Ethiopian Studies Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Ethnic identity is often cited as an important variable explaining
voter choices in Africa. Ethiopia, since 1994, has adopted an
ethnically-based federal system, which makes it an interesting test
case of the importance of ethnicity in shaping voter preferences. Indeed, one might expect higher levels of ethnification of voter preferences in Ethiopia when compared to other African countries. Using cross-national data from the World Values Survey and Afrobarometer, it is found that Ethiopian voters have relatively higher levels of concentrated partisan support than do other African countries. However, when examining the propensity of individual voters to express partisan preferences that “defect” from their ethnic position, I find that the evaluations of government performance explain defections better than does the intensity of ethnic identity or expectations for patronage.

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- Comparative Politics, Ethiopian Studies, African Politics

Three thousand years of writing in Africa has yielded perhaps ten known
biographies of African women written by Africans before the nineteenth
century. Autobiographies by premodern African women are even rarer; an early hagiography about an Ethiopian woman, however, may constitute such a text. Gädlä Krəstos Śämra (The Life-Struggles of Krəstos Śämra [Christ Delights in Her]), written in an Ethiopian monastery sometime between 1450 and 1508, is about a saintly woman who lived in the fifteenth century (no exact dates of her birth or death appear in her hagiography). The text gives a
short overview of Krəstos Śämra’s life in the third person, but then proceeds in the first person as Krəstos Śämra describes a series of her religious visions, including one in which she attempts to reconcile Christ and Satan.
Although the text contains a few biographical details about her, it is more of an intellectual autobiography, the narrative of one woman’s philosophy and her belief in the possibilities for healing a broken world. As such, this text expands our understanding of the global female visionary tradition, which tends to be oriented more toward reconciliation than damnation. Krəstos Śämra must be placed alongside such visionary medieval women saints as the English Christians Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, the Muslims Rabia of Basri and Lalla Aziza, and the Hindu Mirabai. Despite its value, her hagiography has been translated only into Amharic and Italian; in this chapter portions appear in English for the first time.

- by Wendy Belcher
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- Religion, Gender Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Gender and religion (Women s Studies)

Excavations were carried out in 1999 on the location of Stela 2 at the ancient site of Aksum in northern Ethiopia.
These excavations have permitted the documentation of the foundation of this stela, which was transported to Rome in 1937. Preparations were also made for the stela’s return to the site in 2005 and its re-erection in 2008 at the exact location where it stood in the 3rd or 4th century AD.
The excavations also made it possible to re-examine our perception of the three giant stelae on the site, from their conception and erection to their destruction.

- by Bertrand Poissonnier
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- Archaeology, Ethiopian Studies, History of Technology, Africa

Expanding access to formal education is a universal aim of development policy worldwide, and young people today are gaining access to schooling on unprecedented levels. Taking Ethiopia as a case study, this paper explores the mobility impacts of increasing educational attainment. First, we analyse internal migration data for Ethiopia using national Labour Force Survey data, and find that that rural-to-urban migration has now replaced rural-to-rural migration as most common migration trajectory within Ethiopia. The pursuit of work and education were key motivations for rural-to-urban migration, and those with higher levels of education moved more. Second, we show how rising levels of primary and secondary education influence aspirations to migrate, distinguishing between internal and international destinations. Using novel survey data collected among rural and urban Ethiopian youth for the Young Lives project, we find that even completing primary levels of education increases the aspiration to live elsewhere. By studying the linkages between education and migration aspirations, alongside other development indicators like wealth, employment, and levels of self-efficacy, this paper contributes to an on-going debate about the relationship between development and migration and challenges common assumptions that migration is simply driven by poverty and need in poorer countries.

- by Kerilyn Schewel
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- Education, Development Studies, Youth Studies, Ethiopian Studies

In emphasizing equivalences with conceptions of evil eye, accounts of Ethiopian buda understate the capacity of these beings to transform into hyenas. The case study presented here highlights how this element of the buda belief reveals a... more

- by Marcus Baynes-Rock
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- Mythology And Folklore, African Studies, Anthropology, Folklore

