An insight from the Ethiopian diaspora

| April 25, 2011

Several days
ago, an acquaintance called to invite me to participate the next day in a panel
discussion prepared by Deutsche Welle’s Amharic
service program. The panel was to discuss about the Ethiopian Grand Millennium
Dam (GMD). I was told that I was approached because of my training and practice
in Water Resources Engineering.

I politely
declined the invitation because despite my training and practice in a related
field to this specific project, I did not have enough information about its
details. My only information about it is from what I have been hearing through
and reading in various media.

While a plan
to build any sound and useful infrastructure anywhere in the world, let alone a
large dam in Ethiopia that will produce a meaningful amount of power for the
country and region, should be supported, its politicization from the get go is
unfortunate.

No individual
or party, including Meles Zenawi
who has been muscling his way to lead Ethiopia since his political circles
assumed power using the force of arms close to twenty years ago, is in a
position to deny the prevalent political, judicial, and human rights problems
in the country.  

In the
aftermath of Ethiopia’s 2005 legislative elections that caused the death
of many civilians, his own staunch supporters admitted that the country was saved
miraculously.

Under his
leadership and the hypocrisy of his supporters, the country was driven to a
point of destabilization with unfathomable consequences for all its citizens,
the region, and the world due to the country’s geopolitical significance.
Time proved them wrong; their admission that the stability of the country and
region was guarded miraculously is history already. What hasn’t been
publicly accounted for so far is the role of members of the Ethiopian Diaspora
in this history of swaying the country and region towards stability and other
developments since then, including the business to build this dam and the
highly publicized Growth and Transformation Plan.

That swaying
may well have contributed to paving the way for the current discussion about
the GMD. As diverse as the current Ethiopian Diaspora is politically,
generationally, geographically, as well as in training and experience, it is in
a position to generate rich ideas, all of which can be looked at as
contributory to the desire to take the country and its people out of its
current economic situation.

Presumably
under the oversight of Hailemariam Desalegn, the country’s current official Deputy Prime
Minister and Foreign Minister, delegations of Ethiopia’s government
recently visited the Ethiopian Diaspora to garner support for its development
plans and the construction of the GMD.

Whatever
political expressions the Ethiopian Diaspora may have imparted on these
delegations during their visits, the government’s hypocritical supporters
are again conveniently blaming members of the Ethiopian Diaspora as extremists
that have ill-will against the construction of this dam. The fact that effort
was made to visit the Ethiopian Diaspora by officials of the current Ethiopian
government amounts to recognizing the significance of the potential of its contributions,
which could be immense given a solution to the political impasse and a genuine
channeling of the material and intellectual resources of this indispensible segment
of Ethiopians. What is perplexing is reading on the same page that admitted a
few years ago that the country was miraculously saved turn around now to conveniently
call extremists those who contributed to making their “miracle” a reality.
  

In fact, it
is simply preposterous for any self to claim to be more concerned or insightful
than another self about the country and people all Ethiopians come from.

As a former
student of Hailemariam Desalegn,
I don’t consider myself to be less concerned about our country and people
than him even if he is currently the country’s official Deputy Prime
Minister and Foreign Minister.

At a personal
level, I made meaningful connections with my former teacher on at least two occasions.
One was the day he gave back the results of the first test that I took in his
class in the 1989/90 academic year at the Arbaminch
Water Technology Institute (AWTI), now Arbaminch
University, Ethiopia. Before giving back the tests, he went out of his way, we
learned later, to order the students’ test scores; I was the last in the
class to get my test results back.

The second
occasion was when I went back with friends to the institute to get my official
Bachelor of Science degree sometime after my graduation from the institute in
1992. He was then the registrar of the institute. He again went out of his way
to work overtime to complete the processing of our degrees. After receiving my
official degree, I approached him to thank him for working overtime to complete
the paper work. His response was that it is the responsibility of his office to
have the paper work done on time. My appreciation of his meaningful understanding
of the responsibility of appointees in Ethiopia’s bureaucracy, including at
higher learning institutions, was instant.

The respect
he has earned from me as my teacher and due to these connections will be undiminished
because of differences of political opinions we have regarding the current
political establishment in Ethiopia or our places of residence under the
circumstances.

I came to the
U.S. in 1996 to study for my Master of Science degree after competing for and
getting a Fulbright scholarship, graduated in 1998, continued to study while
working as a Teaching Assistant and earned a Ph.D. degree in 2000. I became a
registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in 2002. As far as I know, from those
who graduated from AWTI, I was the first to come to the U.S. for a graduate
study and earn a Ph.D. degree. My class of 1992 was the second batch to
graduate with B.Sc. degrees from the then new institute, which was built and
started functioning under the previous Ethiopian government of Menghistu Hailemariam.

