WIDE ANGLE travels to East Africa to tell the dramatic story of an Ethiopian economist on a mission. Seeking a market-based solution to ending hunger in her famine-plagued country, she creates Ethiopia’s first commodities exchange. What she didn’t count on was a world financial crisis getting in the way.
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Great story – congratulation to Ms Eleni and her team for their vision, hard work and perceverance. As far as I’m concerned, this project is already a success. You go sister- Thanks to Aaron and Wide Angle for the broadcast. The continent needs great stories like these to help reshape the image of Africa
If ms Eleni really want to help Ethiopia,i will explain my disagreement and also real solution to stop the hunger and feed our self, price tagging agent or ECX will be like a broker(delala)but this delala is different than we usually deal,this delala(ECX)have the power to fix the price of commidity trading everyday,it only works for the most democratic industrial nations which the rulling class have no ownership of coroporations and they even can not buy a share after elected to be the rulling elite,but Ethiopia have a rulling class who control and own almost everthing including our freedom and way of life,if ECX have nothing to do with the elites business or if is real independent entity,Elenei will be in prison by now,in the name of ECX scam weyane will have the power to inflate and deflate the price of the dailly market value,weyane will inflate the price of everthing because it is more benfit for them and i don’t have to explain who weyane will deflate the poor farmer,this is scam in a bigger scale because the consumer(ethiopian people)will go poorer and it will bring more hunger and suffering because of the price hike and destroying traditional trading which excisted for centuries,and if Elenei really want to solve our problem she need to convince the unelected elites to use our own god giving resource to build major irrigation systems and build new settlement very close to our major rivers to attract people and create a society to populate the area and in long run hunger will be the thing of the past,Elenei i highly recomand you to go around the world and exposed that we can not use our own resource because of egypt and few powerfull nations who wish our disaster and our current unleacted leaders are dancing with our enemies this include their mentor dictater hosni mubark of egypt,whole bounch of sale outs or paracites,ms Elenei no offence i hope you will find this in a good spirit.
Nobody said the doctor is a bad person,but she is knowingly or unknownigly helping woyane prolong its life and reach its gole to leberate tigray and watch the rest of Ethiopia disintgrate,which makes ECX irelevant and the doctors effort counter prodactive.Since she is a smart women she will a willing partispant for the end result.
great infomercial. I wish pbs would have done its research proir to doing duped by meles cadres. Wish sucess to Eleni if she realy helps the farmeres by telling Meles to spend money in building small dams so we do not have to beg food year to year.
Thank you Eleni Gebre Mehdin for comming back to your country and working hard to develop it. I loved this program. Ethiopia’s next priority should be fixing the energy crisis. Hopefully Ethiopia’s children will come home and fix this. btw my uncle’s song “Shebelew” bole2harlem is nice!
The ECX was hastily forced upon the coffee trade, with disasterous consequences in just one season of operation. It is callous to say “we would rather have one short pain than a long, drawn-out agony” to paraphrase the prime minister. Whose pain? Certainly not the government or the ECX. Yes, it’s clear that by controlling the coffee trade, the government as better control of foreign currency, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. But why institute it in such a disruptive hasty way? Why shut down Dire Dawa auction with such drama? Why suspend exporter licenses? Why disrupt all the transparency and traceability of coffee from the producer to the ultimate buyer, and substitute this mediocre warehousing and grading system for coffee? The ECX did amazing harm to their coffee trade, and for 2010 crop, no meaningful changes have been yet adopted to allow for buyers to make direct purchases from regional private mills, and get exactly the coffee they want (and are willing to pay very good prices for!) ECX is a grain trading platform for simple fungible commodities – a commodity is exchangeable by grade, one lot for another. Coffee is largely NOT such a commodity, except when the buyer is Nestle, Folgers, Kraft etc (and pays the low prices they are willing to bear). The good buyers want to know EXACTLY where their coffee is from, to have pre-arranged for particular lots from particular mills. The ECX has largely made this impossible, and one more season without reforms will be a disaster. I support the reform, and support the idea of the ECX, but they need to act responsibly when toying with so many peoples lives!
PS: I am very happy this piece was produced, to draw attention to this issue, but it is largely a very poor production, a puff piece without any critical content. Aaron Brown is a shlock journalist here, and without any voices of dissent, or any real meaningful argument about the implications of the ECX and it’s too-rapid transition, it’s just a glossy portrait of one person. Showing a few farmers and a walk through the Mercato is not a substitute.
ECX is new and needs some fine-tuning. You can’t expect it to be perfect from day 1. All commondity exchanges went through some adjustments before becoming successful. I highly commend Ms. Elleni and her team for their hard work to launch ECX.
