Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia:
Imagine a Diaspora Economics Professor who wants to run urban terrorism in Addis to promote the Global Toxic Assets in Africa?
How does the Global Economic toxic assets and Economic terrorists related?
Simple, those Economists and Fiscal bandits who accumulated toxic assets disrupted the Global Economy worse than an urban terrorist can do as they polluted all assets at the heads of financial institutions in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, etc.
What about this Pen Country side Visiting International terrorist posing as an economist doing, by literraly claiming that the alleged terrorists were heroes on a weekend Ethiopian language Addis Radio yesterday at 1390 AM.
It is so funny, that the alleged Visiting Prof wants to advise President Barack Obama how to terrorize Ethiopian people. This guy is funny. We need to encourage Home land Security and CIA operates to attend to the Gunibot 7 Meeting on May 3 2009 that is posted at www.guinbot7.org web site.
Let President Obama get first hand intelligence at this meeting where they will be plotting the new urban terror wave for the 2010 elections.
It is amazing how education does not change the urban terrors, the hobby of delinquent youths in Merkato terra in Addis in the late 1970s. You can say this boys were young around 17 and 18, now at 55 the foolish Professor wants to be delinquent again.
What a shame? President Obama showed the world how to make Change possible via the ballot box and digital community organizing. Can Professor Bonger learn a lesson or two. Just sitting in the hills of Pennsylvania and shouting the 1777 Revolution is not enough. President Obama has shown us modern day interactive civil change!
May be we should re-educate fools like Prof Bonger to go back to the school of democracy and not promote terror in Africa from the hills of Pennsylvania.
Let Home Land Security and CIA attend the May 3 2009 meeting and judge for theselves if they see any modicum of democracy being advocated in these meetings. I challenge all intelligent people to review www.gunibot7.org and show us how democracy is being promoted by advocating violence and choas in Merkato terra?
The reports are clear that the 35 will be brought to court and the Court of Justice will investigate their case. How about investingaging www.guinbot7.org for its content, plan and advocacy of terror in the Horn.
We need to have transparency and accountability in all our communications and our activities, and I ask interested parties to examine carefully the contents of www.guinbot7.org and how it is going to change the African landscape towards democracy or anarchy.
The following report demands some careful investiation and I put forward the news as a starting point.
May Good will, transparency and accountability prevail!
Dr B
Imagine Guinbot 7 promoting Ethiopian Coffee rather than Alqaeda type terror in the Horn
We need to examine the financial and technical support that Guinbot7 has generated for terror in the horn under the misguided notion of totalitarin democractic centralism that it advocates!
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BERHANU_PROFILE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-04-25-18-32-46
AP
April 25, 2009
Pa. prof denies leading alleged Ethiopia coup plot
MARK SCOLFORO
LEWISBURG, Pa. -- An economics professor at a Pennsylvania university said Saturday he supports efforts to spread democracy in his native Ethiopia, but denied backing an alleged coup attempt there that led to the arrests of 35 people by the government.
"I'm very suspicious that there was an attempt at all," said Berhanu Nega during an interview at his home outside of Lewisburg in north-central Pennsylvania. "This is not a government that has any credibility whatsoever in terms of telling the truth."
He said he did not know who may have been arrested, and said it could have easily been some sort of overreaction.
"The government, every time, it panics," he said. "It's always treason, always acting against the government."
Berhanu, 51, said he came to the U.S. as a young man in 1980, is married to an American citizen and has two sons. He is an associate professor of economics at nearby Bucknell University, a private liberal-arts school that enrolls about 3,400 undergraduates.
He previously taught at the university from 1990 until 1994, when he returned to Ethiopia to work at Addis Ababa University, according to a profile on the university's Web site.
In 2005, he became the country's first elected mayor when he won the mayoral race in Addis Ababa, the nation's capital. But post-election violence over the election results led the Ethiopian government to shoot 193 protesters and to later jail Berhanu, other opposition leaders and thousands of supporters. Berhanu said the party was not responsible for the violent demonstrations.
The opposition leaders stood trial for nearly two years on charges of challenging the constitutional order - the charge was lessened from treason. The main clique of 38 opposition leaders pleaded guilty and were pardoned in 2007 after appealing to the government.
