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[ENA] Addis Ababa -- Ethiopian Ambassador to Sweden and other Nordic countries, Deriba Kuma has held a virtual meeting with Head of the Horn of Africa and West Africa Department of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Elisabeth Schwabe-Hansen.
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Prime ministers of Sudan and Ethiopia have agreed to resume negotiations on the filling and use of the Grand Renaissance Dam [GERD], signalling a partial end to tensions over the Nile waters.
Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdouk assured Sudan's readiness to continuously communicate with the two countries to reach an agreement that would guarantee full agreement between the three parties.
Ethiopian Prime Minister affirmed his country's readiness to cooperate with Egypt and Sudan to reach a final agreement for the interests of the three countries and supports cooperation between the peoples of the region.
Recent negotiations facilitated by the US government and the World Bank saw Ethiopia and Sudan reject a draft agreement fronted by Washington in February.
The Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy Seleshi Bekele said on Wednesday that the construction of the Renaissance Dam in his country has reached 73 percent, indicating that the initial mobilisation of the dam reservoir will begin in July.
It also critically examines inequalities between the global North and the global South, the growing influence of China's trade relations with Africa and, more importantly, it unpacks the deeply absorbed capitalist globalised hierarchies and the deep structures of racial thinking in the emerging global architecture, and examines the role of the African Union and other regional influential in rescuing the bank from the clutches of western buccaneers.
America's Treasury Secretary, Steven Terner Mnuchin, on May 22, 2020 called for an independent investigation into the affairs of the African Development Bank in the twilight of the re-election of the incumbent president on the heels of the whistleblowing accounts of perceived issues of executive impropriety in the recruitment and consultancy contracts.
Furthermore, another subtle and deadly foreign policy mechanism America uses to achieve its stranglehold on other nations, particularly Africa, is the mobilisation of international shame and brainwashing by which she lobbies other states into believing that the actions of a state or a region (Africa, in this instance) is inimical to America's interest.
Once there is an open knowledge that an institution like the Africa Development Bank is acting against international norms (America's interest, in this instance), other states, particularly the 27 non-regional members, may apply diplomatic pressure to forestall the re-election of Akinwumi Adesina as the President of the Bank.
The suspicion of the United States Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin, and his principal, Donald Trump, in a letter to Niale Kaba, Chairperson of the bank, encrusted fine points which disagreed with the conclusions - in line with corporate governance systems and rules of engagement - of the ethics committee of directors and the Chair of Bureau of Governors' findings on the allegations leveled against the bank's president is to avoid her veiled agenda, which is to rubbish the sterling performance of the bank as a regional player in African intra-trade resurgence and to thwart the promise the bank holds to leapfrog development and reduce poverty on the continent.
June 10: Speaker Keria replaced
\tEthiopia’s upper parliamentary chamber, the House of Federation (HoF), on Wednesday elected a new speaker following the resignation of Keria Ibrahim.
June 8: Speaker of Ethiopia’s upper parliament quits over postponed polls
\tKeria Ibrahim, speaker of Ethiopia’s upper parliamentary chamber, the House of federation, has quit her position citing a looming constitutional blank with postponed elections.
Privately-owned Addis Standard said Keria’s resignation was on the outcome of a Council of Constitutional Inquiry on deferred elections.
The former speaker belongs to the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front, TPLF, a former coalition partner of the now defunct Ethiopia Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front, EPRDF; which brought Abiy to power in 2018.
TPLF is currently the ruling party in the northern Tigray region but technically in opposition with the federal government.
In a diplomatic note through Nigeria's mission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which hosts the AU headquarters, Mr Buhari announced Mrs Okonjo-Iweala as the country's candidate for the WTO job.
The two other African candidates shortlisted by the AU alongside Mr Agah were Egypt's Hamid Mamdouh, a trade lawyer, member of the WTO Secretariat, and trade negotiator for Egypt; and Beninoise Eloi Laourou, the ambassador and permanent representative of Benin to the United Nations and other organisations in Geneva.
