Addis Ababa, Sept 11 (ABC): Renewed conflict in the north, a crippling drought and stubbornly high inflation: Ethiopians rang in their new year on Sunday with little to celebrate. At a livestock market in the capital Addis Ababa, traders and visitors alike bemoaned the various crises confronting Africa’s second most populous nation. “As you can see now, everything is expensive.
If there was peace it wouldn’t be like this,” trader Endashew Denekew told on Saturday, the eve of the new year holiday known as Enkutatash. “The peace situation that you see and hear in different places is not good. People stayed at home and didn’t come to the market and bring their livestock.” Fighting broke out last month between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), shattering a five-month truce that had raised hopes of a peaceful resolution to the nearly two-year war.
“The heightened level of conflict and fragility in Ethiopia is of great concern,” the World Bank said in a gloomy report on Ethiopia published on September 8. “Multiple conflicts combined with historic drought and other shocks have severely impacted millions of Ethiopians, jeopardising the economic and social development progress the country has achieved in recent years.”
The UN’s emergency response OCHA earlier this month described the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia as “dire”, with 20 million people nationwide in need of assistance because of conflict as well as climatic shocks such as prolonged drought and seasonal floods. With a population of 115 million, Ethiopia has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies over the past 15 years, according to the World Bank.
But like many has been hard hit by the Covid pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine, as well as its own domestic woes. Inflation in July was running at 33.5 percent, according to official data, with food inflation at 35.5 percent, deterring people from spending. “There are not the usual crowds that you would see during the holiday market, like before,” civil servant Chombe Gebrehana told near the main open-air market in the capital. “Inflation has had its impact. If people had enough money in their hands… we wouldn’t see smaller crowds like this during the holiday market.”
