The Fall of American Soft Diplomacy in Ethiopia: A Victim of its own Success

Ethiopia’s soft diplomatic history with the United States goes back to the dawn of the twentieth century when King Menelik in 1905 responded favorably to the overtures by the United States for official relations between the two countries when Ethiopia was the only independent country in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the benchmarks of a successful engagement that had lasted for over seventy years only to suffer reversals from critical events both internal and external. A brief historical analysis will be rendered to highlight the role of the United States in the modernization of Ethiopia and how that virtuous soft-power diplomacy was destroyed by cold war calculations for détente with the Soviet Union ignoring the geopolitical reality in the Horn that eventually spelled disaster for Ethiopia. One of the friendliest official relations that the U.S. has had with an African country in the twentieth century became a casualty when U.S. foreign policy failed to match the challenges in the Horn of Africa in the early 1970s, giving way to a brutal military regime aided and abated by some highly educated Marxists many of whom went to school in some of the best institutions of higher learning in the U.S. and Europe

Patterns Of Land Use Pressure In Communal Areas Of Zimbabwe

An AEE Working Paper.The principal objectives of this paper is to demonstrate that land use pressure and related problems in Zimbabwe’s CAs (Communal Areas) are largely the outcome of adverse consequences of distributional incongruity in space (DIS) between population density and land potential. DIS is defined as a phenomenon in which the distributional density in space of any given factor is negatively correlated with that of population. The most important of such incongruities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is that based on land potential and it refers to a situation in which rural populations reside in higher densities on lands with marginal to poor endowments and potential while lands with richer endowments and superior potential with much lower population densities are present within the nation. When DIS is analyzed within the context of carrying capacity, population density differentials between lands of differing endowments and potential may be expressed in relative rather absolute levels. In carrying capacity terms, lands may be considered overpopulated even though they may experience population densities lower than other lands with higher potentials (FAO 1978). But in the case of Zimbabwe higher population densities in fact prevail in poorly endowed CAs

Ethnosymbolism and the Dismemberment of the State in the Horn of Africa: The Ethiopian Case of Ethnic Federalism

The paper has three major objectives. The first is to do a critical review of the current largely antagonistic narratives of ethnic instrumentalism in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa that have ultimately led to the balkanization of the state and caused serious political instability and fratricidal conflicts with traumatic and costly consequences in the region. The second is to do a critical review of the policy of the current Ethiopian government to implement ethno-territorial formations under the rubric of killils (Amharic for territorial enclosures), and to demonstrate how this may seriously vitiate national integration along compatible cultural and economic dimensions. The third is to examine an alternative theoretical framework from social geography and to demonstrate the potential for creating compatible narratives for non-exclusive communal (cultural) and neoliberal (socioeconomic) order that would unleash Ethiopia’s energy and those of its neighbors from the crippling impasse of divisive tribalism (Leoussi and Grosby 2007: 16-17)

Social Poverty Profile of Rural Agricultural Areas

In examining the livelihoods of rural agricultural communities in Zimbabwe, this chapter offers an historical perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities facing the agricultural sector. As a former settler colony, Zimbabwe’s economy at the time of independence in 1980 was characterized by the commercialization of its agricultural activity together with a high degree of polarity between its commercial and communal sectors. This was evident in the duality of the country’s economic sectors, regional development, economy versus resource match and government role in territorial integration of commercial and communal farmers. At the base of the dual economy was the colonial division of resources and related demographics into two exclusive and counter-posed geographic domains: the commercial land and the communal land (former tribal trust lands). This chapter describes the principal features of poverty in rural communities of Zimbabwe and the spatial mismatch between population density and land, potential problems behind growing land hunger, land degradation and declining agricultural yields. These negative conditions became harbingers for political change and inevitable post-independence land reforms, land redistribution and resettlement. Social poverty profiles of communal land communities are outlined, as well as those of the hitherto unnoticed black communities residing and working on the large-scale commercial farmland. The impact of poor accessibility to basic needs and services on the livelihoods of rural communities and their agricultural activities is also explained to highlight the need for rural development

Time and energy costs of distance in rural life space of Zimbabwe: Case study in the Chiduku Communal Area

Time cost of distance (TCD) and energy cost of distance (ECD) devoted to routine activities for supporting the basic human requirements of rural households have become a major source of concern because of the high proportion of the daylight TCDs and ECDs expended on such tasks in most rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. The high burden of TCDs and ECDs on members of the rural household has constrained daylight time available for food production and health maintenance. This case study in a Communal Area (CA) of Zimbabwe, examines the total and comparative magnitudes of TCDs and ECDs on trips for domestic chores, social services and tertiary functions (markets, central services, transport and communication), as well as the gender and age differences in the absorption of TCDs and ECDs for these activities. The findings indicate excessive uses of the time and energy budget on walking trips to accomplish basic household necessities in which domestic chores consume by far the largest portion of this budget with the highest burden falling on the female members of the household.Zimbabwe Communal Areas rural life space time cost of distance energy cost of distance