Ethiopian Billionaires And Millionaires

1)Noah Samara (Xm SATTELITE FOUNDER)1.5 BILLION. Expected to grow to 5 billion in the next 2 years. Building a huge company in ethiopia.

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http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0429/048.html

http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/csg/csg1.html

http://www3.esu.edu/\noahsamaraspeech.asp

http://www.worldspace.ae/english/corporate.asp

http://www.worldspace.com/press/pressimages.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401969.html?sub=AR


2)T. Dosho Shifferaw (FOUND BOWFLEX)800 million. Excpected to grow fast this year. (FAT AMERICANS lol)

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http://www.dosho.com/About_DDI/dosho_bio.html

3) DAMN IT I FORGOT HIS NAME BUT HE HELPED INVENT GPS (GLOBAL POSTIONING SYSTEM) ("HE ONLY HELPED")

4) Sheik Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi. Why is his name sound Muslim. Well he got all his welath in Saudi Arabia and as u might have already known. You have to change your name and relegion to live in saudi arabia. 6 Billion dollars. Excpected to grow to around 10 Billion thanks to the high price of oil. He currently hires over 160,000 Ethiopians. he is also planing to build the Tallest Building in the whole african continent and some disalination plants.

http://rds.yahoo.com/S=96062883/K=A...ethioguide/ethioguide/postcard/al-amoudi1.jpg

http://www.addistribune.com/Archives/2002/02/15-02-02/Midroc.htm

http://www.geeskaafrika.com/person_31mar05.htm

There are ALOT LOT more but i have to go to Work gonna be late. If there was no war in ethiopia. I know the enterpreunial spirit of the ethiopian people would make us a better, developed country. We have our 3000 year old Civilization to prove it.

http://www.pixagogo.com/6999914471

http://www.pixagogo.com/8993914934

it is all because of the damn terrorist who took advantage of the italian occupation for 5 years to get powerful.SHIT


WEIRD HOW ONLY ONE OF THEM IS ON THE FORBES.COM LIST.


******2 hrs later*************

ok here come more

6)Nebi Alemu (tadias Ethiopian-American Magazine) 22 million dollars growing fast

http://tadias.com/


7)Tesfu Sintayhu 4 million . growing fast. started 6 month ago IN THER 20'S


Mining A Rainbow Of Yellow Pages

By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; Page LZ05

Flipping through entrepreneur Tesfu Sintayhu's Yellow Pages yields some expected results: dentists who will whiten teeth, contractors who install granite countertops and lawyers promising divorces in three weeks or less.

But Sintayhu's pages also contain the name of the capital of Swaziland, the country code for calling Kenya, deejays who can remix Ethiopian music and answers to questions on the U.S. citizenship exam.

Last year, Sintayhu and three friends published what they believe is the first African Yellow Pages in the United States. Intended to help African immigrants, from the newly arrived to the firmly established, the 456-page publication offers bus schedules, information on countries and their embassies, travel resources, listings of schools, churches, mosques and hospitals, and a business directory that runs from African stores to video services.

Now, from their office in Falls Church, the team behind the African Yellow Pages is preparing to publish a second edition this summer. They promise that it will be bigger, better and, in some ways, less African.

"The best gynecologist may not be an African," said Ahadu Woubshet, a managing partner. "We're targeting the market for any business owner. . . . from multinationals to small mom-and-pop shops."

Woubshet said that as long as a company wants to do business with Africa or its emigres in the U.S., he can talk them into buying advertising space in the book. And by that logic, Woubshet suggests he should be talking to most businesses in Northern Virginia, which has been redefined and transformed by immigration.

On doorsteps, in supermarkets and at trade fairs, ethnic business directories are piling up one heavy book after another. Vega Hispanic Yellow Pages, which was distributed in the Washington area for decades, was sold last year for $4 million to Hispanic Yellow Pages Network LLC, a growing Tampa, Fla., chain trying to acquire Latino directories nationwide. Business directories targeting Korean, Arab, Indian and Chinese immigrants also serve the region.

Managing partner Mimi Alemayehou said the competing books were a source of inspiration as she worked on the African version.

"We looked at them," said Alemayehou, who also works as an international consultant for organizations doing development work in Africa. "Why reinvent the wheel when we can just learn from them? There's definitely a need for Yellow Pages dedicated to specific immigrant communities. A family arrives in America and they want to know where to get their spices, where to take an English as a Second Language class."

With full-page ads costing about $3,000 and DaimlerChrysler Corp. serving as their lone corporate sponsor, the partners estimate the first book generated $250,000 in revenue.

"When you get into smaller and smaller niches, the prospect gets more daunting," said Charles Laughlin, an analyst with the Princeton, N.J.-based Kelsey Group, which tracks the phone book and directory industry. "Small businesses tend to think, 'If I am going to spend a dollar, I want to get 5, 10, 20 in return. If they can demonstrate that members of the community favor the businesses, they may have a reasonable proposition."