I have been
working since as a water resources engineer and researcher, including on the
impact of climate change on water projects as well as about the uncertainty in
the science of climate change where I am making headway in tackling the latter
even if this effort doesn’t seem to rest well with its committed proponents.

This is not
to recount or publicize my humble achievements but to present my case as an
example to show the hypocritical and lump sum criticism against the Ethiopian
Diaspora that doesn’t and shouldn’t be expected to blindly support
the activities of the inner political establishment that has been leading
Ethiopia for the last nearly twenty years and attempts to continue to do so
through wanton deceptions.  

Since
becoming a member of the Ethiopian Diaspora, one of my virtual exposures to my
former teacher was through a video posted on the internet after the 2010
legislative elections, which showed when he gave inaccurate credentials to Meles Zenawi and nominated him
for premiership. After these elections, the ruling party in Ethiopia that my
former teacher became a member and now leader of claimed to have won 99.6% of
the seats; we have been told that the strongest alternative political party in
the country won only one seat in a close to 550 member parliament of the
country. One of the credentials that Hailemariam Desalegn attributed to Meles Zenawi in nominating him for the position is that the
latter came up with the Ethiopian Renaissance Agenda from his fertile
imagination.

As someone
with a meaningful and personal familiarity with the issue that gave birth to
the Ethiopian Renaissance Agenda, which was sparked outside the circle of the
current ruling party in Ethiopia before Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Millennium speech in 2007 where he
spoke about it, this attribution of my former teacher to the leader of his
party didn’t and will not sell well.

It suffices
to say here that the understanding of such a meaningful and historical agenda as
the Ethiopian Renaissance is likely to come from the fertile imaginations in
the libraries of higher learning institutions, such as Arbamich
University where Hailemariam Desalegn
was a faculty member and official, and continuous learning among the civil
society, instead of from the active adult life spent as a rebel fighter and
leader. In passant though, I would like to call on both Meles
Zenawi and Hailemariam Desalegn, who have publicly subscribed to the Ethiopian
Renaissance Agenda, to write one to two page independent narratives of what
Ethiopian Renaissance means to them at personal and national levels and publish
them for the public before the next Ethiopian New Year in early September 2011,
which will be the fourth anniversary of Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Millennium speech.

So far, it
has become evident in the latest discussions about building the GMD that the
deliberative processes show deficiencies and that they are mired with the
intent for domestic political consumption. It would be unfortunate to have likely
long lasting controversies surrounding this dam project.

For example,
take the term Millennium in the GMD. What is the significance of this term to
the Ethiopian citizenry and the other states downstream along the Abay River? Why borrow such a term at a time when the government
itself is supposed to have officially subscribed to the Ethiopian Renaissance
Agenda?

Egypt that
built the Aswan dam along the Nile River named it after an ancient Egyptian
city of Aswan. The Sudan that built another dam on the Nile River named it the Roseires Dam, after the name of the town of Er Roseires. California, which
has world class water infrastructure projects, has its two largest dams named
after the localities where these dams were built. The Three Gorges Dam that
China built signifies the natural formation of the place where the dam was
built.

As
information posted on the internet shows, the Ethiopian GMD will be constructed
in the western part of Ethiopia at a place locally called Bombadi.

Would it be
inappropriate then to call it the Bombadi Dam, or use
any local name that would be befitting, at a time when Ethiopia is talking
about its renaissance? What would be wrong about putting Bombadi
on the world map since it is already on the ground physically? (After I started
writing this article, the name of the Grand Millennium Dam was changed to the
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry even wrote on
April 22, 2011, an article in this regard under the title “The Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: what’s in a name?” Although I read in a
forum in the past that I am under the spell of horses and buggies of the government’s
turncoat, I have no objection in this name change and would give the benefit of
the doubt that this criticism and name changes are a coincidence unless I am
proven wrong).

As one of the
Diaspora Ethiopians, I can expect criticisms against raising these questions
from the hypocritical supporters of the current partisan inner political
establishment in Ethiopia. I raised these questions with no less interest than
any other individual or official Ethiopian in seeing the construction of this
dam progress smoothly, its completion realized, and its utilization become
fruitful.    

This is not
to say my indignation about the political deeds of Meles
Zenawi and his inner circles over the last two
decades and counting have been diminished. I can even fairly imagine that my
former teacher may not be fully aware of these deeds even after he is charged
with the double duty of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, which in
and of itself appears a setup than a genuine and deeply meaningful working relationship
with his commanding leader. Time is bound to tell this again.