Nader Adem and Getu Addis Aemero were selected for the prestigious exhibition. Bu there is no surprise here, as AFF is known for its high caliber of photographers and imagery, summoned to Ethiopia by Aida every two years. However, if one picture can say a thousand words, likewise words can paint a picture.
The speech of the Laureate, Dr. Abiyi best expressed the PM and Ethiopia’s visions for justice, peace and progress in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa and the Continent. H.E. the PM said, “I accept this award on behalf of Ethiopians and Eritreans, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of peace. Likewise, I accept this award on behalf of my partner, and comrade-in-peace, President Isaias Afeworki, whose goodwill, trust, and commitment were vital in ending the two-decade deadlock between our countries. I also accept this award on behalf of Africans and citizens of the world for whom the dream of peace has often turned into a nightmare of war.” These warm words reflected the Pan African spirit of Brotherhood and desire for continental harmony espoused by the Founding Fathers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) now African Union (AU) including Emperor Haile Selassie I, Ghana’s Hon. Kwame Nkrumah, Kenya’s Hon. Jomo Kenyatta and Egypt’s Gamal Nasser amongst others. The desire for African unity and the protection of sovereignty brought 32 countries together for shared goals in 1963 and we are still coming together here in the 21st century.
Another excerpt of the PM’s speech states, “Peace requires good faith to blossom into prosperity, security, and opportunity. In practice, Medemer is about using the best of our past to build a new society and a new civic culture that thrives on tolerance, understanding, and civility. At its core, Medemer is a covenant of peace that seeks unity in our common humanity…“No justice, no peace,” calls to mind that peace thrives and bears fruit when planted in the soil of justice. The disregard for human rights has been the source of much strife and conflict in the world.” Human Rights Day was commemorated on December 10th at the UNECA, organized by the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights Regional Office with over 200 youth in attendance. They came from various parts of the country from different disciplines, walks and stages of life and I must add, an almost equal representation of male and female participants. Students, social entrepreneurs, tech leaders, lawyers, poets, dancers, painters, media and more came to hear and have a say on the role of youth in Ethiopia as champions for human rights towards ensuring a peaceful and progressive society. Three semifinalists from eighty submissions for the OHCHR sponsored essays contest were read aloud with all “coincidentally” reflecting the Leo Leader’s speech delivered in Norway? No coincidence here at all! We all want peace and we therefore “…must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook…” according to Emperor Haile Selassie I 1963 UN Speech. Simply put, we join John Lennon’s in song, “All we are saying, is give peace a chance…”.

Dr. Desta Meghoo is a Jamaican born
Creative Consultant, Curator and cultural promoter based in Ethiopia since 2005. She also serves as Liaison to the AU for the Ghana based, Diaspora African Forum.

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