Beyond the book, Sintayhu and his partners have lofty goals. They want the Yellow Pages to promote African unity and help Americans get beyond images of Africa as impoverished, war-torn and famine-ridden. They don't ignore the problems -- statistics on AIDS in Africa fill the book, for example -- but the entrepreneurs also cite a surge in development on the continent, especially in Ethiopia (where all four partners were born), the boom in the Nigerian Stock Exchange, tourism in Mozambique and the deep pockets of African immigrants. In the 2000 Census, the African emigre population in the U.S. was shown to earn a median income of $42,000 and number around 881,000 -- although the Yellow Pages publishers assert that the number is closer to 1.8 million.

This area has more African immigrants than any other region in the U.S., with many of them lured by jobs at the World Bank or other development agencies. But the publishers of the Yellow Pages say the mainstream knows little about their community.

"Half the population doesn't know we have cars and buildings in Africa," said Ben Mitiku, vice president and co-founder of the African Yellow Pages.

About 50,000 copies of the first directory were printed. In early April, they handed some out at an African bridal show. Alemayehou recently brought a suitcase of books with her to London, where she attended a conference on the African diaspora.

Like the entrepreneurs who fill the pages of their book, they are trying to think of new markets, trying to think beyond their yellow book, trying to think big. There's been interest in a directory for New York's African community. Perhaps other marketing opportunities can be mined if a database of African businesses is created, they said. "This is going to be a very, very big business," said Sintayhu, who quit his job as a Network Programmer to work on the Yellow Pages and other products full time. "I see the potential."


8)Mr. Gezahgen Kebede and Garad . helped america companies. invest 7 billion in ethiopia. assets = 400 million. growing with economy.

Ethiopians Living In U.S Seek U.S. Investment


With 65 million people, Ethiopia is the third-most populous nation in Africa after Nigeria and Egypt. Its bustling capital city, Addis Ababa, is home to the Organization of African Unity.

But years of Marxist dictatorship and a devastating war with neighboring Eritrea have taken their toll on the country, and even though Ethiopia now has a democratic government and is at relative peace with its neighbors, and it's economy is growing rapidly..

"Trade with the U.S. isn’t much, but compared to trade during the Marxist regime, we can say that it has increased dramatically," said Mohammed Yahya Garad, trade and investment counselor at the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. "During the 1980s, there were less than 20 U.S. companies operating in Ethiopia. Today, there are over 500."

Under leftist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had overthrown Emperor Haile Selassie and abolished the monarchy in 1975, Ethiopia bolstered its ties with the Soviet bloc and let its relations with the United States deteriorate. Famine ravaged the country in the mid-1980s, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 1 million people. After the fall of the Mengistu regime in 1991, a transitional government was set up, leading to Ethiopia’s first multiparty general elections in 1995.

The few U.S. companies that were allowed to stay during the Mengistu years—Coca-Cola, Mobil Oil and PepsiCo—are today among the largest foreign investors in Ethiopia. Between 1992 and 1999, direct foreign investment came to around $1.2 billion.
But that’s not enough for Garad, who said foreign investment is absolutely critical to Ethiopia’s future.

"The Ethiopian government has a policy that is conducive to investment. It’s one of the least corrupt countries in Africa," he told The Washington Diplomat. "There’s not much we can do to alleviate our image. But we can prove to investors that as far as potential, Ethiopia has a wealth that would stagger anybody. It’s very difficult to convince people of that when they see we’re not self-sufficient in food. Farmers depend on rain. But at least six of our 12 rivers have the potential to be a cotton belt. If we could develop our hydroelectric potential, Ethiopia’s cotton exports would surpass anything we make from coffee."

Garad said rebuilding the country’s crumbling infrastructure is the numberone priority of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who came to Washington in September to dedicate the country’s beautiful new $6.5 million embassy on International Drive.

"During a business forum we organized for the prime minister, the prime minister told businessmen that rail transportation is very urgently needed, and he invited private investors to look into that opportunity, as well as hydroelectricity," said Garad, who like most members of his country’s professional elite speaks fluent English in addition to his native Amharic.Another opportunity for investment is the telecommunications sector. State-owned Ethiopia Telecommunications Corp. has only 435,000 (2003) phone lines in service. Mobile service is 97,800 (2003). ETC, which plans to add 1,000,000 phone lines over the next year, will itself be sold to the private sector, with PricewaterhouseCoopers advising the government on how to carry out the proposed privatization.

"The outlook is certainly more positive now than it was before," said Tshanda Kalombo, a Washington-based U.S. Commerce Department official who recently returned from a six-week assignment in Ethiopia. "The country is getting a lot of interest from the investment community. Some of that stopped when the conflict began. Before that, Ethiopia was seen as one of the most promising countries in Africa, then all of a sudden they went to war with Eritrea—sort of a nonsensical conflict—then they got lumped together with the basket cases of Africa."

On June 18, Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a cessation of hostilities agreement, which is less formal than a cease-fire. "Both countries are weary of war," said Kalombo. "Both sides have been cooperating, but there’s clearly a lot of distrust."

According to Kalombo’s report, the positive changes that result from the end of the Ethio-Eritrean conflict should fuel U.S. commercial interest in the country. "Promising markets for U.S. exporters include aircraft and parts, vehicles and spare parts, construction equipment, agricultural equipment and supplies, telecommunications, medical products and chemicals," she said.

