Tag Archives: ethiopia

Interview in NRC over staatsopbouw in de Hoorn van Afrika

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Interview

‘De liberale democratie die het Westen altijd als panacee voorschrijft, werkt simpelweg vaak niet’

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/05/29/er-zijn-meerdere-vormen-van-bestuur-als-alternatief-van-een-centrale-overheid-a4165826

Robert Kluijver | Expert internationale betrekkingen

In de Hoorn van Afrika verkruimelen staatsstructuren. Het Westen moet steun geven aan plaatselijke zelfhulpinitiatieven van burgers, zegt Robert Kluijver.

De Hoorn van Afrika staat in brand en staatsapparaten verkruimelen. In Somalië ging de centrale staat al ten onder in 1991, in Ethiopië nemen sinds 2020 regio’s het op tegen de centrale autoriteit. En in Soedan raakten de machthebbers vorige maand onderling slaags. Maar de bevolking zit niet bij de pakken neer en werkt aan alternatieve vormen van bestuur. De vraag is hoe om te gaan met dit proces van eroderende staatsstructuren. Misschien is het misplaatst om een sterke centrale regering te willen vestigen en moet juist steun worden gegeven aan plaatselijke zelfhulpinitiatieven van burgers, zoals de verzetsgroepen in Soedan en de lokale vredesinitiatieven in Somalië. Dat betoogt Robert Kluijver, die westerse pogingen bestudeert om liberale democratieën te vestigen in landen die cultureel vaak enorm verschillen.

Wat is er over van de staat in Soedan?

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Contemporary Somali culture

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Over the past year I spent a lot of time researching contemporary Somali culture in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Somaliland, Somali Regional State in Ethiopia, Addis, Nairobi, North-Eastern Provinces of Kenya) for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and a nice little consulting outfit focusing on culture called Aleph Strategies.

Unusually, SDC is planning a 12-year long smart investment into the development of Somali culture, and this report is the baseline study allowing to build a strategy. Donors rarely have the long-term perspective which allows for slow and steady build-up: the contrary of so-called ‘Quick Impact Projects’.

As part of their strategy, SDC agreed that we could prepare and disseminate a public version of the report. It covers the different types of cultural expression, the social and political context of cultural production in each region and it gives examples of current cultural developments and groups.

Here’s a link to the report

Two prints from the Coming Home series by Mustafa Saeed (Hargeisa), 2020: Monument (l) and Vintage Spirit (r). Artist’s website
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Sonic BBQ and the Hunger Kitchen

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These are two projects I worked on with Gilles Stassart when in Ethiopia; they finally blended into one at the Alliance Éthio-Française in Addis Ababa, in a series of performances:

  • VIP dinner with WFP rations, November 2018
  • Sonic Barbecue part 1, November 2018
  • Sonic Barbecue part 2, March 2019

Part 1: The Hunger Kitchen

The Hunger Kitchen idea started with the following observation that I made while working in Somaliland and Somalia: beneficiaries of food aid generally dislike the food rations they receive, and do not know what to do with them. Therefore, they often resell those rations to buy foodstuffs they’re more familiar with.

A vendor selling WFP ‘plumpy sup’ (a variant of plumpy nut) on the Somaliland-Ethiopian border at Tog Wajaale. The price is 1000 Somaliland shilling, about 10c, per ration. I took this picture in 2017
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