Hussein Ibrahim walked solemnly past tidy rows of bright green cabbages, vines bursting with tomatoes and trees weighed down with plump avocados.
This year’s poor rains have nearly killed Bizunesh. The rangy three-year-old weighs less than 4kg. Her long limbs, weak and folded like a praying mantis, cannot carry even her slight weight. She cannot speak. She doesn’t want to eat. Health officials say she is permanently stunted.
Ethiopians voted on Sunday in a first round of general elections that the opposition coalition boycotted to protest alleged intimidation of its candidates, and that an international rights group said would be unfair. Governing coalition candidates are running virtually unchallenged after the main opposition coalition pulled out.
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/ 3 February 2008
The United States of Africa is one of few concrete plans on which African leaders agreed as they struggled with issues of peacekeeping and political disputes at this week’s continental summit. The problem is, so many countries want to be Washington, DC, and presidential candidates are already rumoured.
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/ 22 October 2007
R&B star Beyoncé Knowles joined year-long millennium celebrations in Ethiopia on Saturday evening with a spirited concert in the capital of the Horn of Africa nation. About 5 000 adoring fans in Ethiopia — a country normally unimpressed by Western music — turned out to see Beyoncé.
Thousands of homeless people will be moved from the capital to the countryside before next month’s millennium celebration and provided help with food, shelter and medicine, a development group said on Tuesday. Homelessness is a huge problem in Addis Ababa, a city of five million where an estimated 90 000 live on the streets.
Somali pirates are demanding 000 for the return of an Indian-flagged merchant ship and its crew, officials said on Thursday. The pirates, armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, seized the MV Nimatullah and its 14-member crew off the coast of Mogadishu early on Monday.