Last Friday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that his country will receive $3 billion from the World Bank to help strengthen its economy.
On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund said it had reached a preliminary agreement on a 3-year, 2.9 billion financial package to support Ethiopia’s economic reforms.
According to Prime Minister Ahmed, the money will finance macroeconomic, structure, and sectoral reforms to help “transition Ethiopia to a prosperous and peaceful nation.”
But the most significant obstacle to Ethiopia becoming a “peaceful nation” is Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
In a column at 19FortyFive.com, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, Dr. Michael Rubin chronicles Ahmed’s history of genocide against the people in Ethiopia’s Tigray region which has killed over a half million people, arguing that by giving money to Ethiopia, the World Bank will have blood on its hands.
When he took office in 2018 Ahmed had promised to open Ethiopia’s economy to private investors and modernize banking and telecommunication to provide jobs to the people. Instead, a civil war rages in the Tigray region while tens of thousands of Tigrayan people have starved and millions have become refugees.
The civil war began in November 2020 when Abiy attacked the separatists in Tigray, claiming the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front had committed human rights violations.
Rubin argues that Abiy’s excuses for attacking Tigray were without merit. He writes that Abiy chose military intervention to avoid having to resolve the matter constitutionally and legally.
Rubin contends that the World Bank pouring money into Ethiopia will only result in more deaths and millions more displaced, leading to a flow of refugees that will further destabilize the entire region.
