ETHIOPIAN PRIME MINISTER WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE FOR PULLING COUNTRY OUT OF CIVIL WAR, ANGERING SUPPORTERS OF GRETA THUNBERG WHO SAY SHE SHOULD HAVE WON
by Kevin Ryan
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the 20-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ahmed beat out Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen whose main accomplishment is lecturing adults on global warming. Thunberg had been considered the favorite to receive the award.
Abiy Ahmed became Ethiopia's Prime Minister in April 2018. For decades, Ethiopia had suffered from war, government oppression, and economic turmoil. The devastation began in 1974, when a communist government came to power, resulting in famine and poverty that killed one million people.
In 1991, the communist regime was finally toppled, but the government that took over also ruled with an iron fist, and failed to liberalize the economy.
In early 2018, under public pressure, the country’s leader dramatically and unexpectedly resigned. Shortly after, Abiy Ahmed became Prime Minister.
A remarkable transformation followed.
Abiy, a devout Christian, set about healing the religious and ethnic divides that had torn the country apart. He released thousands of political prisoners from Ethiopian jails, and announced the large-scale privatization of state-owned enterprises and the liberalization of several key economic sectors long considered off-limits, shifting the country away from the centralized economic rule that had devastated it for decades. State monopolies in telecommunications, aviation, electricity, rail transportation, sugar, industrial parks, hotels, and various manufacturing firms are all being privatized under Abiy.
Today, Ethiopia is the fastest-growing economy in Africa, and there is a “brain gain” occurring as educated Ethiopians who had fled the country return to it.
On top of that, Abiy brought about an end to the 20-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a border conflict that had claimed the lives of 100,000 people.
Despite his successes at dramatically improving the lives of 100,000,000 Ethiopians and bringing peace and stability to a region of Africa that has known little of of it, many people are up in arms this morning that Greta Thunberg was “passed over” for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“How @GretaThunberg did not win the
#NobelPeacePrize is beyond me,” one supporter wrote on Twitter.
“Greta Thunberg Snubbed For Nobel Peace Prize By Committee Run By Norway, One Of The World's Biggest Oil And Natural Gas Exporters” wrote Newsweek.
Thunberg, a young girl who has credited her Asperger’s syndrome with helping her “think outside the box,” has been a highly divisive figure, especially since her recent U.N. speech chastising adults for not doing enough to curtail economic growth in the name of stopping global warming.
SOURCES:
https://www.cnn.com/…/abiy-ahmed-ethiopia-nobel-…/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/…/abiymania-ethiopia-prime-m…/index.html
https://www.newsweek.com/greta-thunberg-snubbed-nobel-peace…
https://people.com/hu…/greta-thunberg-2019-nobel-peace-prize
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/e84e6efc-eba4-11e9-9306-47…
https://twitter.com/thejakeharri…/status/1182589998199136257