La cour de Ménélik II (r. 1889-1913) est un véritable « laboratoire iconographique ». Le roi des rois est le premier à recourir de façon méthodique à la photographie, importée sur les hauts plateaux de l'Éthiopie par des missionnaires, des commerçants et autres voyageurs. Nombre de portraits parvenus jusqu'à nous en témoignent : les dignitaires éthiopiens y posent en arborant les insignes royaux ou des armes, autant d'attributs laissant à penser que ces images ont été élaborées avec soin. L'auteur s'interroge sur les enjeux auxquels répondait la fabrication de ces images, mais aussi sur leurs significations et leurs usages. Quel éclairage apportent ces documents à l'histoire de l'Ethiopie contemporaine et de ses relations avec le monde extérieur ? Les modalités d'appropriation de ce nouveau médium sont retracées à l'aide de sources écrites éthiopiennes et européennes. Les clichés sont aussi replacés au coeur d'un ensemble iconographique plus large, comprenant des peintures d'église, des timbres-poste ou des pièces de monnaie. Dérivés de la photographie, ils témoignent de recherches sur la forme, les supports et les usages des images, au gré des innovations techniques et des besoins politiques. Ces documents comptent parmi les réponses apportées par la royauté face aux bouleversements engendrés par le triomphe de la colonisation européenne sur le continent africain. À l'heure où l'Europe exporte ses médias et ses imaginaires dans le reste du monde, ils reflètent à la fois la souveraineté politique du pays et une idéologie royale relayée tant par le texte que par l'image : souverain modernisateur, féru de techniques nouvelles, Ménélik II revendiquait aussi une ascendance salomonide trois fois millénaire.

- by Estelle Sohier
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- Cultural History, African Studies, Photography, Ethiopian Studies

June 6, 2021 The genocide in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region has been going on for seven months now. The UN is doing nothing and the slaughter continues. To understand events there one must examine the context in which they were created.
The past 500 years of colonialism and even world politics today are very easy to understand. Euro-American colonialists are inherently white supremacist to give them a unifying bond, uniformly amoral and totally capitalist. Over time they realized its easier to get the “colored savages” to fight each other rather than waste good white boys on the effort so they became masters at dividing indigenous groups within the Americas, Asia and Africa, setting them upon each other, then rolling in later on to “clean up the mess” and totally take over while congratulating themselves on their kindness.
The First Italo-Ethiopian War 1895 – 1896 in which the Italians claimed the entire country of Ethiopia as their own was bad enough, but then the Second Italo-Ethiopian War from 1935 – 1937 saw 200,000 Italian soldiers invade proving what a totally ineffectual entity the League of Nations (1920 - 1946) truly was, precisely the same as the modern so-called United Nations.
What the foreign invaders were really after was a solid base in East Afrika, and specifically the Ethiopian Highlands, the largest continuous elevated area on the continent, sometimes called the “Roof of Africa.” The highlands mountain areas extend from central and northern Ethiopia north into Eritrea. Those are deliciously cool and beautiful lands far better suited to the more delicate European constitutions than the deserts, Savannah and tropics found elsewhere in Afrika along with all manner of fearsome wildlife including those horrid malaria carrying mosquitos.
Jumping forward in time a bit we find the USA with an urgent “existential need” of some kind to rule the entire world forever that looks upon the ancient land of Ethiopia with distain. Myopically addicted to fragmenting and dominating all nations of the earth in perpetuity, the clever but not wise directors of American foreign policies have decreed Ethiopia needs a good war to break it down some more, as if the droughts and endemic poverty brought about by predatory Euro-American aggression in Afrika weren’t enough.
So, the ever-so-clever but avaricious American foreign policy makers locked the former dominant political party called the TPLN located in the northern ancient holy Tigray region into power for an overly long time while feeding their corruption, and at the same time fed anger and resentment towards them from all directions, Eritrea to the north, and the other Ethiopian political parties to the south.
- This short brutally honest satire is an alternative introduction to the much more detailed and analytic article I posted on Academia.edu yesterday titled: Made in Amerika - Genocide in Ethiopia - A four-part article series. That the UN does nothing is not surprising, however it's astonishing to me that so few people seem to even care about another genocide. Is only 20,000 innocents slaughtered too insignificant to call your Congressional representatives and demand the UN send in peacekeepers?

- by Greg Brundage
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- African Studies, American Studies, Ethiopian Studies, War Studies
- by David Callahan
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- Ethiopian Studies, Australia, Migration Studies
- by FURIOLI ANTONIO
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- Ethiopian Studies

The article centres on the exploration of the fascist attempts to arrange the cinematographic audience in Italian East Africa (1936-1941). Methodologically, it puts the study of original archival records issued by the fascist administration against the background of theories and discourses about cinema for colonial subjects well spread in fascist Italy and in other imperial countries.

- by Gianmarco Mancosu
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- Reception Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Fascism

Technology has been influencing the way music is produced, distributed and consumed since the printing revolution in Europe. YouTube technology is the most influential influence on the music world in our day, changing almost every aspect of how music is presented and perceived. The article discusses some of the most obvious aspects of the YouTube revolution, and some of the less obvious ones, aiming to help in creating a basis for further discussion and research.