Much of the investment will likely come from the estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Ethiopians living in the United States. By far, the biggest community is Washington, D.C., home to around 70,000 Ethiopians. Smaller communities also flourish in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and New York.

"There’s a very vibrant entrepreneurial group of Ethiopians residing in the U.S., and a number of them are professionals with their own businesses—more so than from any other African country and some Middle Eastern countries and others," said Garad. "In any major city today, you’ll find two or three good Ethiopian restaurants. Here in Washington, there are over 200."

Garad, 51, graduated from the law school of Haile Selassie First University (today Addis Ababa University) and also earned a master’s degree from Harvard Law School. Along with Texas businessman Gezahgen Kebede, he helped found the Ethio-American Trade and Investment Council, which today has 89 members.

Kebede, interviewed by phone from Houston, said Ethiopia faces a number of obstacles in attracting investment, chief of which is the lack of accurate information.

"Like with any other African country, a lot of American companies don’t know about the potential that exists there. They see Africa as a big risk," he said. "It is risky, but any business anywhere has risks, and most of the U.S. companies really don’t see beyond that. They see only what they read in newspapers and hear on TV."

Kebede said a 35-member trade delegation traveled to Ethiopia last year, producing encouraging results. One of the mission’s participants, Houston-based Rift Valley Industries, will soon begin assembling laptop computers in Addis Ababa for the Ethiopian and sub-Saharan African market. The company’s local partner, Garad PLC, already assembles TV sets. The venture plans to invest $7 million and employ around 100 people.

Despite the country’s efforts to diversify, however, Ethiopia is still highly dependent on agricultural exports. Coffee alone accounts for 60 percent of the country’s export earnings, though the sector was battered last year by Ethiopia’s war with Eritrea as well as low world coffee prices.

"We haven’t done a very good job marketing our coffee," said Garad. "It’s really the power of advertising that, for example, makes Colombian coffee famous. Roasters know that Ethiopian coffee is superior, but they can’t sell it because there’s no demand at the consumer level. We are handicapped because we’ve not approached it systematically. We’ve been too timid to spend money on advertising. We need to take a systematic approach to the marketing of Ethiopian coffee in the United States."

Garad and Kebede are currently organizing a reverse trade mission, in which 35 to 40 Ethiopian executives will soon visit Washington, Houston and Atlanta for meetings with potential U.S. business partners.

One factor that could spark new interest in Ethiopia is the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), passed and signed into law by President Clinton in May. Under one provision of the law, which took effect Oct. 1, Ethiopia and 31 other African countries will receive duty-free treatment of textile and apparel exports to the United States.

Another growth area is tourism. Ethiopia will soon sign an open-skies agreement with the United States, which will allow U.S. airlines to compete with Ethiopian Airlines in offering routes between the two countries. Ethiopia is also applying for loan insurance and guarantees under the Overseas Private Investment Corp., a move that will help attract U.S. investment.

For more information on Ethiopia, visit the Ethio-American Trade and Investment Council’s Web site at






Haile Selassie I inspects Ethiopian troops before their departure to join a United Nations peacekeeping force in the former Belgian Congo in 1960. Courtsey United Nations



Wars, insurrections, and rebellions have punctuated Ethiopia's history. Kings and nobles raised and maintained armies to defend the "Christian island" against Muslim invasion or to conquer neighboring territories. Even after consolidation of centralized authority under "Solomonic" emperors in the thirteenth century, subordinate neguses (kings) and powerful nobles, some of whom later carried the high military title of ras (roughly, marshal; literally, head in Amharic), ruled different regions of the kingdom and commanded their own armies as they struggled for power and position. According to a seventeenth-century European, only nature could temper the bellicosity of the Ethiopians, whom he described as "a warlike people and continually exercised in war" except during respites "caused by the winter, at which time by reason of inundation of the rivers they are forced to be quiet."

From the time of its establishment in the thirteenth century, the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia was fundamentally a warrior society. Both the Amhara and the Tigray, the two dominant peoples of the kingdom, were imbued with a military ethos that placed great value on achievement in battle and the spoils to be gained thereby. Military values influenced the political, economic, and social organization of the Christian kingdom, while senior state officers often bore military titles. Additionally, military symbolism and themes occur frequently in Amhara and Tigray art, literature, and folklore of the period. Other ethnic groups, particularly the Oromo, also had warrior traditions and admired courage in combat, although the social systems that encouraged these values differed substantially from those of the Amhara and the Tigray.

Generally, soldiering has been the surest path to social advancement and economic reward in Ethiopia. Kings and nobles traditionally awarded land, titles, and political appointments to those who proved their loyalty, competence, and courage on the battlefield. As a result, warriors traditionally gave allegiance to that commander who could assure the fruits of victory to his followers, rather than to an abstract notion of the state or to government authority.




