Ethiopia – Part One – From Apollo’s Band Aid to Prometheus’s Africa unbound

By Nicholas Jones [originally published on Nkrumah’s Africa]

If one goes by data alone, then many will find themselves in a pit of numbers that have no order or alignment in concordance with natural law. Natural law you say, sounds lofty and idealistic on the surface but on deeper analysis it offers a far more grounded and realistic vision of the future than any set of linear data sets or reactionary opinions can.

One need only look at a few important metrics to realize a somewhat clear vision of the future, both near and far, for natural law has governable principles embedded at its core and these principles/laws essentially act as arbiters of the reality that we live in. They give us the best of all possible worlds reality, the time that is now, the present moment, a moment created by an extraordinary past that heralds unto an even greater future. It is not to say that one knows when these universal laws will ultimately rebirth the standard of governance on our planet, just that it will happen eventually because it is the only truly progressive and open way forward. It is the path of least resistance and all the other nations are in accordance with it, only the hegemon is not. All other false options have been totally exhausted by the hegemon now, as is the necessary nature of empirical entities throughout universal history…

The new universal standard for governance of the new paradigm that is emanating from China goes by this name – The Global Governance Initiative (GGI) and was just recently announced to the world in September 2025 at the SCO!


The Apollonian Standard

According to western media and the ivory tower institutions, such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the World Bank Group and individuals like the currently “popular” economic commentator – Jeffrey Sachs, who just to mention, is doing a face-saving walk back of the ages, from waxing lyrical about Free market/Laissez-Faire intervention in the 90’s, to now rocking up as an “expert” on how China became the worlds largest industrially productive economy and the worlds largest trading partner in just 30 years. If only we could laugh through a keyboard Mr. Sachs.

We find that poor economic policies have played an especially important role in the slow growth, most importantly Africa’s lack of openness to international markets.

To summarise, Africa has performed worse than other developing countries on the following economic policy variables: openness to international trade, average annual inflation (money-printing), and national saving rates.

There is now considerable international evidence that poorer developing countries that followed market-orientated policies in the past 30 years did indeed grow faster and thus catch up with the richer countries.

And what countries was he talking about at the time – Hong Kong, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. I’ll just say the quiet part out loud. All of these nations did not simply develop because of free-market policies but rather because of state intervention on an industrial scale. They lifted the standard of living for their people by increasing the value addition to raw resource extraction. Not simply by allowing corporations from already rich countries to come in and privatise every resource and industrial operation, the way Russia experienced in the very same decade due to Sach’s advised policies…

They also have China to thank since the 80’s onward –

  • Since 1980: China has maintained a high average annual GDP growth rate, reaching 10% between 1978 and 2000 and averaging 9.91% between 1979 and 2010.
  • Between 1980-1991, the average annual growth rate for real GDP in the Asia-Pacific region was 5.5%, compared to a world average of 3%.
  • 1990-1994: High growth rates, reaching around 6-7% average annually.
  • 1995-1999: The period was severely impacted by the Asian Financial Crisis (Western orchestrated), with average GDP growth dropping to approximately 3.5%.
  • 2000-2004: Growth rebounded to an average of 5.1%, (China picks up where it left off).
  • 2005-2009: Average GDP growth was 4.9%.
  • 2008-2010: Despite the Global Financial Crisis, ASEAN’s average growth was a relatively strong average of 4.7% for the entire period. Imagine what it could have been had it not been for the vultures on Wall street and in the city of London Corporation…

So how in fact did these seven countries have such a great experience with the globalist free market when Russia was plunged back into another economic crisis in the same decade? A crisis that was brought about almost single handedly by yourself Mr. Sachs, thanks to your personal and awful intervention at Yeltsin’s invitation and Clinton’s behest.

Of course, you’ll find many self defense articles by the Harvard boy claiming that the “Shock therapy” effect was not his cause and so simply, he’s one or the other, not a very good economist or he is lying. I’ll take both as truths.

To wrap up a depressively redundant and yet important “Free market” history, it failed and Mr. Sachs is a failed talking head that recycles the same rhetoric over and over again. Here he is in 2015 repeating QE as the almighty savior for the world financial crisis, which merely means – WE ARE OUT OF MONEY SO LETS PRINT MORE DEBT FOR MORE SPECULATIVE BEHAVIOUR BECAUSE REAL CREATION AND INVESTMENT IS TOO LONG AND ARDUOUS. What a beautiful and cultured mind you have sir.

– https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/01/can-printing-money-save-global-economy-yes/

There are limits to Growth!…

The Promethean Standard

Lyndon Larouche is a scary name for many western institutions and this likely down to his scientific discoveries on the relationship between the physical world (the Biosphere in Vladmir Vernadsky terms) and the human mind (Noosphere). This negentropic idea led the way for Lyn’s immortally annoying book (if your an oligarch that is) – There are No limits to Growth!