- by Nadav Haber
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- Black Studies Or African American Studies, African Studies, Music, Music Education

When I did my fieldwork in Bashada, I often heard of Sill-ama, a mysterious kind of creature that is said to live in the bush. The Sill-ama, people said, own a lot of cattle and cultivate sorghum. But preferably they eat people...
The Sill-ama stories are famous in Bashada and Hamar and loved especially by children when told to them in the evenings sitting around the fire.

- by István Tarrósy and +1
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- African Studies, International Relations, Development Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis
- by Heba Abouelwaffa
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- Semitic languages, Ethiopian Studies, Classical Ethiopic, Ethiopian History
- by Hanna Rubinkowska-Anioł
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- African Studies, Ethiopian Studies, African History, African Politics

This article focuses on a significant and hitherto unpublished icon painted around the mid-fifteenth century by the Master of the Amber-Spotted Tunic. By analysing its style and iconography, it furthers our understanding of history of panel painting in Ethiopia during this period. The study shows that Fǝre Ṣǝyon was not the only talented artist who created works in compliance with the policies of Zär’a Ya‛әqob and that the Master of the Amber-Spotted Tunic was an equally accomplished painter. The latter’s work was in fact capable of conveying complex theological ideas in a visually accessible manner.

- by Jacopo Gnisci
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- Semiotics, Ethiopian Studies, Christian Iconography, African Art History

Text read on the occasion of the festive Celebration Ceremony for the accomplishment of the fifth and last volume of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Hamburg, Hamburg University, Asien-Afrika-Institut, July 16th, 2014, h. 14:00-19:00.

- by Alessandro Bausi
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- Ethiopian Studies

With a particular focus on interventions aimed at eradicating female genital mutilation (FGM) in Ethiopia, this article discusses the increased use of religious leaders as a strategy in development practice, showing that the use of religious leaders in these interventions is informed by an instrumental approach and narrow and static assumptions of power. We argue that for religious leaders to be actors of social change, a reconceptualization of power and power dynamics and a critical discussion about the consequences and limitations of instrumentalist approaches are needed. These issues are of particular importance in contexts where monological discourses and vertical structures dominate and influence interventions, local responses to them, and religious leaders’ legitimacy.

- by Marit Østebø
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- Social Change, Development Studies, International Development, Ethiopian Studies
- by Don Seeman
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- Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Anthropology

This paper examines the inconsistencies and contradictions between the Pan-African and more traditional and nationalistic Ethiopian sentiments expressed throughout Haile Gerima’s Ethiopian-set films. With regards to the victory at Adwa in 1896 with Menelik II’s Ethiopian forces proving triumphant over the colonial Italian power, Ethiopia’s presence in a homogenous idea of Africa with a common history of colonialism, expounded in the Pan-Africanist ideology, is somewhat removed. The idea of an ‘African cinema’ will be scrutinised and proven to be a misleading term which overlooks the heterogeneous nature of films in Africa based on a wide variety of regional, aesthetic, political and economic experiences. The paper will then contextualise Gerima’s career and life highlighting his move to the USA from Ethiopia in 1967 to study and the influence this experience and in particular the American Civil-Rights movement has had on him. Taking into account Gerima’s introspective reaction after explicitly supporting the tyrannical Socialist Derg regime in his 1976 Ethiopian film Mirt Sost Shi Amet (Harvest: 3000 Years), the paper will discuss Gerima’s post-Harvest Ethiopian films proposing that they are self-reflexive in nature (with reference to Teshome Gabriel, 2002). The paper will then highlight Pan-African and Ethiopian nationalist contradictions portrayed in Adwa: an African Victory (1999) and Teza (Morning Dew) (2008) linking them within the specific individual and heterogeneous concept of a self-reflexive cinema opposed to a broader and more homogenous idea of an African cinema.

- by Michael W. Thomas
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- Ethiopian Studies, Pan Africanism, African Film, African Film Studies.
- by Hanna Rubinkowska-Anioł and +1
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- African Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Oral history, Oral Traditions

The higher education sector in Ethiopia has witnessed an epochal transformation against the backdrop of the so-called global knowledge age. Expansion and internationalization unfold simultaneously and are deeply intertwined. This article analyzes how an economically and politically stronger global South changes the higher education landscape in Ethiopia. We focus on cooperation programs of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and GIZ (German Corporation for International Cooperation) and show how these are adjusted to the new global political conditions. Cooperation with traditional partners from the global North remains important but is increasingly combined and complemented with actors from the global South.