In early times, the army's command structure, like the nation's social structure, resembled a pyramid with the emperor at its apex as supreme military leader. In the field, a hierarchy of warlords led the army. Each was subordinate to a warlord of a higher rank and commanded others at a lower rank according to a system of vertical personal loyalties that bound them all to the emperor. At each command level, the military drew troops from three sources. Each warlord, from the emperor to a minor noble, had a standing corps of armed retainers that varied in size according to the leader's importance. Many landholders also served several months each year in the local lord's retinue in lieu of paying taxes. Most troops, however, came from the mass of able-bodied adult freemen, clergy alone excepted, who could be summoned by proclamation on an ad hoc basis when and where their service was required.

Each man provided his own weapon and was expected to acquire skill in its use on his own initiative. He brought his own food for the march or foraged en route. Often a soldier brought his wife or a female servant to cook and tend mules. Indeed, the authorities recognized women as an integral part of the Ethiopian army insofar as many officers believed that their presence discouraged cowardice among the men. More important, women formed an unofficial quartermaster corps because men believed it was beneath their dignity to prepare food.

In an environment in which war was the government's regular business, the mobile army camp became the capital of its leader, whether emperor, negus, or ras. Only rarely before the late nineteenth century did a ruler maintain his court at a fixed location throughout the year. Constantly moving over his domain, a ruler took his court with him, issuing laws and decrees from the army camp, collecting and consuming taxes paid in kind, and supervising trade. So integrated was military command with government that army officers also functioned in civil capacities.





The organization of military camps remained virtually unchanged for centuries. In the royal camp, the emperor's tent, customarily pitched on an elevation, marked the center of the encampment. The tents of his immediate retinue surrounded the royal tent. The bodyguard was posted in front of the camp, thus indicating the direction of march. The highest ranking subordinate in the royal army was the dejazmatch (general of the door), who was in charge of the center of the battle formation. The gannazmatch (general of the right wing) and the gerazmatch (general of the left wing) and their troops camped to the right and left, respectively. At the rear of the main encampment was the rear guard, whose commander usually was a trustworthy counselor and the leader's chief minister. Subordinate warlords and their troops camped around the emperor's compound in small-scale replicas of the royal camp. The advance guard was a standard feature of this mobile army, and in times of war it might travel several days' march ahead of the main body.

Although infantrymen made up the bulk of the army, cavalry participated in most military operations. The standard attack formation was a crescent-shaped mass of foot soldiers in which both wings advanced to outflank and envelop the enemy's defenses. Once engaged, the individual soldier was the army's basic fighting unit, and a final charge to bring the enemy to hand-to-hand combat usually decided a battle. Mutilating slain enemies and abandoning the wounded and dead on the battlefield were accepted practices.


Leadership, especially among emperors and powerful nobles, was intensely personal, and commanders at all levels led their men in combat. Success or failure often depended on the leader's fate; upon his death, whole armies frequently scattered and fled.

The army lived off the ruler's subjects wherever it camped in his domain. When troops exhausted food and firewood, they struck their tents and moved on. Often, soldiers turned to brigandage. During Emperor Menelik II's reign (1889-1913), for example, many Ethiopians complained that soldiers "eat, drink, sleep, and grow fat at the expense of what the poor have." Popular feeling against the military was strong in newly conquered territories, where at least a portion of the army would settle as colonists. The granting of tracts of conquered land to soldiers survived into the 1930s. Soldiers benefiting from this system became the landlords and the tax collectors in areas they had conquered. Not surprisingly, the army's demands on local populations often prompted rebellions.

The titles of rank in the traditional military system indicated position in society at large. Soldiers won promotions--and therefore enhancement of their social status--by demonstrating military ability. Titles were not inherited, and distinctions had to be earned. Even those starting at the bottom of the social scale could attain wealth and position if they could draw attention to themselves by displays of loyalty, valor, and ruthlessness. The traditional system's strength and weakness lay in the fact that every warrior strove to become great and as such saw himself the potential equal of the greatest warrior or noble.

Modernization of the Ethiopian army started during the regency of Tafari Mekonnen (who took the throne name of Haile Selassie I when crowned emperor in 1930). In 1917 he formed the Imperial Bodyguard as a regular standing force, recruiting into it some Ethiopian veterans of the British campaign in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania). The regent also hired foreign officers to develop training programs (see Training, this ch.). In the 1920s, he sent Ethiopian officers to the French military academy at Saint- Cyr and arranged for a Belgian military mission to train the Imperial Bodyguard. In January 1935, with Swedish assistance, Ethiopia established a military school at Holeta to turn out officers qualified in modern techniques. The first class, which had been scheduled to complete a sixteen- month course, never graduated because of mounting tensions with Ethiopia's nemesis, Italy, this time under the fascist leadership of Benito Mussolini.

When Mussolini's forces crossed into Ethiopia from the Italian colony of Eritrea and from Italian Somaliland in 1935 without a declaration of war, provincial armies raised by the nobility moved and fought against the mechanized Italian forces in traditional fashion. Haile Selassie's mobilization order typified the Ethiopian way of waging war: everyone would be mobilized, and all males old enough to carry a spear would be sent to Addis Ababa. Married men would bring their wives to carry food and to cook. Those without wives would take any woman without a husband. Women with small babies were not required to go. Men who were blind or who could not carry a spear were exempted.

