Ethiopia: The 4th Largest Slave Exporting Country

Yes, you read it correctly. Ethiopia was the 4th largest exporter of slaves from Africa in the 500 years between 1400 and 1900, and that's considered a conservative estimate. According to a research paper titled "The Long-Term Effects of Africa's Slave Trades" written in 2008 by Nathan Nunn, a Harvard University professor, nearly one and a half million Ethiopians, 1,447,455 to be exact, were sold into slavery and exported. Only Angola, Nigeria and Ghana in Africa had exported more. Just about all Ethiopian slaves were taken to Egypt and areas under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

Nunn's paper explores whether or not there is a causal relationship between the level of economic performance by contemporary African countries and the level of slavery that took place in those countries. His study shows that there is, indeed, an adverse correlation (see the graph below). His data for the paper comes mainly from Ralph Austen's work which you can find here. I think Nunn is on to something important and his observations should be given due attention.

I ran into Nunn's paper while searching the internet for slavery in Ethiopia after reading the story of Bisho Jarsa (picture below) a few weeks ago on BBC online. In that story the BBC relates Bisho's journey which began in 1887 when she was sold into slavery for a pittance of grain. Lucky for her, she was rescued by the British navy on the waters of the Red Sea where she was being taken by Arab slave traders to Jeddah in the Arabian peninsula. The British took her to Aden in Yemen where they handed her over to be taken care of by missionaries of the Scottish Free Church. She eventually ended up and made a life for herself in South Africa.

Bisho could have been my great-grandmother. Maybe yours, too. Bisho was lucky. Millions of others weren't. The story of the one and a half million Ethiopians who were sold into slavery between the years 1400 and 1900 is just a small portion of that sad and ugly legacy of our ancestors. Some of our ancestors, mine for sure, owned slaves while others, like the Jabartis, specialized in the slave trade. They were not, however, alone in this ugly legacy. Slavery is hardly a unique phenomenon to Ethiopia or Africa. It is a curse on the whole of humanity.

My online search for slavery in Ethiopia suggests that it has not gotten the kind of attention that it deserves from scholars. For example, I can't find a single book which is dedicated to the topic of slavery in Ethiopia. It may be out there but I have not yet found it. There are plenty of references available though, Richard Pankhurst's works being a good example. Another scholar that I found who had attempted to give an in-depth look to the issue of slavery in Ethiopia is Teshale Tibebu, a professor at Temple University. In his book, "The Making of Modern Ethiopia: 1896-1974," Tibebu devotes a whole chapter to the topic which is worthwhile your reading time.

I am Eskinder Nega

I am Eskinder Nega. I am not one person. I am eighty million strong. I will let one of my voices speak for me because today I am locked up in Makelawi prison. Those who are in power in Ethiopia have tried to silence my voice. They want to shut me up by locking me up. They don't want me to be heard. They are afraid of the truth I speak out. They think by putting me in solitary confinement they will destroy my hopes and dreams. As you can see, that is an impossible task. I am but a reflection of my people.

I am the echo of their voice. I am a proud father. I am a husband. I am a friend. I am a journalist. I am not now nor have I ever been a terrorist; but I am now and have on previous occasions been a victim of state terrorism and victim of a judicial system that works only for its creators.

I am Youcef Nadarkhani

"I will be a hummingbird" - Wangari Maathai, RIP

Informative Interview with Dima Negewo

Obamanomics is almost dead

Here are two short articles that succinctly explain why Obamanomics has not worked. Enjoy!

Solyndra, the logical endpoint of Obamanomics

The bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra neatly encapsulates the economic, political and intellectual bankruptcy of Barack Obama's Big Idea. It was the president’s intention back in 2009 to begin centrally reorganizing the U.S. economy around the supposed climate-change crisis.

To what end? Well, Obama claimed his election would mark "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." But that was just the cover story. At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income. Government spending on various “green” subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies: lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits.

Oh, and Wall Street, too.

Kiss of Debt for the Flagging U.S. Economy

Why can't the economy grow? It's the debt, stupid.

That is the reminder from the Federal Reserve's quarterly data dump. Added up, household, business and government debt now amounts to some $36.5 trillion, a new nominal record. And that figure excludes the government's unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security.

This debt overhang remains a key problem for the U.S. economy because it limits growth drivers like consumer spending. Consumers who still face big mortgage payments and credit-card bills have less flexibility to increase spending on goods and services, which in turn keeps a lid on job growth.

These people deverve to be supported

9-11-2011

God Bless America!

The "Make Addis Ababa like Baghdad" Plot

This voluminous report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea dated July 18, 2001 is a must-read. A portion of the 417 page report deals with the alleged plot by the Eritrean regime to "make Addis Ababa like Baghdad" during the African Union summit in January of 2011. Here is the report's conclusion on the failed plot.

Only one detainee interviewed by the Monitoring Group, team leader Omar Idriss Mohamed, appears to have been in regular contact with the OLF leadership in Asmara. All other team members were isolated from OLF structures from the moment of recruitment and received all training and orders directly from Eritrean officers. According to Omar, only Dawud Ibsa, Chairman of OLF, was aware of the existence of this special operation and its objectives, and he does not appear to have exercised any command or control over its actions. The Monitoring Group therefore concludes that this operation was effectively an Eritrean intelligence activity, falsely flagged as an OLF initiative.

