A few hours ago, the maiden flight of the Long March 8 was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site. One of the payloads on the rocket is Ethiopia’s second satellite, ET-SMART-RSS. Other payloads include Apocalypse constellation and Zhixing-1A.
ET-SMART-RSS, initially scheduled for October 2020 was postponed to 20 December. Due to unfavourable weather condition, the satellite was launched today. Built and launched with the help of China, the satellite is a 6U Earth observation nanosatellite with high resolution. The primary mission of the satellite program is to expose Ethiopian engineers and scientists to hands-on experience and demonstrate the Institute’s capability in integrating nanosatellite subsystems locally.
The Long March 8 carrier rocket adopts a core-stage bundled configuration with 2 boosters, with a total length of about 50.3 meters, a take-off mass of about 356 tons, a take-off thrust of about 480 tons, and a 700-kilometre sun-synchronous orbit with a carrying capacity of no less than 4.5 tons. The core structure of the rocket has a primary diameter of 3.35 meters, a secondary core diameter of 3 meters, a booster diameter of 2.25 meters, and a fairing diameter of 4.2 meters. The core level of the power system is equipped with two 120-ton YF-100 liquid oxygen kerosene engines, the second level of the core is equipped with two 8-ton YF-75 hydrogen-oxygen engines, and the booster is equipped with one 120-ton YF-100 liquid oxygen kerosene. engine.
In December 2019, Ethiopia launched its first satellite named ETRSS-1, a 70kg multi-spectral remote sensing satellite from China onboard a Chinese Long March 4B rocket. The China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) developed the satellite in collaboration with 21 Ethiopian technicians, trained on the project as part of the technology-transfer agreement between Beijing and Addis Ababa. The Chinese government provided 75% of the total cost of the ETRSS-1 satellite, worth about USD 6 million, and helped to launch the satellite.
ET-SMART-RSS marks another worthwhile achievement in Ethiopia’s space ambitions as the East African nation conceives a longterm plan of having indigenous capabilities in the development and operation of satellite systems. The construction of satellite manufacturing, assembly, integration and testing (MAIT) facilities in Addis Ababa is the works following the agreement signed by the Ethiopian government and French space company ArianeGroup with funding from the European Investment Bank.
This is the first time an African country will launch a satellite in 2020 and brings the total number of satellites launched by African countries to 42.
Domestic conflict threatens to wreck any chance of peaceful democratic transition promised by Nobel Peace Prize winner
By David Pilling and Andres Schipani.
“War is the epitome of hell,” Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, told an audience in Oslo last December on accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating peace with the neighbouring country of Eritrea. Now Mr Abiy is at war again — this time with his own people.
In the early hours of Wednesday, after months of escalating tension, Ethiopia’s prime minister ordered troops into the restive northern region of Tigray after what he said had been an attack by Tigrayan soldiers on a federal army base.
Phone and internet lines to Tigray were cut and a six-month state of emergency declared, effectively sealing off the region. Both sides have reported casualties amid heavy fighting.
The conflict in a part of the country known for its hardened fighters and resistance to central authority threatens to wreck any chance of the peaceful democratic transition promised by Mr Abiy, prime minister since 2018. That in turn could derail one of Africa’s most promising economic success stories after years of strong growth and development in a country of 110m people, the continent’s second most populous.
For Mr Abiy, at 44 Africa’s youngest leader, the declaration of hostilities is likely to further undermine, if not destroy, his fading reputation as a leader who can unite Ethiopia under the banner of liberal democracy. “A war against the member of the federation is an epic tragedy,” said Tsedale Lemma, editor in chief of Addis Standard, an independent website, in a tweet. “Abiy’s failed nation-building project has now morphed into a civil war.”
The stand-off with Tigray began almost as soon as Mr Abiy, who comes from the larger region of Oromia, became prime minister in April 2018. Mr Abiy purged many Tigrayans from senior positions in the military, security services and politics, ending nearly 30 years of dominance by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front.
