Page 439 - Volume 2_CHANGES_merged_with links

Community Economic Development

‘ubuntu’ - 'I Am Because We Are'

As a result, the main sizeable businesses in Aksum are hotels. There are not so many
of them and they tend more to be low or medium rise with only a small amount of rooms.

But they provide some of the few regular wage jobs available other than 'public sector'

ones.
Four years ago, when I was last there, something like 6 of the 10 main hotels had

owners who lived several hundred miles away in Addis Ababa. Local people would refer to
them as running an 'import/export' business in Addis. Having acquired ownership, the hotel

owners saw their financial focus as being in another business in another place. The Aksum

hotel was just a means of securing a regular revenue. In effect, an ATM for cash flow. Not a
place that you would invest in.

Why invest? What extra income would you get?

*****
The UK Government Minister and his 'minder'
ɡ
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Just my luck. I haven't met another m'zuŋ u / faranj in weeks. Then one day when I walk
ɡ
̩
onto the terrace of the one hotel which overlooks the m'zuŋ u / faranj I see two more
̩
ɡ
m'zuŋ u / faranj.
I need to collect a chair so that I can sit at the outermost edge of the hotel’s terrace.
̩
ɡ
And all the chairs are stacked against the restaurant wall. Exactly where the two m'zuŋ u /
faranj are sitting.

The older of the two looks like something out of a Donald McGill 481 seaside postcard

from the 1950s. His head is covered by what might well be a knotted handkerchief. His
face smothered in suntan cream.

As I reach for one of the chairs, I say hello. Then, as people do at chance meetings in
far-off lands, we had some of those polite exchanges. Soon it became the older man was a

relatively newly appointed UK Government Minister. Amongst other things, he had just been

to see a UK Aid funded road.
It was easy to like the minister. Less so his 'minder'. More of that in a minute.

The minister was what you would hope for. Interested in what he was involved in. Keen to

make a difference. Questioning about what he was seeing.
He shared with me his reservations about the UK Aid funded road. I referred him to the

holistic approach to roads in Rwanda, which are also a way of creating local jobs and

income and also stimulating inter-village trade. And I much appreciated the minister's