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Publications

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Publication - December 23, 2021

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Media Narratives and State Building

By Yeshiwas Degu Belay, Emanuele Fantini, Iginio Gagliardone

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..

Belay, Yeshiwas Degu, Emanuele Fantini, and Iginio Gagliardone. “The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Media Narratives and State Building.” Afriche e Orienti 2 (2020).
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Publication - February 23, 2021

Searching for the Sources of the Nile through a podcast: what did we find?

By Emanuele Fantini and Emilie Buist

Podcasts are gaining traction in academic practice and debates. This article reflects on the experience of “The Sources of the Nile”, a podcast on media, science, and water diplomacy. By presenting the podcast structure and production process, we sketch a “podcast pathway” that might serve as a guide for others. We share the results of a survey conducted among our listeners and we review the episodes discussing what we learned on distributions of voice, knowledge and water in the Nile basin. We conclude by reflecting on the connection between the technical production of the podcast and the type of knowledge that it generates, and by pointing at the importance of placing the podcast within a broader community of interests and practice.

Fantini, Emanuele, and Emilie Buist. “Searching for the Sources of the Nile through a podcast: what did we find?.” Journal of Science Communication 20, no. 2 (2021): N01.
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Publication - January 10, 2021

Water conflicts and cooperation: a media handbook

By Rasha Dewedar (ed.)

This handbook is for journalists, researchers and policy makers that are interested in working on science communication for water peace and cooperation and that are searching for ideas and inspiration. It features descriptions and reflections of the activities (action research, training modules, joint workshops, reporting grants, podcast, online photo campaign…) implemented by Open Water Diplomacy project in the Nile basin, and in the new international basins identified under the top-up activities on capacity development, as well as activities in the field of media and water diplomacy implemented by other actors. It will be an online open access repository of case studies and best practices in the field of journalism and science communication for water peace and cooperation.

Dewedar, Rasha, ed. Water conflicts and cooperation: a media handbook. CABI, 2021.
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Publication - December 19, 2019

The political morphology of drainage—How gully formation links to State formation in the Choke Mountains of Ethiopia

By Hermen Smit, Rahel Muche, Rhodante Ahlers, and Pieter van der Zaag.
To understand why soil erosion is persistent despite three decades of massive investments in soil conservation, this paper explores how drainage and soil conservation change a hill slope in the Choke Mountains. By paying close attention to the practices that reshape the hill, we account for the active roles of people and material flows in shaping their identities, forms, and power relations. Social relations can be read in the landscape as their material outcomes are literally scoured into the hill slope. Such a material reading of Ethiopia’s “developmental state” reveals three issues: First, drainage and soil conservation practices are configured by particular historical regimes of land distribution and rent appropriation. Second, the power of the Ethiopian government’s model of the developmental state derives from the exploitation of this configuration by a new coalition of landholders and government officials. Government officials mobilize landholders to construct terraces in exchange for government support in conflicts over land and input distribution. When the terraces create obstructions that can trigger flooding, landowners convert them into drains and divert drainage flows to plots sharecropped by landless families. Consequently, the yearly mobilization for terrace construction does not halt soil erosion but further aggravates it. This continues because the performance of this yearly ritual affirms the authority of landholders and government agents. Third, landless families which fail to live up to the model of the “farmer interested in soil conservation” have created a competing “trader model” with its own institutions. The denial of their non-farmer identities by landholders and officials fuels generational conflicts over drainage which deepen the fractures in the hill and pose a challenge to government authority. Land degradation thus embodies both the powers and the limits of the developmental state.
Smit, Hermen, Rahel Muche, Rhodante Ahlers, and Pieter van der Zaag. “The political morphology of drainage—How gully formation links to State formation in the Choke Mountains of Ethiopia.” World Development 98 (2017): 231-244.
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