SA AND ETHIOPIA
LUMKILE MONDI: Tale of two countries on divergent paths
Pumla Dineo Gqola’s latest book, Reflecting the Rogue, contains an essay she wrote in 2014 that reimagines African unity in Robert Sobukwe terms by thinking of ours as "an era that is pregnant with untold possibilities for good and evil" — brutality closing in, but a time that also offers possibilities for imagining new pathways to freedom. My own reimagination took me to pathways that can be reflected in a tale of two countries: one with a possibility of good and the other of evil. The leaders of both countries have assumed leadership in 2018, one in the horn of Africa and the other on the southern tip of the continent. Abiy Ahmed was appointed as the prime minister of Ethiopia in February, making him, at the age of 42, Africa’s youngest head of state. Ethiopia’s huge population of about 102-million makes it the second most populous nation in Africa, after Nigeria. Although it is the fastest growing economy in the region, it is also one of the poorest, with a per-capita income of $...
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