At the time of the Italian invasion, the regular Ethiopian army had only a few units trained in European warfare and led by officers schooled in modern fighting. These included the Imperial Bodyguard and the Harer garrison. About 5,000 strong in combat against the Italians, many of these troops failed to implement tactics they had learned during training exercises. Most of the army that opposed the Italian invasion consisted of traditional warriors from the provincial militia, armed with spears and obsolete rifles and led by the provincial nobility. Even the 25,000-member regular army marched barefoot and lacked a logistical support system. By early 1936, the Italians--who used chemical weapons and air power with deadly accuracy--had inflicted a severe defeat on the Ethiopians.

After the country's liberation in 1941, Haile Selassie started to transform Ethiopia into a centralized monarchical state. The creation of a strong national army was an important part of that transformation. The imperial regime abolished the ancient military hierarchy and abandoned the traditional method of raising armies by provincial levies. In 1942 the emperor signed a military convention with London under which the British government agreed to provide a military mission to assist in organizing and training an army that would be capable of restoring order throughout the country. Under the terms of the convention, the British assumed responsibility for policing Addis Ababa and for exercising military control over the country's principal towns (see Foreign Military Assistance, this ch.).

Another aspect of Haile Selassie's transformation strategy was the creation of the Territorial Army, whose mission was to disarm the numerous guerrilla bands that were roaming the countryside after the war and engaging in banditry. The emperor authorized the recruitment of many shifta (bandits) into the Territorial Army, provided they brought their weapons with them. The Territorial Army was never anything more than a loosely organized auxiliary forces; when and where it existed, it served mostly to aid in local police work and not in national defense.

In the immediate postwar period, the Ethiopian government expended about 40 percent of its annual budget on defense and internal security. Haile Selassie also diversified his sources of foreign military assistance. Over several years, he appointed Swedish officers to train Ethiopia's air force, asked Norwegian naval personnel to organize and develop a small coastal navy, signed a military assistance agreement with the United States, invited Israeli advisers to train paratroopers and counterinsurgency units, and arranged for an Indian military mission to staff the faculty of the military academy at Harer. During this period, a number of Ethiopian officers attended military schools in the United States, Britain, and Yugoslavia (see Training, this ch.).

After their modernization, Ethiopia's security forces saw action in several foreign conflicts. For example, upon the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Haile Selassie raised a volunteer battalion from the Imperial Bodyguard and authorized its deployment to Korea with the United Nations (UN) forces. The Kagnew Battalion, as the unit was known, reached Korea the next year and joined the United States Seventh Division. Before the 1953 cease-fire, three Ethiopian battalions, totaling 5,000 men, had rotated to Korea, where they fought with distinction.

From 1960 to 1964, some 3,000 Imperial Bodyguard personnel- -about 10 percent of the Ethiopian army's entire strength at that time--and part of an air force squadron served with the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo (present-day Zaire). In 1967 four Ethiopian air force F-86 fighter-bombers were deployed to Zaire to help dislodge a concentration of European mercenaries fighting there on behalf of secessionists in Katanga Province (present-day Shaba Region).

The reforms instituted by Haile Selassie, including the establishment of a relatively large professional standing army, separated military and civilian functions in a way that was unique in the country's history. By 1974 much of the population maintained an ambivalent attitude toward the reorganized and modernized military establishment. On the one hand, civilians, many of whom were university students, often complained that the military drained the national budget and failed to help the country develop. On the other hand, many Ethiopians expressed pride in the armed forces' ability to maintain the country's territorial integrity. Much of the civilian sector also believed that the military represented the best chance for change in Ethiopia.

After the 1974 revolution, the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC; also known as the Derg--see Glossary) designated the armed forces as the "vanguard of the revolution" and apparently had expectations that military personnel would become involved in social and economic development programs. The drain on manpower and mat俽iel caused by the wars in Eritrea, Tigray, and the Ogaden prevented the realization of this objective. However, military cadres became active in peasant associations, political organizing, drought relief, and other duties once assigned to the regular police. The army also undertook projects to improve the country's transportation infrastructure.

Despite the repressiveness of the Mengistu regime, public demonstrations of discontent with the armed forces grew in frequency in the 1980s. The army's inability to achieve victory in Eritrea and Tigray disillusioned many who had supported the 1974 revolution, and the conflicts in north- central Ethiopia caused divisions within the military itself. On May 16, 1989, a group of senior officers attempted a coup against President Mengistu. The coup failed, but it was a key factor in the fall of the military government in late May 1991.