In her two-page letter, Benin informed the Permanent Missions of the Member States of the International Organisation of La Francophonie (01F) at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva of its decision to withdraw its candidate, Eloi however, emerged Tuesday that there are more hurdles for the former finance minister to cross in actualising her dream of clinching the WTO top job.
The counsel noted that in July 2019, the Executive Council during its Thirty Fifth Ordinary Session held in Niamey, Niger, called on the AU member States to consider presenting candidates to the AU Ministerial Committee on Candidatures in the International System for the position of WTO Director General by November 30, 2019, with a view to endorse one candidate during the February 2020 Ordinary Session.
\"However, due to the lack of consensus to agree on one suitable candidate during the February 2020 Summit, the Executive Council through decision Ex Cl 1090 (XXXVI) recalled the Ex Cl Dec 10T2 (XXXV) and endorsed respectively the candidates from Benin, Egypt and Nigeria as short listed for the post of the Director General of the WTO (the names of the candidates were incorporated in the Report of the Committee on International Candidatures presented to the Executive Council).
African leaders have lauded the launch of the continent's first medical supplies platform as the \"jewel in the crown of Pan-African cooperation\".
LIVE | All the latest coronavirus and lockdown updates
On Thursday, African Union (AU) chairperson President Cyril Ramaphosa, AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki and the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Dr John Nkengasong held a media briefing, giving an update on the platform.
Zimbabwean businessman Strive Masiyiwa, who was appointed as the AU special envoy leading global mobilisation of medical test kits and protective equipment for the continent this month, gave a brief presentation of how the Africa medical supplies platform would operate.
Vera Songwe, the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, said the platform was initially developed to assist with maternal and childcare in a bid to connect mothers to women pharmaceutical producers on the continent as big pharmaceutical companies refuse to deliver to small islands with ports that are seen as too small.
The Africa CDC director said the organisation regularly engaged with African countries seeking data on the spread of the pandemic, and the approach was to emphasise cooperation and the sharing of information in a timely fashion.
[ENA] Addis Ababa -The Kingdom of Morocco on Monday Donated more than 600, 000 pieces of medical supplies to the African Union (AU), to help prevent the spread of COVID¬-19 in the continent.
[Premium Times] President Muhammadu Buhari said the federal government revised the 2020 Appropriation Act to reallocate resources for effective implementation of required health and emergency measures, as well as to mitigate the negative socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A series of visits by the President, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary and Chief Administrative Secretary, Special Envoy, ambassadors in New York and in Addis Ababa and myself ensued, often capitalising on regional and multilateral gatherings.
Additionally, Kenya was able to pull off a successful virtual summit of OACPS as well other Covid-19-related webinars at regional and global levels.
By the time a virtual reception for all the Permanent Representatives based in New York and addressed by President Uhuru Kenyatta took place on the eve of the June 17 elections, Kenya was confident of a win.
A mad rush of global politicking and diplomacy, headed by President Kenyatta and the Foreign Affairs CS, and coordinated out of the Foreign Affairs ministry headquarters by the Principal Secretary and the Special Envoy.
What is certain from this historical experience is that when Kenya puts its diplomatic mind on some course, our foreign affairs capabilities are formidable, world class and like our athletic prowess, world-beating.
The sun rises on Africa as we mark the 57th anniversary of the OAU
Tomorrow marks the 57th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
In May of 1963, 30 heads of African states and governments that had attained liberation not long before assembled in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they endorsed what was to be the OAU Charter, one of whose objectives was to coordinate and intensify efforts to achieve a better life for the people of Africa.
Granted, it was through its lobbying efforts and pressure that the granting of independence to those countries still under colonial rule picked up pace, including in South Africa’s case.
Not only was the organisation missing in action where it was expected to have been involved, for example, ensuring that there were minimal instances of the removal of governments by the army and that there were no unnecessary killings and maiming of innocent people, but there were several instances where the very annual summits of the organisation provided opportunities for disgruntled opposition members (and the army) of member states to stage coups against their governments back home when the head of state was away at the OAU meeting.
The extent of failure by African governments to provide for the needs of their people is illustrated by the trend of the political elite’s choosing to go abroad for medical attention, rather than using their local medical facilities.
