Ahmed won the coveted prize last year largely for forging a complex and difficult peace with neighboring Eritrea.

In doing so he greatly assisted stability in the Horn of Africa, one of the most dangerous hotspots on the planet.

He has yet to match domestically what he has achieved regionally.

In that respect he’s like the 1991 peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

She richly deserved the prize awarded for her doughty resistance to the brutal military regime in Myanmar.

Her star has faded of late because of her stubborn refusal to speak out against what is to all intents and purposes a genocide against the Rohingya people – a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist country.

Ahmed has decided to show his muscle against the minority Tigray people.

Comprising only six percent of Ethiopia 110 million people they dominated business and politics until Ahmed from the majority  Oromo ethnic group took the helm.

The Tigrayan have a special place in Ethiopia’s history.

Legend has it their land bordering Eritrea was the home of the  Queen of Sheba.

A church in Tigray is said to house the Ark of the Covenant.

In 1991, the same year Aung San Suu Kyi won her Nobel Prize the Tigrayan led the fight to topple the cruel Derg regime in Ethiopia.

They have, of late become hugely angry at Ahmed reforms, claiming that they are becoming increasingly marginalized.

They are not the only ethnic group to oppose Ahmed’s reforms.

On November 4, Tigrayan rebels attacked a government military base.

There is no reliable indication of casualties.

Indeed the toll from three weeks of fighting is difficult to ascertain.

It is said to be hundreds, perhaps thousands.

The United Nations says if reports of attacks against civilians are true, it would amount to war crimes.

At least 40 000 Tigrayan have fled into neighboring Sudan to escape the fighting.

The Tigrayan have ratcheted up things with rocket attacks into Eritrea to the north and the Ethiopian province of Amhara to the South.

Ahmed’s assurance that the insurrection would not become a war has proved to be optimistic.

Fearful of a regional conflagration, the United Nations, European Union and African Union have all urgently called for an immediate ceasefire.

Ahmed is having none of it.

He says he will talk to the three AU envoys named to broker a peace.

Indeed he is open to negotiations with anyone except the Tigrayan leadership.

He has surrounded the Tigray capital of Mek’ele and warned residents to save themselves.

His uncompromising call to the Tigray leadership at the weekend was: “You have 72 hours to surrender.” 

He believes that Ethiopia will be pulled apart if he does not completely subdue Tigray. 

Angry and undoubtedly provoked, his bellicose language can be understood.

Nevertheless, it is not the behavior of an internationally acclaimed peacemaker.

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On World Press Freedom day it is apposite that we show concern and solidarity with colleagues under the thumbs and worse of oppressive regimes.

On our continent, I think of those bravely trying to speak truth to power in Eritrea, Rwanda, Morocco and Zimbabwe among others.

We may justifiably take a modest bow when told that we are an integral part of democracy by giving  people the facts that enable them to make crucial decisions about their futures.

It is all very reminiscent of the apartheid days when South Africa’s independent media could explain their mission statement in a paragraph.

It was all about ending one of the greatest evils of the 20th century.

We used to hand off compliments about our courage by saying to our readers and listeners that it was in fact they who were being brave.

We had the information and were able to get it to them by driving a coach and horses through the oppressive machinery of the apartheid regime.

It was the people who had to act on that information.

So important as we liked to think we were, it was about them, not us.

Things have changed dramatically since then.

The democratic government in South Africa has lamentable failed to keep its promises as a liberation movement.

Corruption, greed and inefficiency have enriched a thin strata at the top of society and destined the majority who voted them into power to perpetual suffering.

The independent media, which always was a business operation, has been forced to make deeply compromising choices to secure their very survival.

The economic downturn has put them on the back foot.

The COVID 19 pandemic has already pushed some outlets over the edge and threatens to send others into the precipice.

This is reflected in the coverage of what is unquestionably the story of our generation.

Young and inexperienced journalists, who are the reporters that proprietors can afford, are doing their level best to keep their viewers, listeners and readers abreast of developments.

They cover virtual media briefing and try to make sense of the utterances of ministers who are often as much in the dark as they are.

The analysis, both positive and critical, is largely left to the small band of foreign correspondents.

Surely this is the job of the South African media.

Even with the relaxations that came last Friday, our lockdown is one of the most draconian on the planet.

We make the United Nations roll of shame for excessive action by security forces policing the enforced stay-at-home.

We are also in the top ranks of countries suffering gender-baed-violence during the enforced confinement .

What happened to the moral high ground of 25 years ago?

Ministers have allowed their personal ambition and prejudices to impact on their decisions.

A perfect example is continuing on plainly spurious grounds to deny the sale of tobacco products. This was clearly designed, among other things,  to embarrass President Cyril Ramaphosa who now has to countermand the inveterately anti-smoking Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, whom he has put in charge of this process, if he wants to keep the word he gave last week.

As to the continued alcohol ban, we can be assured of heavy-handed enforcement under Police Minister Bheki Cele.

On World Press Freedom Day surely we should be doing our job by shining  the light on these inequities.

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The World Press Freedom Index puts it top of the continental list and ranks it 23rd in the world.

The Paris based non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders has been publishing its annual world press freedom index for 25 years.

This year the Scandinavian countries Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden are judged to be the freest in the world.

For the eighth successive year Eritrea is at the bottom of the list of 180 countries.

South Africa is in 31st position – the same place it occupied last year.

The organisation calls 2020 a decisive year for the world media and says its difficulties have been exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic.