Dr. Pankhurst: Ethiopia, as I see it, has suffered excessively from foreign aggression, and resultant looting. It is of course impossible to bring back what was stolen or destroyed in earlier wars, but the loot taken by the British expedition to Maqdala in 1857-8 can easily be identified, and should be restored to Ethiopia. It is my belief that the British Expedition had, in international law, no justification whatsoever for looting Tewodros's citadel, and that the looting of the church of Medhane Alem was in fact an act of sacrilege.
I became a founder member of the Aksum Obelisk Return Committee because I felt that this historic artifact, which symbolizes the beginnings of Ethiopia's tangible history, should have been returned to Ethiopia in 1947, in accordance with the Italian Peace Treaty with the United Nations, signed in 1947. I first learnt that the Ethiopian Parliament was agitating on this issue, when I was told about this by my old Ethiopian Parliamentary friend Ato Berhanu Tessema, and I wrote an article on the matter at the time. We should not think the Obelisk Return movement is in any way "anti-Italian". It was in fact started in recent years by the Imperiali brothers, Professor Francaviglia and others Italian scholars in Rome, who wrote to the Italian newspaper "L'Unita" about the need for the obelisk's restitution. See the University of Pavia thesis written by Georgia Gregorini on the subject (2000).
We in the Obelisk Return movement consider the restitution of the stele from different angles. We believe that when (or if?) it returns, its arrival will be an important manifestation of the importance of Ethiopia' historic culture, and of Ethiopia's right to its cultural heritage. A block of stone that has traveled twice, from Aksum to Rome, in 1937, and back again from Rome to Aksum, in 200??, will moreover be a great tourist attraction for Ethiopia!

But there is another, no less important, aspect to the restitution question: to educate the Italian public. At the end of World War II, the victorious Allies, for purposes of their own, held show trials of German and Japanese war criminals. Ethiopia wanted to try Italian war criminals, but that would have involved the trial of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who was responsible for the use of poison-gas in Ethiopia, in 1935-6. His trial was therefore blocked by the British and Americans, who preferred having Badoglio as Prime Minister of post-war Italy. The result was that not one Italian was ever tried for war crimes committed in Ethiopia!

The Italians were thus deprived of War Crimes trials: and missed an education which would have been valuable in Italy as it was, as generally agreed, in Germany!

The return of the obelisk, we argue, is perhaps the next best thing: a way to bring home to the Italian people that the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia was not a Civilizing Mission, but a Pillaging Mission; the return of the obelisk, kept in Italy for so long in violation of the Italian Peace Treaty, and its return to its rightful owners, the Ethiopian people, can thus have an educating role in Italy as well as in Italy!

To be frank I must, however, add that most of our Italian Anti-Fascist friends, including the venerable Professor Angelo Del Boca, author of so many works on Italian and Ethiopian history, believe, as of February 2001, that the obelisk will not in fact be returned, and that the victory of the Italian Right in the forthcoming Italian General Elections, will lead to the almost permanent blocking of the obelisk restoration issue.

I would also note that the obelisk is not the only piece of loot still in Italy: There is also Emperor Haile Sellassie's first pre-war aeroplane Tsehai, called after his daughter, the Princess of that name, which has not been returned, and is in the Italian Aviation Museum.

I have also recently published information which shows that at least part of the pre-war Ethiopian Ministry of the Pen archives (i.e. those of the imperial secretariat) were looted in Addis Ababa in 1936, and incorporated into the archives of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs - and have not as of today not been returned. The Italian Embassy in Addis Ababa has intimated to me that it is not prepared to discuss this issue with the general public: so much for "transparency" of Government in the Italian section of the European Union!

As far as the loot from Maqdala is concerned, we have founded AFROMET, the Association for the Return of Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures. This, like the Aksum Obelisk Return Committee, is interested in justice, and is not "anti"- anybody: So far from being anti-British, one of its recent meetings was hosted by the British Council in Addis Ababa, and its supporters include none other than the Mayor of London, the renowned Mr Ken Livingstone.

AFROMET believes that even if we fail (which we won't!) our efforts will have been valuable in educating the Ethiopian public to the importance of the country's historic culture, and the need to look after it much better than is being done at present.

You ask if Ethiopians are doing enough in the struggle for their cultural heritage? Of course they are not! In any great or historic struggle for justice not enough is ever done, but this does not prevent the ultimate victory of the cause of Justice.

You all have the opportunity to sign the AFROMET petition at: http://www.afromet.org.

Also to write to the press, and pass resolutions, for the immediate return of the the aeroplane Tsehai, as well as investigation of Ethiopia's looted archives, now still in Rome and London.

Ethiopians are: " THE MOST JUST MEN"
Herodotus (Greek historian, 485-425 B.C.)

"ETHIOPIA IS THE WORLD'S THIRD KINGDOM"
Persian philosopher Manes (also known as Mani or Manichaeus)(c. 216-276 e.v.)

"ARE YOU NOT LIKE THE ETHIOPIANS TO ME, O PEOPLE OF ISRAEL?"
(Amos 9:7)
Even among the people of Israel, the Ethiopians seem to be more dear to the Almighty God.
Did you know that Ethiopia is mentioned in the Bible more than 48 times by both Old and New Testaments?

“Ethiopia: Thirteen Months of Sunshine”. How does Ethiopia get that extra month of sunshine each year? It’s easy! They still use an ancient calendar in Ethiopia which requires an extra “short month” each year to synchronize with the actual solar cycle. In addition, the western (foreigner’s) calendar is ahead of the Ethiopian calendar by 8 days. According to the Ethiopian calendar we are just beginning the year 1998. Ethiopia has more than just an interesting calendar; in the north of Ethiopia–between the towns of Axum and Mekele are 20 very ancient Christian churches carved out of solid mountains of granite. Axum is said to the be the actual resting place of the ancient Ark of the Covenant of Old Testament fame.

