Crack in Rift Valley Road May Be
Geological Phenomenon
The Ethiopian Road Authority (ERA) is
to hire a geologist to get an opinion on what to do after a supposed
landslide cracked a major highway near the town of Zeway, 163Km
south east of Addis Abeba.
The
265Km Modjo-Butajira road was built three years ago by the European
Joint venture J&P and Dragados. It took a total cost of 310 million
Br, fully financed by the European Union.
The
road suffered a one kilometre long crack following heavy rain on
July 14, 2006, according to officials from ERA. They said a similar
crack due to landslide had occurred on the road from Zeway to the
town of Butajira.
Geologists, however, linked it to the major earth fissure observed
in the Rift Valley a couple of weeks ago, a suddenly widening
geological process. The 60Km-long rift started last year. It is
believed that one day, in millions of years, the crack will isolate
much of Ethiopia from the rest of Africa. Follow-up observations
reported in the journal Nature suggest the split is growing
at an unprecedented rate.
Sheriff Awel, an Isuzu truck driver, who drove the Addis-Awassa road
a day earlier, had seen a crack on the same road that got wider
Thursday.
Although ERA had prepared a detour circumventing the cracked road,
several vehicles are driving straight over the damaged road,
oblivious to the danger the crack may pose. There are neither
traffic signals nor permanent blockades.
Samson Wondimu, public relations head with ERA, told Fortune
that signs put to alert drivers are repeatedly removed. He said ERA
is now planning to put heavier road blockades until the problem is
fixed.
ERA
will hire a geologist to start studying the area in two weeks. It
has begun to work with Addis Abeba University’s Geology Department.
The ruling party
has been presenting itself to the public in a way completely unfamiliar to
government observers and the public. Inter-party dialogue, contract signings,
press conferences, movie premieres and improvised award ceremonies are just a
few examples of the latest ventures carried out by EPRDF leaders who say they
are determined to start “engagement politics”. What could be the motive and how
much is the otherwise sceptical public impressed? Derese Nigatu and Tagu Zergaw, Fortune
staff writers, tried to find out.
Experts in the
information technology field believe two major components determine the success
of technology-supported learning and training. One is the underlying computing
and network infrastructure and the other is the appropriate content to be
delivered to the underlying infrastructure. In a paper presented in Addis Abeba
to the first international conference on “ICT for Development Education and
Training” on May 24 and 26, 2006, Woldeloul Kassa and Samson Teffera argued that
e-learning offers very little in the absence of affordable bandwidth delivery.
The three
essential capabilities for human development are for people to
lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable and to have access
to the resources needed for a decent standard of living.
But the realm
of human development goes further: essential areas of choice, highly
valued by people, range from political, economic and social
opportunities for being creative and productive, to enjoying
self-respect, empowerment and a sense of belonging to a community.
How is to be achieved?
What has come out undisputable and clear in contemporary
Ethiopia is how important May 2005 was. It has already become a
milestone event. It was an epic moment that has changed almost
everything to everyone involved in today’s political discourse of
any type. Nothing is the same. Interestingly, all those playing the
game saw how powerful public voice has come to be, although their
interpretations and perspectives are as varied as their ideological
positions.
My tall Gojame friend called Thursday afternoon to kindly give me
some information that I needed. He enquired about what I was writing
about, and I ......
various - often
conflicting - mindsets, ideologies and worldviews, as well as
assumptions on what works and what does not, guide our particular
context when it comes to agricultural and rural development
policies.
The uncle that I mentioned in this column two weeks ago
left on the same day as my birthday. It was a bit of an odd feeling
because that day is usually all about me. As he was leaving, that
day was all about him, too.
The title
sounds a bit simple. Let me try to reveal its nature.
The other day I
was walking by the Addis Ketema telecommunications zonal office
right in the heart of Mercato when I saw the massive poster carrying
the slogan "Linking Ethiopia to the Future."
I found it
bizarre. Perhaps the message aims at promoting the
telecommunications technology as the pioneering instrument for all
kinds of advancement. You cannot ponder about such things in Mercato
where there are an awful lot of things to draw your attention.
Everything seems to be in a rush in Mercato as best described in one
of the poems of the late Poet-Laureate, Tsegaye Gabre Medhin, and
entitled "Ay Mercato!"
“I Was There
When…”If everyone who says they saw former US President Clinton
playing saxophone at the Sheraton Addis were actually there when it
happened, some say that not even Addis Abeba Stadium would have been
large enough to host the event.
Because in case you were to hear people in town claiming to have had
the privilege of having been there when former U.S. President Bill
Clinton played saxophone at Sunset Bar, an exclusive club in the
Sheraton with over 4,000 Br annual membership fee, gossip wants to
set the record straight.