We must help the famine victims...

...in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and other Horn of Africa countries. There is enough blame to go around why there is a recurring famine in that part of the world. We can have that discussion at a different time. The time now is to help in whatever ways we can.


This NY Times photographer paints a grim picture of the famine condition in Somalia.


The are may ways you can help. Here are the emergency fundraising links to some of the reputable relief agencies I know. There are many more. Just google...

Catholic Relief Services

World Vision

The never-ending famine

The BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism have teamed up to expose how the Ethiopian government systematically uses aid from donor nations to punish areas that support its political opponents. The current drought in the Horn of Africa is creating famine conditions that are exacerbated by government and rebel activities. This never-ending cycle of war and famine in that part of the world is demoralizing to put it mildly.

Read all the details here: Ethiopia Aid Exposed

The accompanying BBC video report can be found here: Ethiopia 'using aid as weapon of oppression'

A BBC radio interview with Angus Strickler, the investigative journalist, who went to Ethiopia undercover can be listened to here.

Before and after satellite images of burned villages in the Ogaden region from 2007.

Probability of pregnancy for healthy women

Gene Expression is one of my favorite blogs to read. The blogger recently posted an article on the probability of healthy women getting pregnant by age. A prospective couple who want to have a healthy child should especially take note of the second graph.

Pure Menzie, Mootchoor Hadiya

I heard of these repugnant phrases recently. They were used to describe an Ethiopian ethnic identity. I heard the first one on the internet and the second one in a personal conversation. Both mean the same thing -- mootchoor means 'pure' in the Hadiyissa language.

What does it mean when a person says I am a 'pure' this or that ethnic group? I suppose it means that all of one's known ancestors belong to the same ethnic group.

What then does an ethnic purity constitute? Let's suppose that all of my eight great-grandparents are Menzie. Does that make me a pure (netsooh) Menzie? Or, let's say that all of my 16 great-great-grandparents are Hadiya. Would this be good enough to make me a pure (mootchoor) Hadiya? Why stop at 16? Why not push the ancestor count further out to 32 or 64 or even 128 of my ancestors?

As you can see, sooner or later, this exercise will turn out to be a futile exercise. In fact, it is a foolish exercise, and it is farcical to think of one's ethnicity as pure for there is no such thing. If you go back enough in historical time, it is clear that an overwhelming majority of Ethiopians (for that matter East and Northeast Africans) share the same ancestors. In fact, all humans on the face of the Earth share the same ancestors if you push the time period beyond 60 thousand years.

It is true that Ethiopia's ethnic problems did not start with the current regime. But it is an incontrovertible fact that this regime has used ethnic differences as the linchpin of its divide-and-rule policy over the past 20 years. The results of this policy (economic disintegration, social immobility, etc...) are out there for everyone to see. Isn't it time that Ethiopians put an end to this absurdity once and for all?

Being Birtukan

It is good to see Birtukan in good spirit. Hopefully, there are more exciting and uplifting chapters to her story in the years to come. Stay well.

All come to look for America

Josh Groban did a lame version of this classic Simon and Garfunkel song at the 4th of July concert at the Capitol today and I had to get over my disappointment by listening to the original. Enjoy!

Dictatorship of relativism (Liberalism in overdrive)

Regardless of where you stand on the debate over marriage, I think you will find this National Review article by George Weigel to be a thought-provoking one. Here is a passage from the article:

New York State notwithstanding, the argument over marriage will and must continue, because it touches first principles of democratic governance -- and because resistance to the agenda of the gay-marriage lobby is a necessary act of resistance against the dictatorship of relativism, in which coercive state power is used to impose on all of society a relativistic ethic of personal willfulness. In conducting that argument in the months and years ahead, it would be helpful if the proponents of marriage rightly understood would challenge the usurpation by the proponents of gay marriage of the civil-rights trump card.

This Music is Really Good for You - VII

I am sure you have listened to music from Mali (they are world famous, you know), but I bet you have not heard of Habib Koite and Bamada before. Malian music is similar to Ethiopian music in that they both are rich in melody. But I have to say that Malian music sounds a lot better than Ethiopian music, to me at least. I suspect the reason may be because Malian musicians make a far better use of stringed instruments and their drum beats are much more sophisticated. When will Ethiopian musicians abandon the dreaded keyboard for a real instrument as their main musical instrument? Wasn't this used to be the case just a short two decades ago? Pardon me for the rant, but please enjoy these three great works of music from Habib and his super band mates.

I am for doing good to the poor, but...

Benjamin Franklin, the sage of an amazing group of people who founded America, wrote the following in 1766 which is still relevant today for everyone everwhere. This is from an article he wrote for a London newspaper regarding the price of corn and the management of the poor.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Netanyahu lectures O'bama

"The Solution is in Tehran"

Peter Robinson of Uncommon Knowledge interviews Michael Totten, a foreign correspondent and author of The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah and the Iranian War against Israel.