- by Claudia Baumann
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- African Studies, International Relations, Higher Education, Ethiopian Studies

Bete Giyorgis, Lalibela, Ethiopia

- by Mohammed Girma
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- African Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Immigration, Politics
- by Stephane Ancel
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- African Studies, Ethiopian Studies, African History, Church History
- by Eske T (Eskender Tesfaye)
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- Ethnography, Ethiopian Studies, Anthropology of Ethiopia, Ethiopia
- by Hagar Salamon
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- Ethiopian Studies, Beta Israel

Proposal for a new kind of tree planting technology, via drones and seedballs, referred to a project in Shoa, Ethiopia.
Development of a type of seedball designed to favour dispersion and germination rates.
Connections with an educational approach to tree planting and cultural heritage in South West Shoa.
Costing, limitations and description of a pilot project.

"This paper explores the nature of vulnerability to climate change and examines the adaptation strategies of the residents of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Data were collected through qualitative interviews to understand the perceptions and coping mechanisms of households and then contextualized within the existing local, national and international research. The findings reveal positive adaptations to climate change in some areas but also non-existent or maladaptive changes in other areas that have
increased vulnerability. The study prioritized vulnerabilities based upon the data collected. Of the areas examined, food (in)security emerged as the greatest immediate and long-term vulnerability for the target population."

- by Logan Cochrane
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- Social Sciences, Climate Change, Ethiopian Studies, Climate Change Adaptation

In the aftermath of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, the government came to adopt an official strand of Marxism that featured a number of characteristics inherited from the late Soviet interpretation of its own experience, and a number of instrumentalist contortions corresponding to the interest of the emergent dominant strata. This generated contradictions between the emancipatory ideational categories employed and the social-material characteristics of the actual process of attempted development. Nowhere were these contradictions greater than in the manufacturing sector, where exhortations and demands for sacrifice on the part of the working class were only matched by the – increasingly farcical – rhetorical place of prominence of that class. By focusing on the rhetorical aims, the practical means, and the achievements recorded in this sector, this article aims to analyse the concrete manner in which these contradictions manifested themselves. The findings indicate that the effort to construct and develop a socialist economy – narrowly defined as such in terms of the judicial form of ownership – failed on a number of levels. This failure is traced back to the nature of power relations in ‘Socialist Ethiopia’, and draws attention to the manner in which the ideology of ‘state socialism’, which shifts attention from the aim of revolutionising productive relations to the development of productive forces under state ownership, has generally been used to legitimise the rule of bureaucratic categories and to conceal exploitative relations prevailing under such rule. In this, the article draws on Marxist theorisation and critique of that ideology.

- by Samuel Andreas Admasie
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- Political Economy, Development Studies, Marxism, Ethiopian Studies

This is a historical book for the genius policy of Emperor Menelik II, as well his exploited the European conflict interests in Africa during the Era of Colonialism at the 19th century.
The book is an editing by Arabic Language for the author's MA degree; at Institute of African Research and Studies, Cairo University; titled: The Abyssinian Regional Expansion during the Reign of Emperor "Menelik II" 1889 - 1913.

- by Dahlia Saad El-Din
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- African Studies, Ethiopian Studies, African History, Africa
- by Nicole Stremlau and +1
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- African Studies, International Relations, Media Studies, Development Studies

Amid growing interest in China’s role in financing and building infrastructure in Africa, there is still little research on how Chinese-financed infrastructures are negotiated and realised at the city and metropolitan scale. We compare the Light Rail Transit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with the expressway linking Kampala to Entebbe airport in Uganda, examining the processes of bargaining behind these transport infrastructures and their emergent effects on urban land use and city-dwellers’ mobility. We find that both projects were designed and implemented through opaque negotiations between African national elites and Chinese agencies, with little or no engagement from city authorities, leading to haphazard outcomes that are poorly integrated with broader planning. Yet we also suggest that despite being enabled and mediated by Chinese agencies, such projects do not embody a Chinese global vision. They instead reflect the entrepreneurial activities of Chinese contractors and the varying ...