Berhanu and several other party leaders then left for the U.S., returning to the country in August 2007. He rejoined Bucknell as a visiting international scholar in economics in Spring 2008.
"It became very clear immediately after our release that they will not at all tolerate any opposition, meaningful opposition," he said.
Berhanu also urged President Obama's administration to "carefully revisit its policy toward Ethiopia."
"It is just unseemly for any democratic government such as the United States to have any relationship with it," he said.
______________________________________________________________________
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-26-voa1.cfm?rss=topstories
VOA
April 26, 2009
Ethiopia Arrests 35 Suspects In Alleged Coup Plot
Peter Heinlein
Ethiopian authorities have arrested 35 people suspected of involvement in a plot to overthrow the government. Those arrested are said to be followers of an exiled opposition leader living in the United States.
Government spokesman Ermias Legesse says the 35 arrested included two groups, one comprising soldiers and another that included civilian government employees and others. He tells VOA police found weapons and other incriminating evidence when they raided the homes of suspects. "We have got information from different people and we investigate it, and we have gone to the court and the court gave us an allowance to go to their home and we have checked their home and we have arrested 35 people and in their home we have got so many weapons, landmines, soldier uniforms, and their future plan what they want to do," he said.
Ethiopia has arrested 35 people suspected of a coup attempt allegedly backed by Dr. Berhanu Nega, an Ethiopian economist now living in the United States
All those arrested are said to be members of a group called "Ginbot 7," or "May 15th", which is the date of Ethiopia's disputed 2005 election. Ginbot 7 is led by Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election. But he never took office.
He was jailed and convicted of treason along with more than 100 other opposition leaders in connection with violent post-election demonstrations in which nearly 200 protestors were killed. He and the others spent 20 months in prison before being pardoned.
After his release, Berhanu went to the United States, where he is currently a professor of economics at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. A page on the university Web site says he has urged the United States and other western nations to back democratic movements in Ethiopia and other African countries by withdrawing support for dictators.
Opposition Web sites such as "Ginbot 7' are blocked in Ethiopia. Berhanu has in the past accused Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of creating a one-party state.
In a telephone interview, government spokesman Ermias described Ginbot 7 as an illegal organization. "It's not registered as a legal party, and not recognized by the government. It is an illegal party. The groups and the party, who are an illegal party, we call it Ginbot 7. That's our issue," he said.
Ermias declined to say what charges would be filed against those arrested, saying that would be up to the Justice Ministry. He also declined to identify any of the suspects. He said they would all be brought before a judge within a few days.
The arrests come as Ethiopia is beginning preparations for its next parliamentary election in May, 2010. With a little more than a year until election day, most political observers consider the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front an overwhelming favorite to sweep the polls.
Party officials have said one of their top priorities will be preventing the kind of violence that marred the 2005 vote.
In local and bi-elections elections last April, opposition candidates won only three of approximately 3.6 million seats being contested. The annual U.S. State Department human rights report was highly skeptical about whether the results accurately reflected the will of the Ethiopian people.
__________________________________________________________________
http://en.ethiopianreporter.com/content/view/988/1/
Reporter, Ethiopia
April 25, 2009
Momentum for change in coffee marketing
Ed.’s Note: This piece of writing is extracted from the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) discussion note which was prepared in December 2008.
The birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia is home to some of the finest coffees in the world. Ethiopia is currently the top African exporter and is ranked sixth in the global market. With an annual production of 225,000 tons and an export sector valued at $525 million, coffee generates 60 percent of Ethiopia’s foreign exchange earnings and provides livelihoods for 15 million Ethiopian smallholder farmers.
The coffee economy employs several hundred thousand in processing of either red cherry (key eshet) or dried pulp coffee (jenfel) in hundreds of washing stations and hulling mills around the country. This results in “supply coffee,” which is then inspected and transported and marketed by several thousand of akrabis or suppliers to the venerable exporters, who have long established trade ties with buyers in Europe, Japan, and the Americas. The coffee undergoes further export processing, polishing, cleaning, and sorting, before loading to the port. As important as coffee is to the economy, it is also consumed in large quantities at home, leaving no doubt that coffee is a way of life in Ethiopia.
Coffee marketing in Ethiopia has undergone several transformations over the decades. Recent initiatives to increase value and to benefit the coffee sector include Fair Trade certification by cooperatives, organic and specialty coffee promotion, and the trade marking and licensing initiative that has successfully established international branding of three of Ethiopia’s major coffee types: Sidamo, Yirgachefe, and Harar.
