Ethiopia Workshop february/march 2003


Ethiopia hosted two linked, inter-disciplinary workshops, during February and March 2003. These were organised by Alula Pankhurst (Addis Ababa University) and Pip Bevan (Bath University).

Ethiopian social scientists attended the first workshop. The topics discussed were

• the WeD conceptual framework
• the ‘reality of poverty, inequality and quality of life’
• methodology
• key policy issues relating to poverty in Ethiopia

Six of the participants in the workshop were asked to use the material generated from the discussions and/or their own expertise to prepare short papers for presentation at the second workshop.

The second workshop was an international forum. WeD members from Bath joined the Ethiopian social scientists in addition to representatives of NGOs, Economic Policy Research Institute, the World Bank, DFID, the British Council, the UN and WHO. A number of these have agreed to be members of the WeD Ethiopia Advisory Group; others will be involved in different aspects of the WeD Ethiopian research programme.

A few ‘Ethiopian’ reactions to the WeD programme are listed below.

· With some additional effort (the WeD framework) can be further developed to provide a ‘common grammar’ and hence the basis for shared discourse among researchers that are otherwise kept apart by their discipline-specific theories, models, paradigms, concepts, and terminologies; not to mention the well-known methods biases.’ (Yeraswork Admassie, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology)
· ‘Poverty stands at the forefront of a plethora of predicaments that Ethiopian society faces at present. The quest for overcoming this problem, however, is constrained by a mix of the vagaries of nature and human folly anchored in climatic, socio-cultural and economic and political factors’ (Kassahun Berhanu, Department of Political Science)
· ‘Culture has some 50 definitions’ (Habtamu Wondimu, Department of Psychology)
· ‘..data concerning perceptions and attitudes extracted from the folkloric materials seem to be more reliable, more rich and closer to reflecting the soul of a community and the individual than the ones obtained through interviews, specially those made during short touristy journeys to rural communities.’ (Fekade Azeze, Department of Ethiopian Languages and Literature)

The WeD group from Bath made three field visits.

• Addis Ababa Kebeles 06, 08 and 22 which contain concentrations of urban poverty. The visit was organised by the ‘Concern’ project which works with very poor street traders.

And two rural sites

• Tirfe
  
• Dessu

These were studied by Pip Bevan and Alula Pankhurst in 1995 and are possible sites for the WeD Programme.

Members of WeD Bath visit Tirfe

The Bath visitors undertook the six-hour journey to Tirfe, mainly along the highway which leads to Kenya, hence recently re-tarmaced. In contrast the journey to Dessu was on unmade roads, through the highlands north east of Addis Ababa, culminating in a rapid and bumpy descent into the Rift Valley. Here in the valley lowlands, amongst the camels and other livestock, they saw local community irrigation schemes. Unfortunately, this site rarely receives sufficient rain and this year conditions were worse than usual; they passed a food aid distribution centre surrounded by people, and donkeys, receiving rations.