Date: 2025-08-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00025591
ETHIOPIA
AN ANCIENT CULTURE ... FASCINATING
Why is Ethiopia the African Eldorado? ... a 50 minute Best Documentary
AN ANCIENT CULTURE ... FASCINATING
Why is Ethiopia the African Eldorado? ... a 50 minute Best Documentary
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRZd1xzY7o0
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I have known something about Ethiopia since I was very young. One of my father's best friends in the 1930s was the brother of the British Ambassador to Ethiopia who was in the news when he enabled Emperor Haile Selassie to escape Ethiopia during WWII and later helped enabled Haile Selassie's return to Ethiopia. I became friendly with the Ambassador's daughter during my period in London during my early 20s!
During my mid-career consultancy work I did various assignments associated with Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and learned a lot about the various cultures of the region. This was enabled in some part by a UN colleague DeeDee Angagaw, an Ethiopian I met through the UN and worked with on and off for several years in many places around Africa starting in the late 1980s. Her father had been an officer in the Haile Selassie's Presidential Guard, but when Selassie was ousted in a coup, her father ended up in jail for a period of 17 years! At that time DeeDee was a student at Harvard and instantly went from 'rich kid' to 'moneyless' ... but made the transition and while losing in wealth gained immensely in wisdom ... and 'guts'.
Over time, I have learned something of the immense importance of 'culture' in the way a society works ... and how many different cultures make simple things complicated.
When I saw this video for the first time quite recently (in September 2023) I was struck by how fast some of Ethiopia was progressing and how some other parts of the country were not progressing at all. The video is interesting in this regard, but the video does little to explain the problems this is going to cause.
When I was in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa more broadly in the 1980s and the 1990s there was no Chinese presence at all ... and the scale and pace of this change is something of a shock.
Interesting video .. and very much worth watching! But a warning ... the video does miss a whole lot, and in some ways is dangerously simplistic!
Peter Burgess
Best Documentary
Premiered Jan 26, 2023 (Accessed October 2023)
3.21M subscribers ... 1,848,863 views ... 16K likes
ÉTHIOPIE
Far from the images of drought, famine and civil war that have stuck with the skin of the country for a long time, Ethiopia is today seen as an Eldorado Within the African continent, with 10% growth per year, one of the strongest rates in the world, this new tiger of Africa is experiencing an incredible economic miracle. Directors: Michaëlle Gagnet, Julien Boluen
Transcript