Jimma Times

Her initiative has affected Ethiopians nationwide and her ambition has attracted the attention of the world community and western media, including being invited to speak at the renowned T.E.D. conference, where "the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers" give short and concise speeches. During her inspiring speech, Dr. Eleni Zaude Gabre Medhin quoted the Nobel Prize in Economics winning Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. "Famine is not so much about the availablity of food supply, but the ability to acquire or entitle oneself to that food thru the market," declared the Cornell University (BA) and Stanford University (PhD) graduate Dr Eleni. Since that time, the founder and CEO of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) has gone thru the ups and downs of her journey to leading Ethiopia's market revolution. If Dr. Eleni's ECX, the first of its kind in Africa, continues to succeed in transforming Ethiopia's economy, this honor would be only the first of many more honors the great economist would receive.

The mostly UN and World Bank funded ECX project has designed electronic screens for around 20 Ethiopian market towns nationwide, which display real-time prices that helps farmers decide when to sell. This helps farmers get more money for their produce and assists them "think national and global instead of local" said Dr. Eleni, as well as ECX benefiting farmers and buyers with standardized grading and certification of crops. The transparency, efficiency and security brought to the market by ECX has already increased agricultural productivity.

BBC Video on ECX



The former New York resident Dr. Eleni has surrounded herself with some of the brightest minds from the Ethiopian Diaspora, including accomplished Ethiopians Ahadu Woubshet, former senior official at US based Fannie Mae Corporation, Bemnet Aschenaki, investment banker and trading at New York based Merrill Lynch and Solomon Edossa, who worked for US based IT giants Accenture and EDS. To match her own extensive experiences working for the World Bank, the International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington), and United Nations (Geneva), Dr. Eleni brought Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian experts from around the world to establish her organization.

However, the road has not always been smooth for ECX. For some doubtful Ethiopians, ECX has played a negative role that has affected the lives of many Ethiopians, particularly by starting a new coffee auction system from scratch. Critics say even if Dr. Eleni established ECX with good intentions, the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and its notorious enterprises are trying to hijack ECX and exploit it for their own benefit. Still, after a rocky first few months when coffee export decreased, ECX has rebounded during this previous year and has began to deliver its promises for the first time.

"The dawn of modern trading here (in Ethiopia) comes 160 years after the Chicago Board of Trade transformed American agriculture by giving farmers more choice in how and when they market their crops" said the New York based Wall Street Journal newspaper.

• Visionary, Humble leader

"This is not Eleni's project, it is the country's project" she said when she began the ECX. An unselfish leader who thinks long-term and is known to have deep love of her country, Dr. Eleni told Jimma Times (JT) that her organization has an agenda for future generations of Ethiopia.

"We are motivated by our passion and conviction that what we are doing is a huge, indeed transformational, agenda for Ethiopia’s future generations. Our vision is to work on behalf of the voiceless" said Dr. Eleni during her interview with JT.

When the American TV service PBS, the most prominent provider of programming to U.S. public television stations, did a documentary on her ECX project, Dr. Eleni declared "i am not the subject of this documentary, i think it is the idea and the dream behind the ECX that is the subject of the documentary."

• Fighting hunger

Even though ECX is proving to be important for small farmers nationwide, its impact would be more felt in drought prone areas where the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has struggled to feed people. Earlier this past year, the World Food Program (WFP ) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) to take part in its auctions. Using the ECX, instead of buying more expensive grain from abroad and having high transportation costs, the WFP reduces its general expenses and feeds more people while supporting local farmers.

Much has been talked about the "food aid industry" and how western companies benefit by perpetuating food aid dependency in third world countries like Ethiopia. In June, Dr. Eleni advised the WFP management to remove the corrupt WFP middlemen whom she called "WFP millionaires," and instead, help Ethiopian farmers benefit from the 137 million dollar programme.

• Controversy

While Dr. Eleni's ECX is considered a historical and vital project for the country that needed fundamental change of its market system, some political critics questioned its motive. Opposition politicians quickly associated the ECX with an undemocratic government that ECX can not function without, despite knowing that all similar institutions around the world (including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and New York Stock Exchange ) could not survive without some level of government cooperation and assistance. Therefore Dr. Eleni and ECX began to sink into a wave of controversy. For its critics, ECX became guilty of being born in the wrong time, during the wrong government, wrong era.

The fact that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi publicly and repeatedly supported the project made it even more suspicious for some people in a country where trust of authorities is already extremely low. Out of context news reports and soundbites of Meles Zenawi saying he will cut off the hands of illegal traders did not help either.

