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Positive Messaging Helps Revamp Ethiopia's Image


Positive Messaging Transforms Ethiopia's Image
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Positive Messaging Transforms Ethiopia's Image

Not long ago, media reports about Ethiopia focused on war, poverty, famine and drought. Now, the headlines focus more often on the East African nation's fast-growing economy.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Dina Mufti said the Ethiopian government actively contributed to changing its negative reputation.

“It is a phenomenon that we have had once in the past; it's something that we have put behind us effectively," Mufti said. "Everybody works to make sure that that agony won’t recur, won’t come back again.”

And it’s not only the double-digit gross domestic product numbers of the past decade that attract positive headlines. Ethiopia’s role as peace negotiator for regional conflicts, such as in South Sudan, is boosting the country's diplomatic reputation as well.

And the reputation of being a relatively stable country with an emerging economy and a growing middle class is reaping fruits, bringing back home Ethiopians from the diaspora.

Henock Assefa is one of them, running a consultancy firm called Precise Consult. He said foreign firms still need a bit of convincing to believe Ethiopia is also a place for business:

“Investors that have never been to Ethiopia, it takes a while to convince them, because their mindset is that this is a poor country where you go and help people live a better life," he said. "They don’t see it as an opportunity so much.”

But not all lives are improving. The U.N. Development Program estimates that a third of Ethiopians still live in poverty. And rights groups frequently criticize the country's human rights record.

Opposition parties, such as the Blue Party, accuse the government of violating basic democratic principles.

Blue Party spokesman Yonathan Tesfaye said Ethiopia's new and improved image is an illusion fabricated by the authorities.

“The information comes from the statistics agency, and those guys are not to be trusted," he said. "The growth that we are having, or the development or the boom or whatever it is, it's all concentrated in Addis Ababa. If you go to the rural areas, they’re lagging behind. And that’s going to be very problematic in the future.”

Images of poverty have damaged Ethiopia’s reputation for decades. The famine of the early 1980s was made famous through BandAid, a collective of pop music stars raising money by singing “feed the world” while showing images of Ethiopia.

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