The wheel was "helped" develop by the Ethiopians and Egyptians whose empires existed for over three thousand years. They flourished through trade, commerce and military conquest. Caravans of four wheel carts pulled by oxen and horses carried passengers. Their merchants sailed across the ocean to India, Persia, Arabia and beyond. Graeco-Roman writers and artists knew the Egyptians and Ethiopians well enough to describe or portray his physical features with some degree of accuracy. They are described as black or dark in colour. They also note variations in the darkness of ther colour, which range from the colour of the mulatto through dark to very black. They also sayed that they were "Civilized blacks".
Did you know that the main reason they don't send women to war is because a mans first instinct in a dangerous situation is to protect the women. No matter what race she or they are.

They also said that the Egyptians first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks took over from them.- Herodotus, Book 2. Danaus...had fifty daughters called the Danaids (born of Egyptian and Ethiopian mothers)....he built a ship for himself and his daughters...and sailed toward Greece together, by way of Rhodes....[He] became so powerful a ruler that all the Pelasgians of Greece called themselves Danaans. -Graves, citing Hyginus, Apollodorus, Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, Pausanias, and Plutarch, p. 201-2.

Did you know that Ethiopians are among the most successful immigrants in the United States, sending millions of dollars every year to relatives back home. Their remittances, estimated at more than $500 million last year.

The congregation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Winnipeg has become the first in North America to raise enough money to buy its own building without having to take mortgage from the bank.


Enrollment in higher education across Ethiopia has doubled during the past three years, according to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.The annual intake of higher-learning institutions has now reached 192,000 compared to 87,000 students three years ago. Thirteen new colleges will be established across the country within 3 years, in addition to the existing 85 colleges.

Famous Places In Ethiopia
Merkato: The Italians didn¹t locate any large industrial operations in Addis Ababa, but they did manage to disrupt the local economy. Italian Economists feared that cheaply produced goods, imported from Addis Ababa, and would undermine the homeland economy, so no factories were built. But the xenophobic fascists altered trade by pushing well-patronized Indian and French businesses out of the city. They also banned Ethiopians from the central market area and established a 'new market, Addis Merkato, west of the Arada.
Talian-Sefer: This is where Italian war prisoners were kept after Adwa.
America-Gibi: This is where the American ambassador and his followers settled.
Teret-sefer: This is where Menelik's entertainers (aChaawachoch) lived.
Korea-Sefer: This area was granted to the members of the imperial body guard who went to fight in Korea [early 50's].
Teyet-Bet: This used to be the location of an armory.
Piazza: Italian word for center city (down town).
Legehar(la-gare): The French word for train station.
Mexico: because of the friendship with the Mexico gov. There also is an Ethiopia square in Mexico.
DORO MANEQIA: Italians used to live in the area, and they never slaughtered their chicken, they just twisted and broke their necks to kill them.

In the 1890's and early 1900's, Addis Ababa had not yet become the grand capital city Menelik dreamed of. Throughout the 1890's, laborers worked in construction of the two oldest structures in Addis Ababa, Menelik¹s Gebbi (palace) at the highest point in the area, and the St. George Church to the west (Zewde 69). Addis Ababa's earliest market opened adjacent to the church in the Arada district.

Part of the city's indigenous character was established by the early settlement patterns of the followers and subjects of Menelik II and his nobles. The lesser nobles were each granted land on one of the hilltops of Addis Ababa as ³gults², or rewards for their loyalty (Zewde 69). The servants and dependents of each noble settled on the flanks of his hill, surrounding his hilltop Gebbi, and forming clustered neighborhoods called safars(Zewde 69). These Safars eventually became the distinct sectors known today as Ras Berru Safar, Ras Tasomma Safar, and Fitaurari Habta-Giyorgis Safar (Zewde 69). The servants settlements on the great hill of Menelik¹s Gebbi gave rise to neighborhoods differentiated by occupation: Saratagna Safar (Worker's quarters), Zabagna Safar (Guards' quarters), and Weha Senqu Safar (the "Quarters of the Unprovisioned", an imperial army camp with no amenities but water) (Zewde 71).

ዋርካ ፖለቲካ
POST HERE ANYTHING FROM ETHIOPIA/ERITREA.

HISTORY
POSTS
PICS

ETHIOPIA HISTORY (GREAT PICS TOO WITH A LITLLE HUMOR)

we were inventing measuring tools, building huge civilizations like aksum that streched from saudi to south of ethiopia have a writing system as complex mythological . .


At Axum you will see a 2000 year old stele carved out of single piece of granite(rock), weighing more than 200 tons (A Jetliner plane weighs 80 ton) and standing more than 100 feet tall. Unlike the Pyramids the stele is similar to a modern building. The pyramids have a very wide base so that it dosen't tip over, while the stele is one solid rock that has been erected straight up. It is still unknown how the acient civlization of aksum , modern day Ethiopia, were able to accomplish such a feat. Even the Italians with modern technology had to cut the stele in 3 pieces to be able to take it back to Italy. It is the biggest stele ever built. Scientist say that only 15 percent of Ethiopia's Ancient civilzation has been discovered.