For all the haters,
There is an old saying…”WHAT WE FOCUS ON EXPANDS…” Let them feed on their own negativity and not GIVE THEM ANY ENERGY to keep them going…
Talk about making a difference, this is huge. God bless you Eleni and Team.
If Eleni Gebre Mehdin had set up a free market or brought her poupularity to bear on a fight to establish a free market for the poor farmers I would respect her but as of now she is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by the elite in Ethiopia and as is usual in Africa the ppl who have the least, the poor farmers, they will be the loosers.
Dr. Eleni has done a remarkable job in bringing the new found exchange to Ethiopia. It is indeed a pride for us Ethiopians to see such a tough but yet compassionate woman strive to make change in the country. I see many of us judge her and ask questions about what happens behind the scenes…. well have you ever questioned how the exhange markets in different countries started off…. many still face challenges and this is a new technology and new innovation to the country that has to be accepted by the people and merged with the culture and hence will face the many challenges. Where I might agree with some critiques would be, don’t loose focus of your initial plan and change course and focus on the big ticket items.
I still say Good job to Eleni and thank you PBS for showing this documentary. Many of us have forgotten where we came from, let this be a wake up moment to help our beautiful country.
STOP the politics for a moment and try to see her real passion from her eyes. No matter how much you hate Meles and his government, you should not hate this GREAT story of Dr.Eleni.
Eleni’s work is amazing. I am very inspired by her work. She is making such a great contribution for Ethiopia. As an Ethiopian and a young college student in US, I am inspired by her. Keep up the excellent work.
I was very happy to se Eleni and her group gonig there and making the difference ,its easy to sit and criticize but for one on her level when she couldv’e lived any where she want and be successful and yet go back home ….and not just talk the talk but walk the walk …walk the talk is admirable ..I cant believe people say for money politics,and so on..thats what kept us behind the rest of the world one working and one sitting and bad mouthing .
Eleni my respect for you and for your team,I am so proud some body care! people what we look like here posting infront of the whole world this kind of nonsense about some one who went home from merkato to dre…to gonder in rain sun heat to help change with what they have and what they know .
This is another great documentary by PBS. Thank you. The exchange is a very interesting development indeed. It will be interesting to see its outcome. I wish it the best.
This is a very interesting report. Does anyone know where I can find a spanish version of the episode?
Will this video be available again?
Due to international broadcasting agreements, the episode is only available in the United States.
soooo inspiring this should be aired on pbs again.. shes witty and she has proven many western economists wrong i admire her confidence as a black woman she’s more than an example to many young girls who want to change the world and be at the forefront of REAL change
What a contrast among the Ethiopian population. One Dr works hard to change the fate of Farmers by abandoning her comfortable Job and life in the west to work in the rural parts of Ethiopia and the other Dr. criticise the effort of the hard working Dr. from the comfort of the west without helping his country in any way he can.
As long as we have the type of Drs who works hard for her country, Ethiopia will have hope despite the hard efforts of the other Dr to distract the Path of Ethiopia to development. But the contrast always amazes me.
I would first like to say that elenas motivation and basic idea is great….in theory. However, if any of you commenting on this video have ever studied economic development you would know that an overarching paradigm within the development world, is the role INSTITUTIONS play in development and economic growth.
Institutions include but are not limited to: enforcement of property rights for a broad cross section of society, so that a variety of individuals have incentives to invest and take part in economic life; constraints on the actions of elites, politicians, and other powerful groups, so that these people cannot expropriate the incomes and investments of others or create a highly uneven playing field; some degree of equal opportunity for broad segments of society, so that individuals can make investments, especially in human capital, and participate in productive economic activities, rule of law, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY/Transparency, and the list keep going and going and going. Now if you also did not happen to know there have been countless econometric analysis’ of correlation/regression that have found that the quality of institutions overrides everything else in dictating economic growth and that the quality of institutions (as measured by a composite indicator of a number of elements that capture the protection afforded to property rights as well as the strength of the rule of law, and government transparency) is the only positive and significant determinant of income levels.
Furthermore, political democracy can be thought of as a metainstitution that helps societies make choices about the institutions they want, and as we all know the current political situation in Ethiopia is far from democratic. MAny of you say that politics need to be left out of this discussion, when in fact nothing will ever come from Eleni’s ECX, in terms of amerliorating social disparities and inequality, if the the institutional foundation seen in countries political structure is not changed. Economic Growth does not create good institutions, good institutions create economic growth. Politics can simply not be left out of the picture, ethiopia will have nothing while the autocratic regime continues its perverse practices of control and rent seeking. Do not be fooled as PBS was fooled into thinking this “free” market strategy will do anything positive for this country so long as it’s people are inhibited from having true freedom; the freedom to choose who leads their country, the freedom to choose what institutions are best and fair for their country, and the freedom to live the life they choose.