Ethiopia

ADF STAFF Drug confiscations at Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa Bole International Airport have more than doubled over the past year, an indication of Ethiopia’s growing role as a hub of drugs moving from South America to Europe and southern Asia.…

ADF STAFF What began as Ethiopia’s aspiration to regain access to the Red Sea turned into a threat of force against its coastal neighbors in late 2023 and is now fueling fears of war. Last year, critics in the Horn of Africa region…

ADF STAFF Weighed down by the costs of war, the COVID-19 pandemic and billions of dollars in Chinese loans, Ethiopia defaulted on a loan payment recently, joining Ghana and Zambia on the list of African countries unable to pay their debts.…

ADF STAFF Fourteen-year-old Abel and some friends were playing in the remote north Ethiopian town of Adi Hageray, in the Tigray region, when one of them found a new toy. “We were throwing it at each other,” he told the International…

ADF STAFF Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s three-country tour of Africa in mid-July marked the first time the controversial country’s president has visited the continent in more than 11 years. Raisi’s government has made a point of…

ADF STAFF Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s call for direct port access on the Red Sea has Horn of Africa observers concerned about a new conflict in the battle-scarred region. Ethiopia lost direct access to the sea in 1993 when…

ADF STAFF Sahle-Work Zewde may hold a largely ceremonial role as Ethiopia’s president, but she succinctly captured the plight of Africa’s second-most-populous country when she recently addressed parliament. “We have not succeeded in…

ADF STAFF The United Nations’ Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide is sounding the alarm over “atrocity crimes” in Ethiopia and warning of the risk of widening ethnically based violence. Alice Wairimu Nderitu listed incidents of…

ADF STAFF Ethiopia recently completed the fourth and final filling of its huge Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). However, the controversy the dam has created with Egypt and Sudan remains unresolved. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy…

ADF STAFF Somalia has asked the United Nations to delay a planned drawdown of 3,000 African Union peacekeepers for three months to allow its security forces time to regroup after a series of extremist attacks. The African Union…