Remembering and forgetting famines in Ethiopia

Abstract

This article aims to advance the understanding of famine memorialization—or the lack of it—in postcolonial Africa by focusing on famines in Ethiopia. It analyses the memory politics of Ethiopian state actors, and the silenced or marginalized place of famines, particularly the 1984–1985 famine. Drawing on interviews with individuals involved in memory-making in Ethiopia, observations of museums, monuments and other memory sites, and archival and secondary sources, the article shows how famine memory only appears at the margins of public commemoration initiatives. It discusses how tensions between a centralized national authority and Ethiopian identity, on the one hand, and regional ethno-national politics, on the other hand, along with efforts to brand the country as modern and developed, have served to silence past famines. However, artistic work and initiatives to remember famine victims “from below” contribute, to some extent, toward making the memory of mass-starvation publicly visible.