«THE my husband was killed a few months ago in the Amhara war. I was left alone with my daughter, who is now eight months old. I have nowhere to leave her to go to work” tells us Afia showing us the baby she is carrying on her back.
With no other option, she spends her days begging in a busy square on the edge of Addis Ababa, where many buses stop in front of an Orthodox church.
Afia speaks English, which is apparently rare for a beggar in Addis Ababa. “I have finished school. I also went to university for two years to study engineering, but I stopped because I got married”. Her husband was killed a few months after they had their first child.
Then Afia found herself hanging from a tree: she has no one to hold the baby for her to go to work – a problem faced by too many women in the – so she carries her daughter on her back all day while she sells gum to the people she descends on bus stop or begs from the faithful in the nearby church.
The in Amhara, one of Ethiopia’s 12 regions, has turned the lives of many in the country upside down, but for the rest of the world it is one of the “unknown wars” of 2024. Every year, alongside the conflicts that attract global attention, there are always and those that rage on the sidelines, away from the interest of the international community – especially if they are civil wars, such as the Amhara war.
Rivalries, poverty and corruption
The conflict broke out in April 2023 between the Amhara Fano militia and the government army. The reason was the government’s attempt to disband the Amhara Special Forces to integrate them into the national army, but in reality the tension had been simmering for a year. Surprisingly it went from the peace agreement signed by the Ethiopian government in 2022 to end the war in Tigray, another region of Ethiopia.
Fano, who in Tigray fought on the side of the government against local rebels, considered the peace agreement treacherous and took up arms against the country’s national army. A deeper cause is the rivalry between Ethiopia’s ethnicities: the Amhara have historically dominated the country’s economic and political life, the Tigrai (from the region of the same name in the north, on the border with Eritrea) took control in the 1990s, while today dominated by the Oromo, the country’s largest ethnic group, to which .
“Each new government fires civil servants and hires its own from its own ethnic group”Ethiopians explain to us.
Since then the Amhara war has continued and is estimated to have caused more than 15,000 casualties, and . In Addis Ababa and the surrounding region, Oromia, there is no hostilities, but the effects of the civil conflict are evident: soldiers check cars on the streets and metal detectors are installed at the entrances of hotels, restaurants and other businesses to detect weapons and explosives.
“The government is worried about the war moving to Addis Ababa”a resident of the capital tells us.
We did not encounter any white tourists in the capital since the top tourist destinations, such as Lalibela, are in war-torn Amhara. The few Chinese who roam Addis Ababa – which means “new flower” in Ethiopian – are entrepreneurs since “China buys everything in Ethiopia”as the locals say.
“He is building our infrastructure by bringing in Chinese workers who live in ‘prison’ conditions and this has created a problem with Ethiopians who are plagued by unemployment”.
Overpopulation and poverty
Ethiopia has a population of just under 130 million – its second most populous country after Nigeria – and is estimated to reach 200 million by 2050. “Addis Ababa is the Brussels of Africa”, the locals tell us, proud that their city hosts the headquarters of the African Union, which has 55 member states.
Ethiopia is an exception in Africa in the sense that it never experienced colonialism. It is basically Christian (over 67%) dominated by the Orthodox (almost 44%) followed by Evangelicals (almost 23%) while the second largest religion is Islam (31%), mainly among the Ethiopian Somali ethnic group.
“Actually, the population of Ethiopia is estimated to have reached 150 million but the government does not take a census (s.s.: from 2007) because ethnic groups are funded according to their population and it is feared that the new census will change the correlations. they call us residents, always willing to talk about their country.
The overcrowding is reflected in Addis Ababa’s huge traffic jams that have grown rapidly and have now literally reached next to the airport.
From the Bole neighborhood, which hosts hotels and embassies, you can walk to the international airport of the same name, which can be seen at the end of the central avenue. The government is expropriating everything next to the boulevards to widen them, traffic lights are few and far between.