In July 2008, a new law (Proclamation 702/2008) and the supporting Regulation issued by the Council of Ministers replaced the existing coffee quality control and marketing legislation governing the sector for the past nearly four decades, effectively legislating that all supply coffees, with the exception of grower direct exports, are to be traded in the newly established Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). This move is as bold and as fundamental a transformation as the opening of the Coffee Auction was to the sector in 1972, prior to which gentlemen coffee traders would swap samples of coffee in handkerchiefs prior to striking a deal. The present innovation to coffee trading in ECX, in a similar spirit of continuous improvement and achievement, launches a new era for Ethiopian coffee.
However, the new legislation does not explicitly address or provide specific treatment for a small but important share of export coffee denoted as “specialty coffee,” which may also include organic coffee for the purposes of this Note. As niche market coffee, specialty coffee can be considered a high end, high value product, relative to bulk or commodity coffee. Some argue that Ethiopia is a unique case as regards specialty coffees, the emphasis on which has recently emerged as an important market trend.
What makes Ethiopia special in the specialty coffee world is that, as the original home of coffee, Arabica coffee has grown in the south-western highlands of Ethiopia for thousands of year. Over this time, an incredible genetic diversity of coffee varieties has evolved as a combination of natural advantages in the country’s ecosystem: altitude, ample rainfall, optimum temperatures, and volcanic fertile soils. Thus, Ethiopia is home to some two thousand indigenous strains or cultivars of coffee and the research system has introduced at present 24 formal varieties of Arabica coffee. This is unique relative to other coffee producer countries where the coffee plant was introduced much later with much less genetic variety.
Second, the way in which coffee is cultivated in Ethiopia is also significant in understanding both the nature of coffee as well as the coffee market structure. Ethiopian coffee is cultivated in four distinct production systems. Forest Coffee is self-sown and naturally grown wild under full forest coverage mainly in south-western Ethiopia, and represents a tenth of total production. Semi-forest Coffee, also grown under forest canopy in the same region has limited human intervention, represents a third of total production.
Garden Coffee refers to the bulk of Ethiopian coffee (more than 50 percent), grown by smallholder farmers inter-cropped with cereals, fruits, and vegetables, mainly in the southern and eastern regions. Finally, Plantation Coffee is grown on large state-owned or commercial farms, representing 5 percent. This cultivation system combined with the genetic wealth results in a diversity of coffees produced for market, with the potential to qualify as specialty coffees, by millions of small scale producers. In contrast, coffee in other producer countries is mainly plantation or estate cultivated, with fewer varieties, and thus more homogenous.
Against this backdrop, the objective of this discussion note is to examine the implications of the recent legislation to trade all coffees in the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (with the exception of grower direct exports) for the marketing of specialty coffees. For the purposes of discussion, we include the whole basket of “niche” coffees as specialty coffee, including wild forest coffee, shade grown, bird-friendly, mountain, and organic coffees in addition to specific geographic appellations.
We begin by highlighting the background and justification for introducing coffee trading into the recently established Ethiopia Commodity Exchange in the next section. From there, we focus on specialty coffee, starting with definitions and perspectives on its certification. From there we proceed to a discussion of the relative importance of specialty coffee in the Ethiopian coffee industry and an analysis of possible implications for specialty coffee in the context of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange.
Coffee as commodity has been traded for more than for more than 1500 years and Ethiopia is the oldest coffee exporter in the world. For centuries, Ethiopian merchants transported coffee in caravans of mules, camels, and donkeys. In the late nineteenth century, coffee had become one of Ethiopia's more important cash crops, even exported to far destinations such as London, Marseilles, New York, and Trieste. Trade then flowed along two major trade routes, either north to Massawa port via Gondar and Adwa or east along the Awash River valley to Harar and then on to Berbera or Zeila ports, although prior to 1920, Ethiopia still consumed the bulk of the coffees it produced. As the export of coffee picked up, in the 1940s and 50s, a common practice was for brokers to circulate samples of various coffees in their handkerchiefs to show to the few exporting houses.