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Kenyan farmers are posting pictures of swarms like the Biblical plague, so large that they block out the sun.

ends intro

The desert locusts have hit  eight African countries where at least 20 million people are food insecure because of the three deadly ‘C.s’ : conflict, climate change and COVID 19.

In addition to Kenya they include Somalia, Uganda, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Sudan,

They have stayed and produced a new generation because of favorable conditions including above-average rainfall.

Pesticide to eradicate or at least thin them has been blocked by the coronavirus lockdown.

The swarms generally number 150 million per square kilometer, devouring every leaf where they land. Driven by the wind they can travel 150 kilometers a day.

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The US leader is cutting immigration from countries with large Muslim populations to rally his support base as he seeks a second term in the White House.

In 2018, the United States issued nearly  8 000 immigrants visas to Nigerians.

That’s a thing of the past in terms of the extended ban coming into effect this month.

Tanzania, Eritrea, Sudan, are also affected.

Somalia and Chad are on the original list.

In the past Trump has made foul-mouthed references to African countries and complained that Nigerias who arrive in the United States on visas never to back to their huts

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Essential for survival in Africa is being able to take the rough with the smooth.

So, after British Premier Boris Johnson told an investment conference in London that  a post-BREXIT Britain would be able to open its borders to Africa there was hardly a blink about US President  Donald Trump tipping off the Wall Street Journal in Davos that he is about to add four African countries to those subject to US travel bans.

Johnson believes the continent with some of the fastest growing economies in the world should be courted by Britain to make up on business it is losing by leaving the European Union.

Trump, by contrast believes there are redneck American votes to be won by adding Nigeria, Tanzania, Sudan and Eritrea to his list of majority-Muslim countries whose subjects find it increasingly difficult to visit the U.S.

Understandably this dichotomy from two of the continent’s oldest Western friends will drive many Africans even further behind the Great Wall of China.

Beijing’s burgeoning links with Africa are based on non-interference in the affairs of the countries with which they are doing business.

This is an extremely attractive quality among those African leaders who undemocratic, authoritarian and corrupt practices and human rights violations put them beyond the pale of traditional European partners.

A very strong message of support came from two of these this week.

France and German celebrated the anniversary of the signing of bilateral friendship treaties in 1963 and 2019 in an unprecedentedly novel way.

In South Africa, they exchanged ambassadors for the day.

German Ambassador Martin Schäffer and his French counterpart Aurèlien Lechevallier  gave an upbeat  media briefing about swapping desks for the day.

They said it was more than a  symbolic nod to the  reconciliation between the two engines of the European Union.

“Without German French reconciliation there could not have been a united Europe,” asserted Schäfer.

It was also a salutary lesson to African about the lasting value of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Both ambassadors noted this was particularly germane  to  South Africa with its troubled history.

The Franco-German example was particularly relevant at this time of commercial tension between the United State and China.

Africa needed a more robust, more united and stronger Europe to be a reliable partner.

“This is the right moment to show the convergence between Germany and France,” said Lechevallier.

“We are moving together with Africa creating investment and economic opportunities.

“There already are many French and German companies creating tens of thousands of jobs and we want South African companies to invest in France and Germany.

“Schäfer added: “It is a simple fact that Europe – and Germany and France are an integral part of that is by far Africa’s biggest read and investment partner.

“We do not come and make a quick buck.

“We come and we stay and we become corporate citizens.”

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It could spread to at least five other countries in the region.

In one Somali town the residents have started eating the pests.

The locust plague is the worst in a quarter of a century.

It has stripped the cereal grass teff and maize being harvested on 70 000 hectares in Somalia and eastern Ethiopia.

With climatic conditions favourable to their breeding and governments in the region poorly equipped to fight the plague, locusts could spread in to Kenya, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan and South Sudan. 

In the central Somali town of Adado, residents have started eating the locusts after Islamic scholars reportedly declared them Halaal. 

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This is expected to continue into the election campaign he faces in Ethiopia next year.

Domestic rivals of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who equal if not outnumber his supporters in Ethiopia, say his crackdown on opponents is not appropriate for a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

His international critics say the peace he forged with neighboring President Isaias Afwerki has not improved the lives of Eritreans.

And they condemn Ahmed’s use of lethal force against protestors in Somalia and the hard line he takes on access to the Nile where Ethiopia is building a dam that will cut water to Sudan and Egypt downstream.

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The leaves Eritrea as the only African country outside the market of more than 1,2 billion that will be worth nearly $3,5 trillion.

Signing the Free Trade Agreement as he met with his peers in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari says without Nigeria, which is Africa’s largest economy, the trade pact is lacking.

Trading will start a year from now, to give the 54 signatory countries time to grow accustomed to the new order.

The agreement will boost intra-African trade by 60% and will cover the largest free trade area on the planet.

First step will be cutting tariffs from within the block but no exact timeframe has been given for this.  

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The leaders of the 54-nation growing are meeting on a theme of fighting corruption as a sustainable path to Africa’s transformation.

The authoritarian Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El Sisi will start his AU presidency by underlining the good news of a trilateral peace agreement between host country Ethiopia, neighbouring Eritrea and troubled Somalia.

This thanks largely to Ethiopian Prime Minister Aby Ahmed who will play a leading role at the gathering.

El-Sisi goal as African leader is to implement the institutional changes introduced by his predecessor Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

These include an African free trade agreement and measures to make the AU less reliant on foreign development assistance.   

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