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by Aaron Maasho
21 March 2007
MEKELE, Ethiopia (AFP) - Twice a week, Taddesse Hidego anxiously waits for salt traders to arrive in his town in northeast Ethiopia to bring supplies to his shop, but this localised arrangement faces a threat.
Here in the heart of the Afar region, the privatization of salt mines that lie in the remote desert threatens the livelihood of impoverished nomads.
For now, columns of traders continue to cross the inhospitable desert twice a week from a salt market in Berhale. The salt itself is mined from fields further north, near the border with Eritrea, over which Ethiopia fought a bloody war in 1998-2000.
The Afar region -- straddling Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti -- has a turbulent history including inter-tribal conflicts, secessionist movements, banditry and kidnappings.
Five European tourists were this month captured there and released nearly two weeks later in Eritrea. Eight of their Ethiopian guides and drivers are still missing in the remote desert region.
The management of the region's main commodity -- salt -- is behind many of the region's disputes.
More than half of the region's salt mines were privatized two years ago, sparking local discontent, and now the government is planning to privatise more.
"Our lives will be very difficult," said Taddesse, almost 70, standing among piles of salt bricks in the shop he has run for decades.
"The prices will rise and, as a result, neither we nor our customers will be able to conduct the trade," he said.
Most people in the Afar region rely on salt for their incomes.
Ethiopia produces an average of 100,000-165,000 tonnes of salt each year and many of the country's salt deposits lie in the scorching hot Danakil Depression, in the Afar region, according to the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines.
The lack of roads in the desert inhibits the movement of nomadic traders during the rainy season, since their routes pass through river beds.
"During the winter season, prices rise from 7.5 birr (0.85 US dollars) for one brick of salt to 15 birr (1.70 US dollars) because of scarcity, but even then our customers are not willing to spend that much," Taddesse said.
But privatisation plans are an even greater concern for local traders like Taddesse.
Two years ago, one of the biggest mines, in Afdera in western Afar, was partially privatised.
Ethiopian corporations took over part of the mine which represents 65 percent of the country's total salt consumption.
The privatisation was blamed for ensuing clashes between disgruntled locals and police.
Government officials played down the incidents and insisted that further privatisations would benefit locals.
"There were few incidents, very minor. I do not see anything that relates it with privatization. They are not even worth mentioning," said an official from the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines, declining to be named.
"The government believes that privatisation would only help the cause of the locals. There is a huge potential for salt and it can only be realized through this, not to mention the economic benefits it would bring to the locals."
But the top regional leader, the Sultan of the Ethiopian Afar, Ali Mirah, blamed the privatisation for the violence.
"Some youths were not happy and they started to create troubles. But with the elders, and through dialogue, we managed to cool the situation down", he said.
Further privatisations risk provoking more violence with locals skeptical that they will reap the benefits, local leaders say.
"For those people, who have been exploiting salt traditionally for thousands of years, the attribution of the mines to some industrial groups represents unfair competition", said Francois Piguet, an Afar regional expert working for the University Institute for Development Studies in Geneva.
Around 1.4 million Afars live in Ethiopia with smaller, but still very significant, Afar communities living as minorities in Eritrea and Djibouti.
Tourists visit the Afar region mainly to see the Danakil Depression, one of the lowest and hottest places on Earth known for its active volcanoes as well as its salt mines.