Category: Opinion

Coronavirus and Ethiopian Constitutional Crisis

I am not a legal scholar, still less a constitutional expert. I wrote this piece on constitutional crisis to assess the consistency of the reactions of opposition parties to the four alternatives that the government presented, less so to provide…
Why Ethiopia needs to embrace gene-modification technology

The recent exchanges on Ethiopia’s acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops and the resulting report of USDA praising the steps our country has taken continue to be informative. My understanding of the debates surrounding GM foods suggests that neat explanations…
An open letter by Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher

In an open letter, former Director-General of the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia and the spokesperson of the Like-Minded Group (Group of 77 & China) at the Montreal and Cartagena biosafety talks, Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, urges the government to…
The case for GMOs

Genetically modified (GM) traits can be valuable and the discussion around them should be based on facts and in a case-by-case approach, according to an Ethiopian geneticist doing his postdoctoral research at Aarhus University in Denmark. A recent report by…
Lockdown could do more harm than good

Loss of livelihood and lack of food due to containment measures and quarantine orders threaten a large part of the country’s population and could kill more people than the COVID-19, warns this writer. Coronavirus has started hitting Ethiopia, so it…
Abiy’s apology and Ethiopian political culture

Reacting to PM Abiy’s recent harsh and indiscriminate detraction of African and, specifically, of Ethiopian intellectuals, comments were quick to flow that, not only contested the criticisms, but more seriously exposed their dangerous implications, the most glaring of them being…
Recalibrating Lefort’s Article

It is with great interest that I have read René Lefort’s analysis and prognosis of the political situation of Ethiopia in an article titled “A flicker in the Gloom.” There is no doubt that the recent bloody disturbances have not…
The case for an independent commission

The official narrative on the motive and the exact nature of the assassinations of the president of the Amhara regional state and the country’s army chief of staff in an alleged local coup attempt has not convinced everyone. In order…