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This article explores how Ethiopian mainstream media portray the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), perhaps the most relevant materialisation of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)’s developmental state approach. Through critical discourse analysis of a sample of articles from private media outlets from 2013 to 2020, we map the plurality of narratives employed by the media to represent the GERD and the Nile river. We analyse how changes and continuities in these narratives are related to the process of state building in Ethiopia, and to the unfolding of political events in the Easter-Nile basin. We conclude by pointing at how the continuity in the narratives about the GERD resonate with state-building discourses and strategies under different political regimes.

By reviewing and comparing literature on the role of ICTs in statebuilding and peacebuildingin Africa, with a particular focus on neighboring Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, this paperexamines whether the claims of the transformative power of ICTs are backed by evidence andwhether local knowledge – e.g., traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution – is taken intoconsideration by ICT-based initiatives. Several key findings emerged, including: 1) empiricalevidence on the successful use of ICTs to promote peacebuilding and statebuilding is thin; 2)few differences exist between scholarship emanating from the Global North and from Africa;and 3) the literature exhibits a simplistic assumption that ICTs will drive democraticdevelopment without sufficient consideration of how ICTs are actually used by the public., Working paper

Since the Millennium Development Goals first met digital media, initiatives harnessing ICTs to improve health services, empower civil society, enhance emergency response and increase the competitiveness of small producers have proliferated across the Global South. In particular, the widespread adoption of mobile telephony has been increasingly shaping aid policies and coalescing strategies of actors driven by diverse aims: Ngo���s cultivating innovation for social change, businesspeople reaping profits at the bottom of the pyramid, activists seeking greater political accountability and governments (sometime) willing to concede it, but in their own terms. The emphasis on the transformational potential of the ICTs often conceals tensions arising from the encounter of different ways of knowing and of acting and from the emergence of new socio-technical arrangements in which deep-seated dichotomies are challenged: profit/no-profit; surveillance/sousveillance; civil society/uncivil society; formal economy/informal economy. Processes of appropriation and reshaping of technological innovations problematize linear views of technology transfer based on the North-South axis and call upon academics to elaborate new frameworks and methodologies to grasp the ongoing transformations., JUNCO | Journal of UNiversities and international development COoperation, N. 1 (2014): Immaginare culture della cooperazione: le Universit�� in rete per le nuove sfide dello sviluppo - Atti del III Congresso CUCS, Torino 19-21 settembre 2013

Through the lens of China in Africa, this paper explores the transformations in the relationship between the Internet and the state. China’s economic success, impressive growth of Internet users and relative stability have quietly promoted an example of how the Internet can be deployed within the larger political and economic strategies of developing states, moving beyond the democratization paradigm promoted in the West. New evidence suggests that this model is becoming increasingly popular, but it is not clear why and how it is spreading. Through a case study comparison of an emerging democracy, Kenya, and a semiauthoritarian country, Ethiopia, where China has recently increased its involvement in the communications sector, this paper investigates whether and how the ideas of state stability, development and community that characterize the strategies pursued by the Chinese government are influencing and legitimizing the development of a less open model of the Internet. It analyses how new ideas, technologies and norms integrate with existing ones and which factors influence their adoption or rejection. It is based on fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia and in Kenya between 2011 and 2013, where data was collected through mapping Internet related projects involving Chinese companies and authorities, analysing Internet policies and regulations, and interviewing officials in Ministries of Communication, media lawyers, Internet activists, and Chinese employed in the media and telecommunication sector in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs. The Horn of Africa is one of the least connected regions in the world. Nevertheless, digital media play an important social and political role in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia (including South-Central Somalia and the northern self-declared independent Republic of Somaliland). This paper shows how the development of the internet, mobile phones, and other new communication technologies have been shaped by conflict and power struggles in these countries. It addresses some of the puzzles that characterize the media in the region: for example, how similar rates of penetration of media such as the internet and mobile phones have emerged in Somalia, a state which has not had a functioning government for two decades, and in Ethiopia, one of the countries with the most pervasive and centralized political apparatus in Africa. The paper also gives particular attention to the role played by diasporas, which have been highly influential in starting the first websites, blogs and forums covering the politics of the Horn and facilitating debates among Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis living at home or abroad. The paper concludes by discussing the often innovative, but little acknowledged, ways in which digital media have blended with their predecessors to fashion unique hybrid media and communications systems., Mapping Digital Media

In crisis areas, those who control the media hold a keen advantage in terms of disseminating ideas, strategically supplying information, and apportioning blame. Through the analysis of the case of the Darfur conflict, Iginio Gagliardone and Lauren Kogen will illustrate on the one hand how the Sudanese government has tried to use the local media to re-frame the image of the West from provider of help to corruptor of local values before the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces, and on the other how different quantitative and qualitative research methods can be used in repressive situations to understand how messages regarding the conflict are received and interpreted by the population in Darfur. Paper prepared for the Fifth Anniversary Conference of the Department of Media and Communications, ‘Media, Communication & Humanity’, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, 21-23 September 2008.