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> “Ethiopia, barely a country, torn by civil war, without a shred of functional infrastructure anywhere in sight” Look up some pictures of Addis Ababa. It’s pr
by pavlov 3y ago
> “Ethiopia, barely a country, torn by civil war, without a shred of functional infrastructure anywhere in sight”
Look up some pictures of Addis Ababa. It’s probably not what you expect.
The regional differences within Ethiopia are very large. One way to grasp the scale is to look at UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) rankings.
The poorest Ethiopian regions have an HDI score around 0.44 [1] while Addis Ababa reaches 0.74. That’s higher than many Mexican states.
For comparison, Mississippi has a HDI rating of 0.866. By this metric, life in the Ethiopian capital is much closer to living in the poorest American state than to living in other parts of Ethiopia. They have stable power, cars, highways, office towers, malls, and the rest of developed infrastructure.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ethiopian_regions_by_Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ethiopian_regions_by_H...
- boeingUH60 3y agoOf course a country’s capital will always be relatively developed. But Addis Ababa contains less than 5% of Ethiopia’s population…the majority live in horrible conditions.
- pavlov 3y agoEthiopia has a population of 120 million people. Six million of them living in a relatively developed environment seems like pretty clear evidence against the claim that it’s “barely a country” and “without a shred of infrastructure.”