After years steering Ethiopia’s economic revival under the visionary, if authoritarian, leadership of the late Meles Zenawi, a former prime minister, senior TPLF members returned to Tigray to lick their wounds. “It’s very clear it was anti-Tigray,” Debretsion Gebremichael, chairman of the TPLF, told the Financial Times from his home base last year, referring to Mr Abiy’s ousting of senior Tigrayans, including from business.
This September, in defiance of a postponement of national elections blamed on Covid-19, the TPLF organised and won a regional poll. Mr Abiy’s government responded by cutting federal funding to a government it said was no longer legitimate.
This week Mr Abiy, a former security chief, made the case that he had no option but to act in the face of repeated provocation. “The TPLF has been arming and organising irregular militias,” he said in a statement, alleging that it had crossed a red line by attempting to steal artillery and military equipment from a national army base.
Christopher Clapham, an expert on Ethiopia at Cambridge university, said it was impossible to verify whether such an attack had taken place. If it had, he said, Mr Abiy would have had little option but to respond.
But Tigray was only one of Mr Abiy’s problems, Prof Clapham said. “Where Abiy has failed is in putting together a coalition of political forces including in Oromia and Amhara which could have formed the stable base for a government,” he said, referring to the two most populous regions. “He seems to have gone pretty much alone.”
Amhara, a traditional seat of Ethiopian power, has come to rhetorical blows with Tigray over old land disputes and there have been unconfirmed reports this week of fighting on the border. In Oromia, whose people make up more than a third of Ethiopia’s population, some resent what they regard as Mr Abiy’s betrayal of their interests and the arrest, on terrorism charges, of Jawar Mohammed, a popular Oromo leader.
In Tigray, Mr Abiy is accused of trampling on regional rights, enshrined in the constitution, under the guise of national unity.
“The whole idea of this pan-Ethiopianism is bullshit,” said Getachew Reda, an executive committee member of the TPLF, speaking before this week’s fighting. “It presupposes dismantling the federal amendment which we have fought bitterly for,” he added, referring to the 1995 constitution that devolved power to ethnically defined regions.
In his stand-off with Tigray, Mr Abiy had “shown his true colours”, Mr Getachew added. “He has never been interested in the kind of fairy tale democratic reforms the west is very much enamoured with.”
Mr Abiy, a devout Pentecostalist, was born in a small town in Oromia, the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother. He speaks Amharic and Tigrinya in addition to Oromo. His PhD thesis in conflict resolution has helped shape his ideas about forging national unity from ethnic diversity.
But a senior foreign diplomat said TPLF defiance had posed an existential threat to his vision of a unified Ethiopia. “Abiy has a messiah view of himself,” he said. “He genuinely wants to change the country and he’s obsessed with legacy.”
Not everyone is disenchanted with Mr Abiy, whose concept of a unified Ethiopian state still appeals to many. “Abiy wants a united country for all of us,” said Mesfin Worku, who sells maps of Ethiopia in central Addis Ababa. “And that is a very good thing for all of us Ethiopians.”
Prof Clapham said Mr Abiy lacked a willingness to compromise that would be necessary to translate his grand vision of pan-Ethiopian unity into reality. “The hope was two years ago that the miraculous succession of an Oromo leader would be the basis to create a political settlement,” he said. “But it just hasn’t happened.”
But a senior foreign diplomat said TPLF defiance had posed an existential threat to his vision of a unified Ethiopia. “Abiy has a messiah view of himself,” he said. “He genuinely wants to change the country and he’s obsessed with legacy.”
Not everyone is disenchanted with Mr Abiy, whose concept of a unified Ethiopian state still appeals to many. “Abiy wants a united country for all of us,” said Mesfin Worku, who sells maps of Ethiopia in central Addis Ababa. “And that is a very good thing for all of us Ethiopians.”
Prof Clapham said Mr Abiy lacked a willingness to compromise that would be necessary to translate his grand vision of pan-Ethiopian unity into reality. “The hope was two years ago that the miraculous succession of an Oromo leader would be the basis to create a political settlement,” he said. “But it just hasn’t happened.”