When accused of becoming a monopoly that will serve government affiliated companies as the only exchange, ECX's Dr.Eleni quickly responded with examples of commodity and stock exchanges around the world and what measures they took in order to reflect the true market supply and demand.  "To be a truly representative market price, the trading system needs a critical mass of sellers and buyers, otherwise the Exchange’s price is meaningless as an indicator of market supply and demand" and for this reason, Eleni reminded her critics that "all of the world’s exchanges essentially 'force' this critical mass of trading in a commodity or stock into a single trading system."

• "A kaleidoscope of identities"

Near the beginning of the Ethiopian 2002 year, Dr. Eleni sent letters to Ethiopian media outlets to answer questions from the public about her initiative and to stop destructive rumors about her organization's goals as well as, surprisingly, about her ethnic identity. Even though her ethnic background should not matter or as she put it herself, should be "irrelevant to my choice or ability to lead an initiative to bring a better marketing system for all Ethiopians," the reality on the ground in Ethiopia still forced her to respond about ethnicity.

Dr. Eleni (who speaks four languages) thus started her family story by saying "when the unnecessary gets in the way of the important, however unpleasant it may be, it must be faced," and begun to tell about her complex and intertwined multi-ethnic Ethiopian identity which included that of ethnic Gurage, Wolaita and Amhara ancestry. Unlike her government friends from Addis Ababa who rather not engage with or reach out to the public, Dr.Eleni continued to communicate with her critics by responding with her articles titled "Let’s be like the market," "Will The Real Poor Farmer Rise," " Songs of Freedom, Stories of Change" and "An idea whose time has come."

However, the identity of millions of multi-ethnic Ethiopians like that of Dr. Eleni and pro-democracy icon Judge Birtukan Mideksa have been de facto outlawed under the ethnic federalism policy of the current government. Naive to the fact that Ethiopia's current government has institutionalized ethnicity, Dr. Eleni, who has not lived in Ethiopia since she was 4 years old, continued to describe her mixed ancestry with pride, including about her patriotic great grandmother, a rare female soldier who defended Ethiopia from Italian invaders. "In my extended family" Eleni continued, "my aunt married a man from Wollega and my uncle married a woman from Asmara, my great aunt married into the Abba Jifar clan in Jimma, and the list goes on. So the Ethiopia I knew growing up with my cousins was a kaleidoscope of identities bound together in one Ethiopia."

Though her ethnicity mattered in Ethiopia's political circles, for the small farmers and traders however, they only cared about what the ECX can do to change their daily livelihood.

• "Financial revolution"

While the ECX has been a revolution in itself, various techniques the company uses during its operations have been new technologies for the poor country and have made ECX a financial insititution in its own right. One of these being a new payment system the ECX established with electronic data signature in which anybody with a bank account will be paid a few hours after trade "anywhere in the country." ECX has been transacting millions and millions of birr this way. This contrasts with the backward banking system serving farmers in Ethiopia that compares hand signatures face to face in order to hand over money physically.

By overhauling and modernizing the traditional marketing system in Ethiopia, ECX today continues to deliver its promise of becoming "a marketplace, where buyers and sellers come together to trade, assured of quality, delivery and payment. " Even to her critics, Eleni has earned the benefit of the doubt. "There will be some winners and some losers when change comes," she said in her interview with Jimma Times. But "even the early critics are now adapting and starting to benefit as well" added Dr. Eleni.



[WATCH FULL DOCUMENTARY AT PBS]



Dr. Eleni, who wanted to make the Addis Ababa based ECX "a trading platform for a pan-African market in agricultural commodities," was also recently selected as the Chairwoman of the African Commodity Exchanges Forum (ACEF). In addition to beginning a revolution in Ethiopia's agriculture - the backbone of country's economy in which over 80% of Ethiopians depend on for their livelihood - ECX has also impacted several linked industries in Ethiopia, including financial services, transport and logistics. Her achievements however will not be measured just with ECX and ACEF, as it goes beyond herself, for her dream and boldness is motivating Ethiopians studying in the universities of America, Europe, Australia and globally; both the young and the old who want to help their native land in any way they can. Dr. Eleni has helped many Ethiopians see the promise in the otherwise still uncertain future.

A visionary, patriotic and charismatic Ethiopian economist, Dr. Eleni has inspired many Ethiopians worldwide, initiated a major transformation of Ethiopia's economy and brought new hope to a nation.

RELATED LINKS

- Jimma Times Interview with ECX CEO Dr. Eleni

- United Nations WFP signs with ECX

- Ethiopian Person of the Year Time line

- Runnerup Ethiopian Person of the Year 2002 (ET calendar)

- Let’s be like the market – Eleni Gebre-Medhin