With limited information, coffee trading was costly and highly arbitrary, with farmers and local suppliers often at the mercy of the brokers. By 1957, as production and exports grew, the Imperial regime established the National Coffee Board to regulate coffee marketing and quality control. In this era, a system of strict quality control from the production area to the export channel was established.
However, the Auctions in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa did not emerge for another sixteen years until 1972, at the request of both suppliers and exporters equally concerned by the need for an improved trading system that would be managed, at their request, by the State as a neutral third party. The coffee auctions were established as a Dutch type ascending price bidding system, hosting the two sides of the market, the akrabis (or suppliers) and the exporters, with trading on the basis of sample and bidding lot by lot. In this system, all coffees are brought to Addis Ababa, with the exception of Harar type coffee, which is brought to Dire Dawa. At the central market, it is inspected and graded and sold on a sample basis, with payment upon delivery to the exporter. This system, although going through some modification, survived nearly intact over three regimes, nearly four decades, and numerous regulatory and policy changes to the sector, up to the present.
However, over the past decade, there has been mounting policy concern with the existing coffee trading system and several factors contributing to the impetus for a transformation of the trading system to a commodity exchange model. The first concern is with increasingly noncompetitive practices related to vertical integration of the coffee supply chain. Exporters engage in direct contracting with suppliers as a means to ensure supply and reduce their risk exposure when they sell forward in international market. In addition, vertical integration gives them the traceability advantage which is available to cooperatives. This vertical integration in turn undermines the price discovery that is central to the auction system, distorting price signals to the market participants. An export firm may bid on its own supply coffee at a much higher price to discourage others from buying it, leading to false price signals in the market (IFPRI, 2003).
The second concern relates to quality and quality dispute resolution. As Ethiopian coffee is produced in small quantities by many small farmers, quality is difficult to manage and significant quality losses occur at various stages. In production, Ethiopian coffee is susceptible to Coffee Berry Disease (CBD) which requires good cultivation practices and additional production investment to circumvent. Quality losses also occur in poor post-harvest on-farm processing, including weak storage infrastructure and contamination with other products. Further quality losses also occur in the dry or wet-processing stage. There are approximately 637 washing stations and 480 sun dried coffee processing plants. At the terminal market, grading is based on origin and there are 6 grades used with each origin, which are known in the international market. As can be seen from the table below, the bulk of Ethiopian coffee exports are low grade coffee, 3rd quality or 4th quality.
Quality is also eroded during the marketing phase by adulteration of coffee origins as well as improper bagging and storage practices. For this reason, Ethiopia’s export coffee does not have deliverable grade status on the international coffee market (New York), which requires maintenance of a consistent and relatively high quality set of coffees which would be priced with a constant differential to the New York price. Thus, despite its status as a relatively important producer country, Ethiopia is unique in not having acquired this status, in contrast to most producing countries.
Further, the existing system does not have an adequate quality dispute resolution system to protect all sides of the market. If a coffee is bought through auction and its quality is not found to be the same as the sample, the exporter-buyer can appeal for rechecking. But the rechecking is done by the same authority which undertook the first certification, and moreover, it is the same authority that will be giving the export certification, which can distort incentives for compliance. Also, when an exporter returns the product for rechecking, the supplier has to bear the costs in the meantime. In addition, exporters use this opportunity to renegotiate and lower the purchase price. A third issue is weak risk management. Given the volatile international market, all market players face significant risk that they have difficult managing. There are several types of risks.
First is price risk, due to market conditions. This is followed by the risk related to the quality of coffee that the exporters purchase from the suppliers (akrabi) in the auction market. In addition to the above risk, exporters have to face the risk of weight loss until the coffee reaches the importers. For their part, suppliers do not have sufficient information on the international coffee markets, which exposes them to a higher risk in the auction (Muir, 1997). If, for instance, the supplier purchases coffee on the basis of current price, there is no guarantee that the price will be similar when the coffee is processed and delivered.
Belai Habte-Jesus, MD, MPH
Global Strategic Enterprises, Inc. 4 Peace & Prosperity
Win-win synergestic Partnership 4P&P-focusing on
5Es: Education+Energy+Ecology+Economy+Enterprises
www.Globalbelai4u.blogspot.com; Globalbelai@yahoo.com
V: 571.225.5736; C: 703.933.8737; F: 703.531.0545
Our Passion is to reach our Individual and Collective Potential
No comments:
Post a Comment