Ethiopia's Famine In Ethiopia

“For just one dollar you can feed these starving children.” Immediately you pictured a small African child with a skinny frame and protruding belly. A person does not need to be born in the 1980’s to imagine the picture I have described, nor do they need to know that it was not until the 1980’s that the United States intervened in Ethiopia’s famine. As the word famine travels across any medium we picture Africa. However, many take it a step further by relating these issues to Ethiopia. African culture, specifically Ethiopia, is diminished by commercials, social media, and the idea that any product “African” is primitive. As a society, African culture has been bastardized, within our own country and protruding to the continent. Ethiopia is one
The coffee drunk today originated in the empire of Abyssinia, which we today call Ethiopia. However, as the Abyssinian Empire thrived, it was only time before imperialism caught wind of the “exotic” products of Ethiopia. Coffee was, and still is Ethiopia’s dominant export, the importance of coffee can be summated by Fernando Vega, “From its humble origins in Africa, coffee has become the second most heavily traded commodity in the world, after petroleum products, with an estimated retail value that exceeds $70 billion. Coffee is planted in more than 10 million hectares spread over 50-plus countries, where more than 100 million people depend on it for their livelihoods.”(Vega) Abyssinia thrived from the 12th century until the Gondar Period. The Gondar period was Ethiopia’s last stand as a powerful, independent nation. The Gondar monarchy built palaces, churches, and established trade with muslim merchants (Pankhurst, R, 1998, 109-117). By 1630 the Ethiopian capital of Gondar became an epicenter for art and culture, catapulting Ethiopian culture across the Red sea and into the Middle East (Pankhurst, R, 1998, 109). While Abyssinia grew in power, the “exotic” products, such as coffee, exported began to gain popularity in Europe. As coffee houses grew in number, the marking of Ethiopia’s demise began. Just prior to the 18th century the Gondar monarchy fell to Ras Mikael Sehul of Tigray, while more emperors were appointed Abyssinia entered
The Ethiopian Empire of Abyssinia laid fractured and unstable, the Kingdom of Italy saw this as an opportunity to colonize the dying Empire. The battle of Adwa in 1896 marks “...a significant anti-colonial rebellion, we have made a call to celebrate the victory in all African countries and urged all black and oppressed people to mark the day”(Ademo,Hussein). While many celebrate this great stand by the Ethiopian people, many have tried to declare this is Ethiopia’s “Original sin”(Ademo, Hussein). This victory allowed itself to be one of the only two nations not under European imperial rule, the remaining nations were divided amongst the European powers, predominantly England and France.(McGuire) While the Kingdom of Italy may have lost, but by 1935 Mussolini felt, “His focus was the Italian invasion of Ethiopia that began on October 3rd, 1935 and culminated in the fall of Addis Ababa on May 5th, 1936...Ethiopia experienced the first Nazi-Fascist aggression in what became the bloody cascade into the Second World War.”(Boswarth) TALK ABOUT HOW INDEPENDENCE IS WHY WE HAVE PUNISHED ETHIOPIA