ETHIOPIA; Ethiopia Tourism Revenue More Than Kenya And Tanzania Combined

Ethiopia’s tourism revenue jumped 20.7 percent in 2015 to a record high of $3.5 billion from $2.9 billion in the previous fiscal year lifted by increased number of foreign tourists visiting the East African nation, data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed.

The country’s revenue was more than what it more tourists established neighbours, Kenya and Tanzania, earned last year combined. The two east African neighbours cumulatively earned $2.77 billion.

Kenya’s revenue from its tourism sector dropped about 3 percent in 2015 to $837 million as visitors numbers continued a four year drop due to increased insecurity caused by frequent al Shabaab militants attacks, Reuters reported.

In Tanzania, a reduction in number of visitors last year also saw a fall in foreign exchange earnings from tourism to $1.93 billion, from $2 billion in 2014, The Exchange reported.

The number of visitors to Ethiopia increased by 136,000 to 910,000 in 2015, an estimated 88,000 foreign tourists per month, as the country hosted a number of high profile international business conferences and exhibitions, Ethiosport reported.

Ethiopia, home to nine UNESCO World Heritage sites, wants to become one of the top five tourist destination in Africa by tripling the number of foreign tourists visiting the country to 2.5 million in 2020.

This will make tourism making the leading sector in one of Africa’s fastest growing economies. It had targeted to raise $3.5 billion from the sector this fiscal year.

On average visitors to the country have rose by 12 percent annually over the last decade as the country economic growth picked up and the government introduced incentives to attract investors into the sector.

Ethiopians living in abroad have built more than 200 luxury hotels in the country making it easier for the country to market itself as a upmarket tourist destination.

Tourism contributes about 4.5 percent of the country’s GDP and generates about a million jobs according to the World Bank.

Landlocked Ethiopia does not have any beaches to promote like the other two, but its cultural wealth like its 13th century underground churches of Lalibela, hewn from solid rock and the hill castles of Gondar are its big selling point.

It’s also grown more and more popular for travelers as it’s a safer and affordable destination.

The country has in recent years embarked on massive infrastructure spending that saw Africa’s first light train cutting though the sprawling city of Addis Ababa launched in September.

“What Ethiopia offers to tourists, different from Kenya and Tanzania, is history and culture,” Tony Hickey, an Irish tour operator who first arrived in Ethiopia in 1973, said.

MOZAMBIQUE: Poaching Benefiting North Korea’s Political Leadership

The fatal breach in South Africa’s defence against rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park is Mozambique – and corrupt diplomats are continually widening it.

According to a study just released by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, the country is incapable of disrupting the criminal syndicates that have turned it into a major trans-shipment point for rhino horn, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and dagga. The value of illegal drug trade in Mozambique, it claims, is probably greater than all foreign aid combined.

Global Initiative rhino investigator Julian Rademeyer found that the corruption permeating every level of the Mozambique state and the country’s leaky ports, airports and borders made it a smuggler’s paradise. Of great concern is what he describes as “dodgy diplomats”, particularly North Koreans, using this weakness to smuggle illicit products.

Once hailed as a post-civil war success story, Mozambique, he says, is a country in crisis, paralysed by rampant corruption, a weak judiciary, an ineffectual and criminally compromised police force, and powerful criminal syndicates with tentacles reaching into every level of the state.

Many of Mozambique’s political elite, according to Global Initiative, have grown fat on the proceeds of the patronage networks that grew and festered for a decade under the country’s former president, Armando Guebuza.

“His successor, Filipe Nyusi, is still grappling with Guebuza’s toxic legacy and, more than a year since he took office, has yet to solidify control over the state and Frelimo, the ruling party.”

Added to Mozambique’s problems is its role as a key regional money-laundering hub, a dramatic increase in kidnappings-for-ransom and a series of high profile assassinations that, among others, have claimed the lives of a judge, journalists and, most recently, a prosecutor.

“There is a very real sense of fear within the judiciary and government,” a diplomat based in Maputo told Global Initiative. “People don’t want to rock the boat because they could be next.”

In May this year the country was also rocked by revelations that the government had tried to conceal close to $1.4-billion in hidden loans from donor countries and agencies. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Union (EU), African Development Bank, and several other donors suspended aid “pending a full disclosure and assessment of the facts”.

