Awra Amba

[Safferz]

Take the way the village of Awra Amba is being discussed by foreigners interested in portraying it as some sort of secular utopia (people living there do practice religion, it's just that the hierarchical forms practiced in Habesha society - institutions historically tied up with Ethiopia's feudal system - are seen as antithetical to progress) with a huge grain of salt. But it's an interesting case study for development in the region, and offers some important lessons.

 

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"Ethiopian Zumra Nuru founded Awra Amba on an alternative cultural model, built on the principles of gender and social equality, the absence of organized religion, and the importance of hard work.

 

The model has paid off: Some 40 years after its founding in 1972, literacy levels, life expectancy, gender equality and economic growth in the village far exceed Ethiopia’s national averages.

 

[...] But while rethinking norms has brought the village both accolades and success, it has also attracted a fair share of trouble.

 

Ethiopia is a highly traditional country, where many communities follow strict religious and cultural mores. Since day one, the Awra Amba project, which lies a nine-hour drive northwest of Addis Ababa, has met with hostility and violent attack from the conservative Christian and Muslim communities that surround it.

 

Awra Amba’s model is highly egalitarian. Most of the village’s labor force — in the early days, concentrated in agriculture — works communally, so money is plowed back into village projects and the profits split evenly. The village is run through a series of popular committees where majorities agree on all bylaws and village decisions.

 

[...] Limited land forced the returned people of Awra Amba to diversify the village economy beyond its own small borders. They got into textiles, milling, trade, and tourism. Today in Awra Amba, a clutch of wattle and daub houses sits beside shared buildings such as weaving workshops, a grinding mill, a tourist hostel, and a school. The variety of industries has been key to its development success.

 

Over the last two decades, the combination of Awra Amba’s progressive values with its new market savvy has made it a model of progress in a nation that is currently ranked at the bottom of the UNDP Human Development Index.

 

Founder Nuru himself grew up a Muslim in the traditional Amhara region of northern Ethiopia. But the customs never felt right to him: he was sent to work in the fields instead of to school; his mother had to work at home more than his father, yet his father was the boss of the house; and religion came between Christians and Muslims.

 

By the time he was an adult, he could see that many of these social norms were holding back economic development, too.

 

“They always work and that helped them a lot to get out of poverty, and now we observe that they are really improving,” said Ashenafi Alemu, a researcher in the sociology department of Ethiopia’s University of Gonder.

 

Through Awra Amba has many local critics, it’s also attracting a growing number of fans, with more Ethiopians intrigued by the project. New communities inspired by the Awra Amba model have already sprouted up elsewhere in the country. But their growth is spontaneous and erratic, with no input from Nuru or his community.

 

It is Nuru’s goal to export his idea beyond the village, but Awra Amba doesn’t have the capacity to manage such a scale-up.

 

“We need to see these villages,” he says, “but I can’t go check them out because we don’t have a car and it is not feasible to travel there by bus.”

 

The original Awra Amba, meanwhile, is still struggling for acceptance by the conservative villages that surround it.

 

The various services it now provides are helping. Awra Amba has several grain mills to which local farmers bring their grain to be ground for a small fee. It has constructed a junior high and high school where children from the wider area are educated together.

 

On top of that, every month, Gonder University’s School of Sociology, in a project aimed at facilitating the transfer of knowledge from Awra Amba to its hostile neighbors, brings together a growing number of people from the village with members of Christian and Muslim communities surrounding it. Around the same table, they talk out their differences.

 

“Now there is a sort of understanding and improvement regarding the image of the Awra Amba community,” says Alemu, the researcher."

[Khayr]

The model has paid off: Some 40 years after its founding in 1972, literacy levels, life expectancy, gender equality and economic growth in the village far exceed Ethiopia’s national averages.

The Islamic paradigm for societal success is How many did we produce in terms of:

 

1. Ulema

2. Awliya

3. Shuuhaada

 

A total opposite of the myopic standards of measurements for the successful society.

 

Two different directions and

no, we don't stop trading

and living just because we want the Akhira. Just incase any obtuse house Negreos wants to come to that conclusion.

[Safferz]

Trolling, Khayr? What's un-Islamic about development indicators like literacy rate, life expectancy, status of women, economic growth, etc?

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

its a very odd and widespread attitude that in the face of failure, rather then address the source of these failures, we try to subvert the meaning of success (khayr) or throw around vague words like the west (apophis). Even more odd that Islam is religion that teaches to approach everything in moderation, yacni find a balance between living in the now and for the here after. Either way, this ostrich like attitude is of no help but if it helps anyone feel better about themselves, whatever helps.

[AfricaOwn]

Khayr;991394 wrote:

The Islamic paradigm for societal success is How many did we produce in terms of:

 

1. Ulema

2. Awliya

3. Shuuhaada

 

A total opposite of the myopic standards of measurements for the successful society.

 

"Two different directions and

no, we don't stop trading

and living just because we want the Akhira. Just incase any obtuse house Negreos wants to come to that conclusion.

"One reason the people of Awra Amba are able to work so hard is that they do not follow organized religion.

In neighboring Christian and Muslim villages, residents respect the Sabbath and holidays. “They have quite frequent religious days, so on those days, they don't go to [do] farming work,” says sociologist Ashenafi Alemu of Ethiopia's University of Gondar. “But for Awra Amba, this is not the case. They work every day.”

The lack of religion is not the only competitive advantage for Awra Amba"

[Khayr]

The article is articulating

the dominant worldview

which is Secularism affords peace and prosperity[

 

That is the greatest Lie of the dajjal. The idea of heaven on earth. If that assumption is true,

then why are there american navy ships in the Chinese sea or

French troops in Mali or Drone strikes or the Atom bomb.

 

Unless a society adopts what the dominant global unpeaceful culture propagates, then that society is not given its due recognition and peace (no navy ships in their backyards).

 

So cut the B.S. and go take a trip around the world and see the reality as it is.

[Hawdian]

and how would an ethiopian take a trip around the world .

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

Khayr;991571 wrote:

The article is articulating

the dominant worldview

which is

Secularism affords peace and prosperity[

 

That is the greatest

Lie

of the dajjal. The idea of heaven on earth. If that assumption is true,

then why are there american navy ships in the Chinese sea or

French troops in Mali or Drone strikes or the Atom bomb.

 

Unless a society adopts what the dominant global unpeaceful culture propagates, then that society is not given its due recognition and peace (no navy ships in their backyards).

 

So cut the B.S. and go take a trip around the world and see the reality as it is.

Forever dodging the question! forget about peace, why is there such disparity between the living standards of say a place like Ethiopia and Canada?

[Guje]

Khayr do you watch glee ?

[burahadeer]

Hawdian;991580 wrote:

Didn't I tell you to jooji all this mambo jumbo stuff you keep posting and keep it within your "eastern star" meetings . Your secular ideas are not working here .

watch him come back with more mumbo jumbo:D