SHOWCASING AN ANCIENT NATION TO THE WORLD
ETHIOPIA’S MILLENNIUM
It was a beautiful sunny day and the place was on a veranda of a coffee
shop at the Hilton Hotel Addis facing a well trimmed garden.
The coffee shop is popular with the Ethiopian Diaspora and foreign
visitors. Ato Seyoum Bereded, Director-General of the Ethiopian
Millennium National Council secretariat, invited us all for coffee.
The discussion started with on the origins of the festival.
SEBLE DEMEKE
It was a beautiful sunny day and the place
was on a veranda of a coffee shop at the
Hilton Hotel Addis facing a well trimmed
garden. The coffee shop is popular with the
Ethiopian Diaspora and foreign visitors. Ato
Seyoum Bereded, Director-General of the
Ethiopian Millennium National Council secretariat,
invited us all for coffee. The discussion
started with on the origins of the festival.
The background of the Millennium is the original calendar of the Coptic religion, which dates back 500 years. Ethiopia is an ancient country, unique in many aspects of life. Part of its uniqueness is having its own calendar, making it the only country to celebrate the millennium 7 years later than the rest of the world. Starting in June 2007, the country commenced celebrating its history, culture, beauty and early civilization. Most of all it celebrates being a cradle of mankind.
The Millennium is the talk of the country (see www.ethiopia2000.com ). The nation is organizing the celebration at all levels of the community. Buildings are going up, new business are being started, roads are either being built or repaired, trees are being planted nationwide, public parks are being opened, and signs, posters, brochures and T-shirts are all covered with encouraging messages for the Millennium. Prominent artists, sports people, students, teachers, women’s organizations, youth associations, labour unions and the military are all making their own contributions to this unique time in history. The media in general, newspapers, radios and TV, have devoted columns and space to it: one gets the impression that each is competing to be the best publicist for the event.
In May 2005 (1997 by the Ethiopian calendar), the Council of Ministers set out regulations to establish the Millennium Council and its secretariat. For 5 years Ato Seyoum was in charge of the programme. His experience about how to organize such a big festival comes from his participation in the 2000 Millennium in Britain. In London he was involved in the area of crisis management as an IT expert. He made up his mind to do a similar celebration for the Ethiopian Millennium, which would take place 7 years later. Seyoum Bereded started taking notes and made comparisons for the millennium. He made it a point to attract the Ethiopian Diaspora and others to come to Ethiopia to participate at the celebrations. The government realized a good opportunity and he was asked to head the programme.
A big festival
The government gave an initial $2.6 million
to come up with a strategic plan document.
The programme breaks down into two areas:
festivities, about 25% of the budget, and
legacy projects, 75+% of these monies.
The festivity part will be celebrated across the nation for 10 days with participation from artists from the Americas, Africa and the rest of the world. This will be picked up by satellite and shown to other regions in the country, while Addis Ababa will also be looking at festivities in the other regions. African Heads of State adopted a resolution to denote this as an African event. The United Nations General Assembly also marked 2007 as an Ethiopian Millennium year.
There will be activities such as walks (2,000 kilometres total of walks), and the Ethiopian football federation will call on teams from each continent to play in Addis Ababa. An African athletics competition is also set. Other African events will follow, the most important being Africa Day, next 25 May, when 53 countries have been invited by Ethiopia.
Operations require $1.2 million for costs. (Organizations that have sponsored the millennium include the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, the Ethiopian Electric Light Authority, Ethiopian Shipping Lines, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and the National Bank of Ethiopia.)
The following UN families have also sponsored the event: UNICEF, UNEP and WFP. To date, one French media organization, one Japanese and the BBC will be reporting directly. Negotiations are also taking place with CNN to cover the breaking news from Ethiopia.
Legacy projects
The biggest and the most important legacy
events are “2 trees for 2000”, also known as
“(2/2)”. This means that each individual,
Ethiopians and everyone living in the country,
will plant 2 trees and will take care of it
as their own. Since the Millennium was
launched, we are supposed to have planted
60 million trees. The regions will prepare
the seedlings. The sustainability of the
planted trees is guaranteed by individuals, as
their own responsibility.
At the village level, familiar local institutions are used for assisting in the tree plantation programme. These include clergy from the Coptic Orthodox Church, who will go around the nation and pass along the message. On Friday every Mosque will be informed. Saturday will be indigenous traditional believers and Sunday will be for the Christians. The military, the police force and schools will be mobilized to distribute trees. The philosophy is that Ethiopia still suffers image problems because of droughts, therefore the nation is determined to face the challenge.
Other projects include the Millennium Park, a space to show artifacts and styles from the different regions; the School Foundation programme for underprivileged students, with street children helping to manage it; a running competition for kids planned in cooperation with Haile Gebre Selassie, the greatest long-distance runner of all time. Mean while, listros (shoeshine boys), who dream of having their own box, will benefit from a project offering one box per listro. This will bring together all the street kids who have no jobs. The list of projects – statues, guestbooks, concerts – is impressive.
An invitation
The Millennium’s Director General Siyoum
Bereded invites UN Special readers, especially
as Ethiopia is one of the founding members
of the United Nations and the UN/ECA
regional office is here, to celebrate with us.
We invite the world to come be part of this
Ethiopian celebration of its Millennium.
Seble Demeke is a member of the UN Special editorial board, and a former UNOG staff member
