{"id":23255,"date":"2018-07-10T09:02:25","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T08:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=23255"},"modified":"2018-07-10T11:01:03","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T10:01:03","slug":"whats-happened-in-ethiopia-and-do-you-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=23255","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s happening in Ethiopia? &#8211; and do you care?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two important books which I&#8217;ve read recently &#8211; &#8220;Enlightenment Now&#8221; [my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nfbooks.html#EN\">here<\/a>] and &#8220;Factfulness&#8221; [my review <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nfbooks.html#FFN\">here<\/a>] &#8211; both make the fundamental point that most of the progress which is being made by humankind is not reported by the media \u00a0because it is gradual and undramatic and therefore unnewsworthy. \u00a0This is especially true of developments in Africa and Asia which seem to be of little interest to many people in Europe and America.<\/p>\n<p>It appears to me that a good example of this is the advances being made in Ethiopia &#8211; a country you&#8217;ve never visited and you hardly ever read about.<\/p>\n<p>I visited Ethiopia three years ago and the conclusion of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Ethiopia\">my account<\/a>\u00a0noted:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230; for the tourist who wants something different and is prepared for some challenges, Ethiopia is a great destination. The exotic names of places we visited were themselves magical: Addis Ababa, Axum, Lalibela &#8230; But the history was so rich and fascinating, whether it was the skeleton of Lucy, the stelae of Axum, the rock churches of Lalibela, or the castles of Gondar and the terrain was awesome whether it was the mountains of the Simien National Park or the waters of Lake Tana. In fact, four of the locations we viewed are World Heritage Sites.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In recent months, some significant political developments have been occurring in Ethiopia. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/jul\/08\/abiy-ahmed-upending-ethiopian-politics\">this article<\/a> explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, has accelerated a radical reform programme that is overturning politics in the vast, strategically significant African country.Since coming to power as prime minister in April, Abiy has electrified Ethiopia with his informal style, charisma and energy, earning comparisons to Nelson Mandela, Justin Trudeau, Barack Obama and Mikhail Gorbachev.<\/p>\n<p>The 42-year-old \u2013 who took power following the surprise resignation of his predecessor, Haile Mmariam Dessalegn \u2013 has so far reshuffled his cabinet, fired a series of controversial and hitherto untouchable civil servants, reached out to hostile neighbours and rivals, lifted bans on websites and other media, freed thousands of political prisoners, ordered the partial privatisation of massive state-owned companies and ended a state of emergency imposed to quell widespread unrest.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ethiopia still has huge problems but there are reasons to be cheerful including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/jul\/09\/ethiopia-and-eritrea-restore-ties-after-20-years-of-enmity\">a new accord<\/a> between Ethiopia and Eritrea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two important books which I&#8217;ve read recently &#8211; &#8220;Enlightenment Now&#8221; [my review here] and &#8220;Factfulness&#8221; [my review here] &#8211; both make the fundamental point that most of the progress which is being made by humankind is not reported by the media \u00a0because it is gradual and undramatic and therefore unnewsworthy. \u00a0This is especially true of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23255"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23268,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23255\/revisions\/23268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}