An IMF official said the concealment “is probably one of the largest cases of the provision of inaccurate data by a government the IMF has seen in an African country in recent times”. Mozambique is heavily dependent on foreign aid.

Conservationists in South Africa and Mozambique say they are encouraged by the work done by Mozambique’s National Agency for Conservation Areas, but are frustrated by the lack of progress from the Mozambican police in apprehending key poaching and trafficking ringleaders.

“Policing is abysmal,” said a Mozambican conservationist. “There’s enough evidence to arrest and prosecute. We know who the key figures are. They are very well known. Despite that, we are not able to arrest any of the poaching gang leaders.”

The Global Initiative report highlights the increasing role and impunity of North Korean diplomats in criminal activities in the southern African region. An example was the arrest, in Maputo in May 2015, of a North Korean diplomat and a Taekwon-Do instructor after 4.5kg of rhino horn and $100,000 was found in their vehicle. Police detained them and impounded the vehicle.

Within hours of learning of the incident, the North Korean ambassador to South Africa, Yong Man-ho, was on a flight from Johannesburg to Maputo. The diplomats were released after paying $30,000 and the vehicle was returned to them.

Diplomatic and government sources in South Africa have made similar claims, telling Global Initiative that the North Korean embassy in Pretoria is “actively involved in smuggling ivory and rhino horn” and may be linked to other illegal activities.

There are also allegations that the North Korean embassy in Addis Ababa is being used as a transit point for the smuggling of illicit wildlife products to China, with embassy officials abusing their diplomatic status to act as couriers.

Since the mid-1970s, North Korea’s involvement in transnational organised crime – particularly drug and cigarette trafficking, weapons smuggling and the production of counterfeit US currency – has grown steadily, peaking during the severe economic crisis and famine the country faced in the early and mid-1990s.

North Korean embassy officials have been implicated in 16 of the 29 smuggling cases involving diplomats that Global Initiative identified in a variety of sources dating from 1986.

A 2007 assessment of illicit activity and smuggling networks concluded that “North Korea possesses sophisticated smuggling capabilities developed from years of transnational criminal activity, driven by economic necessity and justified with ideological veneer”. These illicit activities are said to be controlled by a shadowy agency known as Division 39.

The US described it as “a secretive branch of the government… that provides critical support to [the]North Korean leadership, in part through engaging in illicit economic activities, managing slush funds and generating revenues for the leadership”. In this North Korea’s embassies appear to play a key role.

From the mid-1960 to the late 1990s, according to Global Initiative, Pyongyang poured military and financial resources into Africa, hoping to sway newly independent countries to recognise the North Korean leadership. Embassies were established across the continent but quickly became a financial burden.

After the country defaulted on its international debts in 1975, its embassies were required to “self-fund” their operations, a practice that continues to this day. “Diplomats are expected to earn enough money to supplement their paltry salaries and be able to make sizeable financial contributions to the central government in Pyongyang.” Some embassies even use their vehicles as a private taxi service.

According to Rademeyer, the need to self-fund is part of the reason Korean diplomats have been implicated in crimes ranging from diamond, gold, drug and gun smuggling to trafficking in counterfeit currency, cigarettes, medicines and electronics.

With seeming immunity from prosecution by African states, supporting organised crime seems to have become one of the primary preoccupations of North Korea’s beleaguered embassies.

With most of the planet’s rhinos in Kruger Park, which borders on Mozambique, the future of the species remains extremely tenuous unless South Africa and the world takes action to hold Maputo and North Korea to account.

When police stormed a house in Matola on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital, Maputo, on 12 May 2015, little did they expect to make the largest seizure of ivory and rhino horn in the country’s history.

Packed into shipping crates and piled on the floor were 340 elephant tusks and 65 rhino horns. Together they weighed about 1.3 tonnes, representing the deaths of at least 170 elephants and more than 30 rhinos at the hands of poachers.

Fresh blood spatter and the rank smell of decay indicated that some of the horns were from recent kills. One of the occupants of the house, a Chinese national, was taken into custody. A day later, a second Chinese man was arrested when he offered police investigators a $34,000 bribe to drop the case.

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, praised the “highly significant seizure” and said it hoped the arrests would signal “a new chapter in Mozambique’s history of wildlife trade law enforcement”. Tom Milliken, TRAFFIC’s rhino and elephant programme leader, said it was “now absolutely vital for a full and thorough investigation to be carried out”, adding that “the opportunity must not be squandered”.

