Ethiopia seems to have forgotten its place in the international community and particularly that in the African Union. In the early days of EPRDF, Meles Zenawi had defended Ethiopia’s rightful place as the seat of the African Union. He said in the successive governments of Ethiopia since the time of the Emperor, through the Derg and the EPRDF, Ethiopia has always championed African Unity and stood in solidarity with Africa. He knew, to be a seat for the African Union, you needed to be in a strong state of peace and security. It seems now Ethiopia doesn’t have a defender of its legitimacy not to bigger claims, such as whether or not to continue to be the African Union seat, but to even a simpler international conference.
The International Telecom Development Conference due to be held in Ethiopia in June 2022 “has been snatched from Ethiopia and given to Rwanda” writes the Ethiopian reporter. The International Telecom Development Conference is organized by an agency of the UN, the International Telecom Association, and is held every four years. Ethiopia was waiting to be the first African country to hold the conference in October 2021. Since 2019, the Ethiopian government has been preparing for the function on the previously set date of October 2021. This was postponed to June 2022 because of the state of emergency announced by the government at that time due to the war in northern Ethiopia, Tigray. At this rate it is doubtable that Addis Ababa will continue to hold the African Union Conferences, as a seat of the African Union, when it can’t assure to hold granted conferences as opposed to, in the words of Meles Zenawi, the successive governments of Ethiopia have solidly done so in the past decades. Instead the residing Ethiopian government is going to sue for the cost of preparation of the conference it has let slip away because of its incompetence.
