Brand Ethiopia

Do you know how your country is branded? Lucy Eyre, a British writer living in Ethiopia, deals with the topic of country branding in her essay ‘Brand Ethiopia.’ Living in a ‘mis-branded’ country, the author levels criticism on the way media helps create wrong images on some regions.  ‘Ethiopia has been branded with famine,’ Eyre says as the impression most people have on the country is the famous famine in the mid-1980s and the subsequent globally beamed  Live Aid event organised to raise money for the crisis relief. Stigmatized with famine, conflict and disease, Ethiopia as well as the whole African continent is still seen as a charity case. This image is widely rejected by Ethiopians both because they see their country as much more than famine and because they do not want to be lumped together with the rest of the members of the continent as if they where indistinguishable from one another.

Storm