He plucks away at every string to undo decades of Malthusian brainwashing and programming under the guise of protecting mother nature and stopping the climate from changing; an insane idea when one understands that you are living in a living and ever developing universe, not a dead entropic one. Your brain is even naturally resistant to such a morbid idea and that is due to your childish and once innocent imagination, that we can agree may act silly at times, but is essentially optimistic that it can solve a paradox. With the honing of mental skills and understanding certain physical laws, the mind can navigate extraordinarily difficult tasks and lift the collective human condition to a higher level of understanding of the universe through an individual moment of excellence and divine connection with the one, thereafter raising the standard of life for everyone included in that space or nation.

That is an inevitable construct – If I come up with an idea, that I can extrapolate into physical space and it works universally, it will raise the physical condition of humankind universally. Nuclear energy was and is such an idea and is a great example of how Energy as a universal subject is not a dead end, cul-de-sac discussion that only humans can have (Imago viva Dei) but is a subject for humans to ever increase our knowledge and understanding off, so that we can release more and more souls into the domain of scientific and artistic freedom of thought. A true culture, that seeks the betterment not just of the physical space, for that would be ugly without the necessary development of the metaphysical first, well cultured and beautified before action.

There are No limits to Growth!… (Morocco’s newly built TGV Train)

Ethiopia unbound – A Renaissance in the making

  • GERD – The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
  • The Genale Dawa III Hydroelectric project
  • Bishoftu/Abusera International Airport
  • Addis Ababa – Meskel Square City Redevelopment
  • The Adwa Memorial Museum
  • The Lamu Port/Kenya – South Sudan – Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET)
  • The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway
  • The Gode Fertilizer Plant – Built by Aliko Dangote (Nigeria)
  • Rosatom (Russia) + Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation & Technology start exploring the feasibility of an Ethiopia-based Centre for Nuclear Science & Technology. Two Nuclear power plant units each with around 1200 MW capacity too begin construction in 2032-2034.

The above list represents just some of the examples of world class infrastructure that have been or are going to be built in Ethiopia during the past five years or during the coming five. It is a list that shines a beaming light on the not so distant past and the failures of that past. You see, with the final revival of Hamiltonian America under John F Kennedy’s Platonic leadership and its fall from grace thereafter; the Oligarchical -Apollonian – Wall Street – Free market – Adam Smith heathens were waiting in the wings to charge once again into Africa for rampant extortion. From the 1970’s and onwards up until today, Africa has been forced into a neo-colonial debt trap; enslaved by the whims of the U.S Dollar; a currency that has been so awfully managed back home in America that the world now finds itself in the very precarious position of trying to loosen the load without upsetting the tyrant and receiving the mother of all manipulators – the regime change sauce.

Ethiopia has managed to last the length of this dance and fortunately for the 130 million Ethiopian souls, Abiy Ahmed has been in quickstep with the geopolitical world arena. Today, Ethiopia has left the former IMF/World Bank port of poverty and instead, she has charted a course towards China and BRICS+, she has navigated the cold waters of regime change during the Tigray civil war (2020-22) and now finds herself at that new port of the BRICS+, as a major global actor in the world arena.

2025 has heralded in a new dawn for humankind and especially for the continent of Africa we can see the early light glowing on the horizon. The early bird is perfectly aware of what is dawning and has already been chirping the first hour to wake the others but to little avail just yet. The others will come and see eventually but first they need confirmation that the light is real. The data is undeniable so lets get into some of the very important metrics that go someway into showing the current and future path that Ethiopia and many other similarly placed nations are on. To do this we need to take the highest world example in human development terms over the past 50 years and that is most certainly China given the sheer scale of human lives lifted above the world poverty line since 1980 until today in that nation.

The above graph illustrates two significant metrics that play an extraordinarily important role when attempting to forecast the future economy. The Human Population and the density thereof leads to a necessary increase in economic activity within the given space. Due to the intrinsic nature of humankind to work together to create new processes of physical productivity, when we increase the density of economically active humans in an area, the value added to that area is significantly increased in a short period of time and the land/area value increases with that development and increase in people.

