E is for Ethiopia, F is for Filtered (Weekly No. 11)

Ethiopia

• Officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
• The second-most populous nation in Africa, 90 million people
• The tenth-largest by area, with its 1,100,000 km2
• GDP (ppp): $70.9 billion
• GDP Per Capita: $954

According to an annual report by the United Nations, Ethiopia is ranked as the second poorest country in the world with over 90% of its population living in poverty, 39% of its people living on $1.25 a day, and 61.5% of its population deprived of adequate schooling. I was curious to see where the blogosphere would be in a country whose people lived under such unfathomable circumstances and desolate living conditions.

Although there was an Ethiopian presence on Global Voices Online, a rather sparse presence (the last story was from August), I learned jaw-dropping information about the blogosphere in Ethiopia after further researching the web. Not only is Ethiopia one of the poorest countries in the world, but it has the lowest overall teledensity—the number of landline telephones in use for every 100 individuals living within an area—in Africa. With a population of 90 million, there are less than 1 million fixed lines in service, and a little more than 3.3 million mobile subscribers. Even more surprising, the number of Internet users was below 500,000 at the end of 2009. All Internet users in Ethiopia access the World Wide Web through the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC), a state monopoly and sole Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the country.

While researching the web, I was shocked to learn that Google, the site that so many of us, myself included, are so thankful for, was blocked in Ethiopia in 2007; and from what I gathered was blocked for two years until President Obama's administration released its Human Rights reports in February 2009 accusing the Ethiopian government of restricting Internet access to its citizens and of "blocking web sites." This is alarming news because as we all know, Blogger is owned by Google; millions of blogs created with Blogger were unavailable in Ethiopia as a result of this filter and still are. Ethiopian citizens heavily criticize government authorities of censorship, which is still an enormous issue plaguing Ethiopia today.

Ethiopia is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to actively engage in political Internet filtering; authorities feel that many political bloggers who oppose the current regime are a priority in being blocked, and thus blocked. Not only does Ethiopia block Blogger, but they also block CyberEthiopia and Nazret, two extremely popular sites that aggregate Ethiopian news and has space for blogs and forums. Nazret even has a directory that displays Ethiopian blogs and bloggers.

Of the few Ethiopian blogs I did come across, many of them are hosted by Blogger and accessible by me because I live in America. I was shocked to see how much they cover American politics. This political blogger noted the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. This blogger pleads to President Obama that Ethiopians "need him" in a post. These popular bloggers, Enset and Ethio Pundit, are also blocked by the Ethiopian government; both host their blog on Blogger. The general tone of concern for the state of Ethiopia, particularly politically, from bloggers and their interest in foreign affairs was really astounding to me. Although their voices are oppressed and silenced and cannot reach their fellow citizens, they are still passionate about expressing their opinions and actively blog.

My discoveries of the blogosphere and the web in Ethiopia really blow me away. I believe as a human, we all have the right to express ourselves, but I understand that not everyone lives in a country where these rights are respected and honored. How ironic is it that I'm sitting here on my laptop using a wireless router to connect to the Internet, while using Blogger and Google as tools to help me complete an assignment for my studies at Georgetown University. Sounds fancy doesn't it? And a world away from the lives of Ethiopians, whose entire population is banned from the mighty Google, and who have limited access to computers and the Internet, let alone a space to express themselves.

Although there are Ethiopian bloggers, the blogosphere, as I know it, seems to be nonexistent in Ethiopia.

P.S. How strange is it to see this ad on an Ethiopian site while doing research for this blog assignment:

Weird.