Zarówno islam jak i chrześcijaństwo pojawiły się w Rogu Afryki bardzo wcześnie. Aksum, kolebka etiopskiej cywilizacji, przyjęło chrześcijaństwo jako religię panujących już w IV wieku, natomiast islam dotarł na te tereny w VII wieku. Wyznawcy obu religii od setek lat mieszkają na tych samych terenach (często jako sąsiedzi), przez wieki byli poddanymi tego samego władcy, wypracowali wspólne wzorce kulturowe, posługują się tymi samymi językami i, o ile przyjmiemy, że istnieje naród etiopski, stworzyli jeden naród. Celem niniejszego artykuły jest próba udzielenia odpowiedzi na pytanie w jakim stopniu w Etiopii istnieją granice pomiędzy sferami życia, kultury i obszara-mi historii związanymi z chrześcijaństwem i z islamem, a na ile te przestrzenie są wspólne, przez co wyznaczenie takich granic nie jest możliwe. Postaram się dokonać próby ustalenia granic i wspólnych przestrzeni poprzez analizę w ujęciu geograficznym, historycznym, etnicznym, politycznym i kulturowym. Terje 0steb0n - badacz islamu w Etiopii i związków pomiędzy islamem i chrześcijaństwem podkreśla, że granice pomiędzy tymi religiami i życiem ich wyznawców, przynajmniej w pewnych przypadkach, są wyraźne'. Postaram się wykazać, że pomimo tych granic, które bez wątpienia istnieją, istnieją też płaszczyzny życia społecznego, doświadczeń historycznych i kultury, na których łatwiej dostrzec wspólne przestrzenie niż odrębne obszary. Innymi słowy, uważam że w odniesieniu do Etiopii można mówić o odrębnych sferach życia wyznawców chrześcijaństwa i is-amu.

- by Hanna Rubinkowska-Anioł
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- Ethiopian Studies, African History
- by Wolbert Smidt
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopia, Ethiopian History, Tigray

The optimal language for literature and educational materials is not the same for all Zay areas. The data gathered during the current study points to Zay as optimal for the islands on Lake Ziway and Oromo as optimal for the lakeshores. However, the Zay people living on the islands would probably be well served by Amharic literature and educational materials until most of them immigrate to the shore or the Oromo educational system causes a shift in preference to Oromo. Zay’s case is one of an endangered language that could prove to be a development success story, but only if the level of motivation for a language development project is high enough to initiate and sustain the effort.

- by Linda Jordan
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- Multiculturalism, Languages and Linguistics, Semitic languages, Multilingualism

Avec Londres et Paris, Bâle constitua, à partir du milieu du 19ème siècle, l'un des « centres » de la première diaspora africaine en Europe de l'Ouest. Toutefois, l'origine de cette étonnante présence d'Africains à Bâle n'est pas due aux activités du commerce international qui préoccupaient tant les métropoles de l'Ouest. À Bâle, ce sont les piétistes qui jouèrent le rôle principal dans la création d'une communauté africaine. On peut, en effet, déjà parler d'une véritable communauté, dans la mesure où non seulement les Africains se connaissaient, mais où ils partageaient aussi un sort commun et effectuaient une grande partie de leurs activités ensemble. En revanche, il serait certainement exagéré de qualifier cette communauté de « diaspora » au sens strict du terme. Cette expression ne serait appropriée que si un nombre important d'Africains, originaires d'une seule région, s'était établi de façon permanente dans cette ville, ce qui ne fut pas le cas. Quelques-uns parmi ceux qui résidèrent à Bâle – surtout à partir des années 1850 – venaient de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, mais la plupart était originaire des régions soudanaise et éthiopienne. Une fraction assez considérable de ces Africains mourut à Bâle, mais plus de la moitié retourna finalement dans son pays d'origine. L'observation suivante est importante, puisqu'elle indique une autre spécificité bâloise qui la distingue de Paris ou de Londres : non seulement la motivation. Une étude proposant des biographies des Africains vivant à Paris ou Londres montre qu'une majorité d'entre eux était des anciens esclaves, des serviteurs de personnalités impliquées dans l'expansion commerciale française ou anglaise, ou encore des ressortissants des premières colonies. - Article : Les Africains de Bâle du 19ème siècle, in: Thomas David et al. (eds.): De la traite des Noirs à la fin du régime de l'Apartheid : trois siècles de relations entre la Suisse et l'Afrique (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), Münster: Lit-Verlag 2005, 209-225

The late Nikodemos Idris gave me this mimeographed work titled Phonology of Kunama in December 1993. Ii's an unpublished paper. I hope that it will be at least of historical and cultural value for the Kunama and for the scholars in the field of the Nilosaharian Languages. As far as I know Nikodemos helped a lot well-known linguists like Lionel Bender.
This paper follows the previous The Kunama and their language. See also the short autobiography I uploaded.

- by Gianni Dore
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- Ethiopian Studies, Horn of Africa, Eritrean and Ethiopian languages, Kunama