But it was squandered. A dozen horns vanished within days of the raid, despite being under guard at the police’s provincial command headquarters. They were replaced with crude replicas made from “bull horns”, according to some reports. The Chinese suspects were released on bail after promising to return to court in November. They disappeared without trace.

AUSTRIA: Migrants Choke Austria As They Head To Germany

Thousands of migrants streamed into Austria Saturday, desperate to travel on to Germany after days of ugly standoffs with authorities in Budapest's train station that made headlines worldwide.

Austria's interior ministry said 6,500 people had crossed into the country since Friday night when Hungary laid on more than 120 buses to ferry the migrants to the Austrian border.

But on Saturday, Hungary's police chief announced the end of the bus transfer, calling it a "one-off."

Columns of refugees set out on foot to walk the 175 kilometres (110 miles) to the German border -- the last phase in a gruelling trek from southeastern to northern Europe.

Hungary's tough line contrasted with a show of solidarity elsewhere in Europe, reflecting divisions over how to handle the continent's biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.

"This has to be an eye opener, how messed-up the situation in Europe is now," Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said on arriving in Luxembourg for European Union (EU) talks dominated by the crisis.

"I hope that this serves as a wake-up call that (the situation) cannot continue."

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila offered to put up refugee families in his country home, in France more than 10,000 people rallied in support of the migrants and in Frankfurt, hundreds of Germans gathered at the city's railway station, ready to welcome refugees with water, food and clothing.

Around 4,300 migrants boarded trains in Salzburg for Germany on Saturday, with no incidents reported, Austrian officials said.

Germany's open policy on asylum has made it a magnet, especially for those fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

The bill for the German government is expected to be around 10 billion euros ($11 billion) this year, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted Berlin could still balance its budget and fulfill its "duty" as a haven.

At the Austria-Hungary border, people arriving off buses, exhausted but happy, walked across the frontier to the town of Nickelsdorf where the Austrian authorities had set up a makeshift shelter.

"My toes hurt, a lot of blood, we walked too much. I want to go to Germany, but then I stop," one 26-year-old Syrian man from Homs, who had both his feet wrapped in thick bandages.

Red Cross medics were on hand at the border to tend to the sick and injured.

"We treated a two-day-old gunshot wound. We're seeing eye injuries caused by stun grenades. We're seeing bruising, including children with bruising," Red Cross spokesman Andreas Zenker said.

Most boarded special buses and trains to Vienna, from where they planned to continue on to Munich, or other German cities, on the last leg of their perilous journey.

In Vienna, they were greeted by a small army of volunteers handing out food, drinks, sanitary products and train tickets.

"After endless examples of shameful treatment by governments of refugees and migrants in Europe, it is a relief to finally see a sliver of humanity," said Amnesty International's Gauri van Gulik.

Hungary is a key point of entry to the EU for migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Asia trekking up through the Balkans.

The perils of their odyssey could be seen on Saturday on the Greek island of Agathonisis where a two-month-old baby died shortly after the family landed there, having sailed from Turkey. Authorities did not immediately provide the cause of death.

It comes just a few days after a three-year-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey, the photographs vividly showing the horrific human cost of the Syrian exodus.

Aylan, his brother and mother died after the boat in which they were crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece capsized.

On the Greek island of Lesbos, riot police used tear gas Saturday night to drive back thousands of migrants who had tried to force through barriers to board a ship chartered to transfer some of them to Athens, police said.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR on Saturday said 366,402 migrants had crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, with 2,800 dying or going missing en route.

Forty-nine percent were escaping Syria's civil war and jihadist groups.

A record 50,000 entered Hungary in August alone.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde said her agency would help as much as it could, but said the effort had to be collective.

"I think it is everybody's concern and everybody's business and it cannot be left to just one country because it happens to be nearby," Lagarde said at a G20 meeting in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

"It requires a coordinated approach and probably an innovative solution as well."

EU foreign ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, discussed proposals for mandatory quotas to resettle 160,000 refugees across member states.

But the 28-nation bloc is divided roughly along east-west lines, with relative newcomers to the EU from the former Soviet bloc taking a harder stance.

"We must not forget that those who are coming in have been brought up under a different religion and represent a profoundly different culture," Hungarian Prime MInister Viktor Orban wrote in a German newspaper this week.

"The majority are not Christians but Muslims. That is an important question because Europe and European culture have Christian roots."