Terri Hathaway's blog

“There is no singing and dancing all along the Omo River now. The kids are quiet. We adults go into the shelter and sleep silently. We are too hungry. The big rains have been gone for three years, and now we come to the Omo and there is no water. Go and give this news to your elders, our people are hungry.”

Hungry Kwegu child after the Omo River failed to flood (2009) (anonymous)

These words come from a farmer one month ago on the banks of Ethiopia's Omo River. The Kwegu, Bodi, Nyangatom, Karo, Mursi, Dassanech and other tribes, an estimated 200,000 people, depend on the Omo River floods to grow maize and sorghum, and to replenish grass lands for grazing cattle herds. The river's annual flood is a lifeline for these indigenous tribespeople.

Floodwaters have been small (2007), then smaller (2008), until the Omo's annual flood disappeared altogether in late 2009. The last three years of poor rains combined with the unexplained, decreasing flood has left the people of the Omo River hungry with little or no stored grain. Many farmers have stopped planting all together. Traditional cultivation sites are being abandoned. Last November, four men and two children died of hunger.

Main road in Awassa (Oliver Benson)

It’s been more than a week since anyone has heard from three students kidnapped from the Awassa University campus in southern Ethiopia by government security forces, according to the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA). Whereabouts of the students, Nagga Gezaw, Dhaba Girre, and Jatani Wario, is still unknown. The students were part of a local movement in southern Ethiopia which has called on their government to address river contamination, unpaid compensation and other problems caused by the Lega Dembi open pit gold mine. Several student-led demonstrations in early December brought promises to address the issues, promises now left empty by the extra-judicial kidnappings. (For more info on the demonstrations, see Addis Fortune and Voice of America.)

Ethiopia announced last week that, faced with a 120 MW deficit, electricity will be cut, 14 hours daily for six days each month. Those lost 84 hours a month will cost the country’s economy 1% of its GDP.

Although Ethiopia has only 767 MW of grid-based electricity, it was more than the country’s demand until last year. Domestic peak demand has reportedly risen 24% since, beyond the national utility’s meager supply.

But Ethiopia’s power company, EEPCo, had every intention that two new hydro plants, Tekeze (300 MW) and Gilgel Gibe II (480 MW), would be supplying power long before now, doubling grid supply and even jumpstarting power exports in 2008. Once operational, both will loom largely over Ethiopia’s current largest power plant, the 184 MW Gilgel Gibe Dam. But technical delays and cost overruns, two characteristics notoriously common in large dams, are now haunting EEPCo.

Exploiting the Inga Rapids could make a lot of money and electricity, but there's a snowball's chance that the people of Democratic Republic of Congo will see much of either....

Matadi Port

From Matadi, the country's main port and capital of Bas Congo Province, we headed towards one of the Congo's great riches: the Inga Rapids. The paved road continued, curving lightly past steep hillsides of brilliant green dropping downward into deep valleys. It was a sight I might expect to see amongst the foothills of the Alps. Below me to the right, the Congo River lay calm and wide. The serenity of the landscape gave no hint of the exploitation, conflict and injustice that have shrouded the country for more than a hundred years.