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By Tedla Desta - Capital
26 June, 2007
Ethiopia is expected to earn around from 13 - 14 billion birr as a result of its millennium celebration, a study yet unofficial reveled.
According to the unofficial study, the country will incur around 13 to 14 Billion Birr from the visiting tourists, events and celebrations incomes.
Beruk G/ Medhin , Projects, Information, Communications and Promotion Head with the City Government of Addis Ababa Millennium Secretariat quoting the unofficial study said that from the festivities that would occur for the millennium celebration the country is supposed to witness hundreds of thousands visitors.
He said that the City’s Millennium Council is engaged in activities that would build the country’s image and projects that would help the larger society.
Ethiopia has its own calendar which is different from the Gregorian and other calendars of the world. Though it seems that Ethiopian calendar is 7 years late than the Gregorian calendar the fact is that Jesus was born 7 years before the Gregorian calendar makes us unique from the rest of the world. We are going to celebrate our millennium 2000 on the coming September 2007 of the Gregorian calendar.
The millennium celebration activities have commenced with the tree plantation project which will go under the slogan: 2 trees for 2000, where every citizen is to plant two trees each to symbolize double millennium to finally plant 60 million trees through out the country under a national campaign and will be completed within three months with other doings.
According to sources an estimated total cost of 75 million birr is needed for the tree planting campaigns.
One of the main purposes of the Ethiopian Millennium Project is to engage the Ethiopian community at large, educators and policy makers, researchers and learners, in Ethiopia and throughout the world, in an ongoing, mediated discussion regarding Health, Education and the Environment.
So much so that the Ethiopian calendar retains the old Egyptian system whereby the year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each plus one additional month of five days (six days in leap years). Ethiopian dates therefore, fall 7- 8 years behind western dates and have done so since early Christian times. This discrepancy results from differences between the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church as to the date of the creation of the world.