Salaam salaam from BA! This is the Rorshok Ethiopia Update from the 11th of December twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Ethiopia.

The Guardian newspaper published a photo essay last Monday the 1st documenting the Fano, a militia in the Amhara region, in North Central Ethiopia, that has been fighting against federal forces since twenty twenty-three. The piece has many photos of Fano fighters in the rural parts of the region, along with civilians caught in the middle of the conflict. According to the newspaper, Fano says it controls over eighty percent of the region, mainly rural areas.

The article also includes brief interviews with civilians and fighters. Fighters said the federal government's efforts to stop the insurgency with increasingly brutal measures have fuelled hatred, both among the Fano and civilians. The Guardian notes that this has increased Fano’s popularity, along with the federal government’s failure to stop ethnicity-based attacks against the Amhara ethnic groups by various other ethnic groups.

Check out the article in English with the link in the show notes.

Meanwhile, The National Election Board of Ethiopia revealed that the general election will take place on the 1st of June, twenty twenty-six. Candidates can begin campaigning in about a month and must respect the five-day electoral silence prior to the voting day.

The board says that it will need ten days to count and confirm votes and release official results. Many opposition parties have expressed concerns about the country’s readiness to organize a fair and inclusive election, especially considering that there are many groups and individuals that the government has forced out of the political scene.

In and around Gambella, in the western part of the country, deadly shootings took the lives of four and injured eight on Tuesday the 9th. It started in the morning when an unidentified gunman shot two civilians, killing one and injuring the other. Three more shooting incidents followed as unidentified perpetrators shot at vehicles, two of them heading towards the city and the other leaving. The Gambella region is home to the ethnic groups of Anuak and Nuer, who haven’t gotten along well.

An official from the region said that, because the victim of the first attack was Nuer, community members headed to Gambella to retaliate against the Anuak. Federal police intervened and an officer was also among the casualties. The city administration imposed a 7 pm curfew that same day.

Earl Carter, a Republican member of the US House of Representatives, introduced a resolution this week urging the Secretary of State to sanction the Ethiopian government, saying it is threatening regional stability and violating human rights. He also said that the government has created enabling conditions for the persecution of Orthodox Tewahedo Christians, several of whom have recently been killed.

He said the US government should hold the Ethiopian government accountable. The resolution calls for the application of a law that allows the US government to issue travel bans, asset freezes and diplomatic restrictions.

The move has received support from Ethiopian advocacy groups based in the US.

Many have also criticized the Ethiopian government for being repressive, especially towards the media. Almost two months ago, the government temporarily banned the journalists of the Ethiopian branch of the outlet Deutsche Welle.

This week, on Thursday the 11th, the Ethiopian Media Authority announced that it has lifted restrictions against seven of the nine journalists who had been temporarily banned, but that the remaining two have been permanently banned. Deutsche Welle criticized this decision and urged the government to provide evidence of these journalists’ reporting that violated the profession’s ethics or Ethiopia’s laws.

Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, will head to Ethiopia on Tuesday the 16th. The trip will be part of a tour to three countries, including Oman and Jordan, and it is expected to end by next Thursday the 18th.

Modi’s visit will mark the first time in almost fifteen years that an Indian PM has gone to Ethiopia. He’s expected to hold bilateral talks with PM Abiy Ahmed. The last time the two met was about two years ago in South Africa at the twenty twenty-three BRICS summit, a bloc of countries with emerging economies that Ethiopia joined in twenty twenty-four.

India and Ethiopia have a long history of strong bilateral relations and cooperate in different fields, including health and education.

Speaking of bilateral relations, last Thursday the 4th, Parliament made agreements with Brazil, China and South Africa to expand criminal law enforcement cooperation. However, the agreements need Parliament’s approval before they can be turned into law and enforced.

For instance, in the deal signed with China, Ethiopia agrees to give the country information about Chinese nationals in Ethiopia who are suspected of crimes and are wanted in China. Ethiopia also committed to detaining and extraditing them. China also promised to do the same for Ethiopia. The two countries have also agreed to enforce search and seizure warrants issued in the other country.

The deal with South Africa is more limited, but does require both countries to extradite suspects, while the agreement with Brazil will see the countries exchange convicts so that citizens will serve their sentences in their own country.

Still in the parliament, it approved two loans: the first was from the World Bank and it's worth four hundred and fifty million US dollars. The other one was over twenty-eight million US dollars, and was given by the International Development Association.

During the session, representatives explained that the loan from the World Bank will be used to expand access to electricity to seventy-five percent of Ethiopians by twenty thirty. The other loan will be invested in education and training.

Ethiopia received yet another package of financial support this week, but this time it was a grant from the African Development Bank worth over a hundred and eighty million US dollars. The country is going to use the amount to build an almost seventy-kilometer-long road, which is around forty miles, in Eastern Ethiopia.

The project is expected to improve trips between Ethiopia and Djibouti, through which Ethiopia’s imports and exports pass. Ahmed Shide, the Minister of Finance, and Alex Mubiru, the bank’s East Africa director, signed the deal. Ahmed said that it is in line with inter-governmental initiatives and should improve regional stability and cooperation.

Recall that the African Development Bank is financing several projects across Ethiopia, including a new airport in Bishoftu in the central region, which is expected to become the largest airport on the continent.

In business news, Safaricom, the country’s only private telecom services provider, accused Ethio Telecom, its state-owned counterpart, of engaging in unfair competition practices as it banned Safaricom’s mobile money app users with Ethio Telecom SIM cards from accessing the app.

The accusation came just a few days after Safaricom announced that customers with Ethio Telecom SIM cards can only use its mobile money app after getting permits from regulators. Insiders said that even if Safaricom makes formal complaints, it is unclear which government office the complaint should be brought to.

More business news as private bank Hibret revealed at its general shareholders meeting on Sunday the 7th that its pre-tax profits have taken a nosedive, declining by seventy-five percent compared to last year. The numbers get even more disappointing for the Hibret shareholders as the bank earned a net profit of just a little over twenty-three million birr, which is around a hundred and fifty thousand US dollars.

The bank’s leadership blamed the government’s decision in mid-twenty twenty-four to allow market forces to determine the value of the birr, instead of the government itself.

And for our final story this week, social media influencers had a run-in with the law this week, as Federal Police said it detained around six of them and some event organizers following a televised award show for Tiktokers at which police said some wore revealing and indecent clothing that violated Ethiopia’s cultural and moral values. Police said suspects include those who wore the clothes themselves, but also the organizers and sponsors.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Ciao!