"The largest standing stele in Aksum I rate definitely as a world class sight. In a way so simple and so pure. But also so mysterious: how is it possible that a civilization existed here 2000 years ago that was capable of constructing such great monuments?In and around the center of Aksum, many more remains of the Axumite Empire can be found. It's a bit like walking around in Greece - ruins scattered here and there. There is the Queen of Sheba's Bath, King Ezana's stone and King Kalebs Palace. Another interesting thing to see in Aksum is the old St. Mary of Zion Church. Though not open to women, you can sit in the adjoining park and watch daily religious life go by. "---American Scientist in Ethiopia




AM NOT DONE IF U WANT TO SEE THE RESt GO TO


http://www.pixagogo.com/8993914934


100% EThiopic Writing System

100% Ethiopic

http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/East_Africa.html

Ethiopic is an Ethiopian Writing System designed as a meaningful and graphic representation of knowledge. It is a component of the Ethiopian Knowledge Systems and one of the signal contributions made by Africans to the world history and cultures. It is created to holistically symbolize and locate the cultural and historical parameters of the Ethiopian people. The System, in its classic state, has a total of 182 syllographs, which are arranged in seven columns, each column containing 26 syllographs. Ethiopic is a knowledge system because it is brilliantly organized to represent philosophical features, such as ideography, mnumonics, syllography, astronomy, and grammatology.
The History and Principles of the Ethiopic Writing System: A plausible argument can be made establishing the Ethiopic writing system as philosophy in the strictest sense of the word. In fact, it is philosophy par excellence, because it is systematic, rational, logical and critical. In addition, it is holistic. It is also one of the few writing systems with ditinctive major properties like pictography, ideography, syllabry, astrography, numerology and grammar.


Ge’ez is to Ethiopia as Latin is to the west. Ge’ez, like Latin, was not used as a spoken language for a very long time. But like Latin, Ge’ez is the precursor of Ethiopia’s three major Semitic languages:

“In order to convey an idea of the relationship of Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigré towards each other and towards Ge’ez, we might enlist the helpful parallel of the Romance languages. If Ge’ez is compared to Latin, Tigrinya takes the place of Italian (both because it is most closely akin to the ‘parent’ tongue and also on account of its continuance in the original home). Tigré would then be likened to Spanish and Amharic to French.’’

Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia and it is spoken most widely in the northwest and central part of the country. Tigrinya is mostly spoken in northern and northeastern Ethiopia. Tigré is spoken in the independent nation of Eritrea, formerly part of Ethiopia

The south Arabian immigrants brought with them the Sabean language into Ethiopia sometime early in the first millennium BCE, possibly by the Aguezat settlers. By early in the next millennium, a distinctive Ethiopian version, influenced by the indigenous Cushitic peoples, was being used in stone inscriptions.


Ge’ez took 24 symbols from the Sabean writing system. The early form of Ge’ez was written in boustrophedon, which is writing in alternate lines in opposite directions, as from left to right and then from right to left on the next line, and then left to right on the next line, and so on.

Before the fourth century, Ge’ez had not made use of vowels. But the usage of vowels was incorporated into Ge’ez when the Aksumites converted to Christianity, which occurred sometime in the fourth century. Pankhurst suggests that the reason that the alphabet was modified at the time could have been due to “the wish to make Biblical texts more intelligible to newly literate.” The bible was translated into Ge’ez from Greek. Greek influence is also seen in the organization of the Ge’ez letters, which is very similar to Greek alphabet organization.

Ge’ez ceased to be used as a spoken language most likely a short time before the tenth century CE. Nonetheless, it is being used today as the “liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and was the only official written language of Ethiopia practically up to the end of the nineteenth century.” .



DEFENSE
The Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) numbers about 300,000 personnel, which makes it one of the largest militaries in Africa. During the 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea, the ENDF mobilized strength reached approximately 550,000. Since the end of the war, some 250,000 soldiers have been demobilized. The ENDF continues a transition from its roots as a guerrilla army to an all-volunteer professional military organization with the aid of the U.S. and other countries. Training in peacekeeping operations, professional military education, military training management, counter-terrorism operations, and military medicine are among the major programs sponsored by the United States. Ethiopia now has two peacekeeping contingents in Burundi and Liberia.

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tl;dr

Wtf is this about?

 

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Precisely wht is your point with all this? That there are rich people that came from Ethiopian? If anyone wanted to make the effort (I sure don't want to be bothered with it) they could easily compile a huge list of rich people that came from practically every country across the globe.

State your purpose for such a long and boring post. I fell asleep halfway through it and perhaps missed something. Oh, and try to limit yourself to about a hundred words or so.

 

hi dude....

thanks for those links...

its rocking man....

try to update regularly...

 

hey Thanks. All stuff are super cool!

--------------
Thanks
Alex
Lessons of an Entrepreneur by john detitta

 

Mod Note: Dude. Post a this diatribe somewhere else. If you want to start a thread, condense down this rubbish into something digestible. Until then, It'll just get cesspooled.

 

Damn some one mention ethiopian cuisine I have a great line about that.