The next metric is Energy Production and the access of the population to that energy. This increases the power by which the given population can use to increase economic productivity even further and faster. Access to energy gives many a basic standard of life so that they are better enabled to study higher methods of production,. This in turn can change the standards of living around them for the universal welfare of the community and to increase the potential of that environment too. The increased abundance of energy gives the human being more time for other actions; rather than producing a fire to cook, keep warm and provide light in the dark, that same individual can now put their action toward increasing their potential in all areas of the human domain – science, art, culture, mathematics and history. This will all lead towards a universally developed nation where no single soul is left to rummage through the dust of the earth but rather, every single soul would have his or her eyes fixed firmly on the world around them and the stars and heavens above…

From the graphs above i would like to note an inflection point for both nations based on the simple metrics provided. It would appear that the inflection point for China’s now witnessed historic growth became apparent with the opening up of the PRC under Deng Xiaoping in 1978; with Mao Zedong having already provided the massive foundation of almost 60-70% Energy access and 300% growth in Food production for the nation.

When the PRC was founded in 1949, the grain output was only 113.2 million metric tons, which translated to 104.5 kilograms of grain per capita, providing an inadequate guarantee for people’s basic food needs. Grain production was later improved to a certain extend due to the rural land reform starting in the 1950s. In 1978, grain output reached 304.7 million metric tons. – Source: China.org

With the foundation of basic universal standards of living now in place and even though the percentage of people living in poverty was still very high in rural China, enough good work had been done in the cities and townships to start the process of industrialisation.

And start it did; as we can see above, the rates of poverty in rural China plummeted from 1978 onwards and we have the great Deng Xiaoping to thank for that beautiful economic plan but also we have Mao Zedong to thank for the very difficult and perilous foundation that was built for the PRC. No house, family or nation will have true last independence without that sovereign economic foundation.

Rolling forward to Ethiopia and Abiy Ahmed’s steering of the ship. For this Author, Mr. Ahmed is standing at the same step as Mr. Xiaoping had some decade before him and that step is the step of industrialisation or “opening up” as the Chinese called it at the time. You see when China “opened up”, the western oligarchs were rubbing their hands with glee for it surely meant that it was open season for themselves to come into China and buy up every industry with fanfare. Invite them in, China did; only that China did not let the western oligarchs come in and takeover industries, rather they told the Bank in London and Wall St in New York that we got this and your system of “governance” is not needed; but we will build the new Apple factories, learn from your wonderful hardware and software skills and also make you your cheap iPhones… the rest is history as they say and China has completed her made in China 2025 task. (“Made in China 2025” – a strategic industrial policy launched in 2015 by the Chinese government to transform China’s manufacturing sector from a focus on low-cost goods to one that is dominant in high-tech, innovative industries.)

Back to Ethiopia and where this nation is situated along the path of Hamiltonian/Xiaopingian economic development. I’d like to suggest that Ethiopia has arrived at China’s 1978 moment, in fact even a little past it already, for Ethiopia is fast becoming a multi vectored industrial nation with multiple modes of production.

  • Agriculture – Coffee, Livestock and Crop production.
  • Manufacturing – Textiles, food processing, beverages, cement and leather tanning.
  • Mining -Gold, tantalum, niobium, and gemstones.
  • Construction – Ethiopia’s construction industry is projected to grow by approximately 9% in 2025, following an 8.7% growth in 2024. The sector is also expected to average a 7.7% growth annually between 2026 and 2029.
  • Services, Tourism, Telecommunication and IT, Financial services.

Then when we include the vast development of energy resources to back this quantum leap in industrialisation, we can see a very bright fire being lit in the horn of Africa. Ethiopia has just recently become an energy exporting nation, an achievement that is not just helping the nation but the entire region –

Timeline of electricity exports

  • 2011: Ethiopia began exporting power to Djibouti, enabling Djibouti to import 35 megawatts of electricity.
  • 2011: An interconnection with Sudan was established, with exports beginning in September 2011.
  • November 2022: Ethiopia officially started exporting electricity to Kenya via a new 500-kilovolt power line – 200MW annually.
  • 2024: Ethiopia expanded its energy exports to include Djibouti, Kenya, and Sudan, and plans to add Tanzania in the near future. The initial agreement is for 100MW, but there is potential to increase this to 200MW by 2027. Key players – The deal involves Ethiopia Electric Power (EEP), Tanzania’s Tanesco, and Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited (KETRACO), which will be paid a wheeling fee for using its transmission lines. Status: Trial runs have been successful, and the full-scale operation is being implemented soon.
  • Present day: The country currently exports electricity to Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan.

What we are witnessing above is the creation of an East African energy pool that will secure electricity access for all of the 520 million souls living in the region, thereby unleashing the birth of the next industrial revolution on this planet. Believe it or not, these nations have never had such extensive transport and energy corridors exist between them and are only just now beginning to realize the enormous potential in the development of that infrastructure. With the coming increase in the movement of people and trade, this development will inevitably speed up what is already a very impressive GDP and PPP growth for the region as a whole, but particularly for the big players – Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

To be continued in part two…

The New Bishoftu airport to be built south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To be complete in 2029.
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