Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 20, 2021
🔥 Bloody Brothers Eritrea, Africa’s Gulag State, is on the march
It is an unlikely pairing. Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, is young, charismatic and says he is committed to democracy in Africa’s second-most-populous country. Until war erupted in November in Tigray, a northern region, he was a darling of the world. In 2019 he won the Nobel peace prize for ending a war with Eritrea. Yet he is now knee-deep in blood alongside Eritrea’s president, Issaias Afwerki, an ageing dictator who locks up dissidents in shipping crates in the desert.
When the two leaders met to sign a peace deal in 2018, many hoped their reconciliation would reshape the region. Abiy was liberalising Ethiopia, releasing political prisoners and freeing the press. Some thought Issaias might learn from his new friend. Outsiders rushed to encourage the thaw. The un lifted an arms embargo (imposed because of Eritrea’s support for jihadists in Somalia). Western donors poured in cash. Eritrea’s decades of isolation seemed about to end.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 20, 2021
Among the most powerful kingdoms in the medieval period was Solomonic Ethiopia, a Christian kingdom that sought out contact with Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages. The BBC speaks with Verena Krebs about contact between Solomonic Ethiopia and Western Europe, how historians have misconstrued Ethiopian interests in the past, and what we can learn when we dig into primary sources.
Verena Krebs is Professor for Medieval Cultural Realms and their Entanglements at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. Her new book, Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe, is published by Palgrave Macmillan.