Overpopulation and constant wars intensify poverty. In Addis Ababa it is obvious, outside the capital it is absolute. We go 50 kilometers away from Addis Ababa to distribute food with the organization Synesis Pigi AMKE, a branch of the NGO Time to Help Germany. The houses are mostly tin, the roads are dirt roads, cars are rare. People move around in carriages pulled by mules.
We enter the first house, it is at most 10 square meters. A whole room, with tin walls divided in the middle by a plastic curtain: on one side a bed and in the corner a “mountain” of sheets while on the other a fire pit (the kitchen) and two gutted armchairs in front of a old television – the living room.
In this house lives a woman with her three children: one, a baby, is carried on her back, the other, a four-year-old girl, eats sitting in bed, while the eldest, seven years old, is absent from school. Our woman explains that her husband left a year ago to find work and has been missing since then. She is grateful for the food we brought her: rice, pulses, pasta, sugar, flour.
In the neighboring houses, in the neighboring villages, the same story. Tin walls that “bite” in the cold of the night – Addis Ababa and the surrounding plain are at an altitude of 2,355 meters which means that during the day the sun is scorching and at night it’s bitterly cold -, a pit inside the room with wood for cooking and heating, old televisions, often black and white, no mobile phone, the toilet a hole in the ground around fields, running water does not exist – even in Addis Ababa it comes twice a week and those who have the means, store it in tanks.
Some of the ‘houses’ we visit are owned by the government and let out to people who were homeless at a rent of €10 a year – but many struggle to find even that amount. In one of them, we see a very old woman. “How old is she?” we ask.
The translator and member of a local humanitarian organization helping us distribute the food says “60”, but immediately adds: “Most likely she doesn’t know her age, she probably doesn’t even know how to count, she just said a number to answer something”.
Below we are greeted by a thin woman. She has nine children, some of them surrounding us with smiles, while she is pregnant again. Births are high, family planning awareness campaigns have little impact – “many, especially in the countryside, treat them with distrust”, they explain to us – with the result that around 25,000 newborns are abandoned every year on the streets and some of them are found half-eaten by hyenas.
The drama with the orphaned children
In Addis Ababa, we visit an orphanage to distribute food and medicine. It hosts 37 children, many of them with mental retardation or physical disabilities, because they are the first to be abandoned on the street.
Ethiopia used to be a source of children for adoption to the West, including Greece, but the government banned them from abroad eight years ago when the killing of a little girl adopted in the US made headlines in Addis Ababa. Since then the situation in Ethiopian orphanages is desperate.
“Mostly boys are abandoned, while very few, mainly girls, are asked for adoption by Ethiopians”, the manager of the orphanage explains to us.
“We barely survive thanks to private donations, we have no government funding. The police collect the abandoned children, take them to the state orphanage and from there distribute them to the various orphanages, like ours. Before the policy change, there were 65 agencies active in foreign adoptions. Today there is none. We are pressing the government to open up adoptions to foreigners, but at the moment we have no positive indication”.
In Addis Ababa the inequalities are evident: on the one hand beggars on the streets, slums and goats and on the other, skyscrapers being built everywhere. Mainly intended for housing schemes, the vast majority make it into the real estate market.
These programs are aimed at the middle and small middle class: “The 40-60 program – that is, 40% is put up by the buyer and 60% is lent at low interest by the government through the state banks – is aimed at the most affluent and concerns residences in the center, while the 20 programs are applied in the most remote neighborhoods of the capital -80 and 10-90”, they explain to us.
“The land is owned by the government and leased for 99 years, property tax was introduced for the first time last year”.
Many Ethiopians chew a stimulant herb, kat (or chat as they pronounce it), which they hold like a “ball” against their cheek until it releases its slightly euphoric substances. “What is the greatest advantage of Ethiopians and what is the greatest disadvantage?” we ask Mohamed who “guides” us while chewing food in the Mercado, the largest open-air market in Addis Ababa and in all of Africa. “Hospitality and mutual support on the one hand, lack of education and unity on the other” he answers.
