^NOTES

*Assistant Professor and Fulbright Lecturer (1997-98), Faculty of Law, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A practicing lawyer in New York and Honolulu for almost thirty years before beginning to teach in Ethiopia in 1995.

**The author reserves all rights under Articles 1647 - 1655 of the Civil Code of Ethiopia. Permission to reproduce any material herein, with attribution, is hereby granted.

1. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 1996 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT ON ETHIOPIA 1.

2. See Land, below at p. 17.

3. Bahrain, CzechInvest, Dubai, Fairfax County, Virginia, and The Netherlands have published advertisements in The Economist (London) which I have used in classes at Addis Ababa University.

4. Investment Proclamation No. 37/1996, FEDERAL NEGARIT GAZETA, 2nd Year, No. 25, June 18, 1996 hereinafter Investment Proclamation]. In Ethiopian legal terminology proclamation simply means act or statute. The Federal Negarit Gazeta is the official government gazette for publishing laws, regulations and official notices, all of which have no authority until published. The Federal Negarit Gazeta, which began with publication of the 1994 Constitution on August 21, 1995, is the successor to the Negarit Gazeta, which was published from 1941 until replaced in 1995.

5. Investment Incentives Council of Ministers Regulations No. 7/1996, FEDERAL NEGARIT GAZETA, 2nd Year, No. 29, July 4, 1996.

6. Licensing and Supervision of Banking Proclamation No. 84/1994, NEGARIT GAZETA, 53rd Year, No. 44, art. 2.4 and 4.1, January 31, 1994.

7. There are, however, eight American investors which have received investment permits from the Ethiopian Investment Authority. See note 50 for more information about them. They have not yet established visibility in the American expatriate community in Ethiopia.

8. In 1893, Emperor Menelik II attempted to give dignity to work by a law that forbade insulting those who work and said that whoever did so insulted the emperor himself. Daniel Haile, Law and Social Change in Africa, Preliminary Look at the Ethiopian Experience, 9 JOUR. ETH. L. 380, 385 (1973). The emperor was unsuccessful; work in general is looked down upon in Ethiopian society. Id., at 382; Biniam Estifanos, Friday Nights, Saturday Mornings, THE MONITOR (Addis Ababa), May 29, 1997, at 3, "We urbanites in particular are getting used to that very Western habit of starting our week ends (sic) on Friday night. The only difference is that Westerners work hard throughout the week and put down tools to unwind on Fridays while most of us here do not work even three hours a day. . ." See also TESHALE TIBERU, THE MAKING OF MODERN ETHIOPIA, 1896-1974, at 158 (1995); Abebe Gelaw, Round-table discussion examines culture-economy interplay, THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD (Addis Ababa), March 22, 1997, at 1, 5.

9. Abu Girma, Public Enterprises Reform in the Utilities Sector in Ethiopia, PRIVATIZATION AND PUBLIC ENTERPRISE REFORM IN ETHIOPIA, 253, 255, 262 (Abdulhamid Bedri Kello ed., 1994).

10. The Grim Picture of Health Care in Ethiopia, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), April 11, 1997, at 1, 4.

11. The port is Assab, Eritrea, which is on the Red Sea. By treaty Ethiopia enjoys access for imports and exports free of any Eritrean customs duty.

12. The Grim Picture of Health Care in Ethiopia, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), April 11, 1997, at 1.

13. Interview with Eshetu Girma, Head, Legal Affairs and Tessema Woubneh, Policy Advisor, of the Ethiopian Investment Authority, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (May 30, 1997).

14. Id.

15. The term incorporated is not a term of art in Ethiopian law; it does not refer only to corporations. The Ethiopian Commercial Code recognizes sole proprietorships, four kinds of partnerships, two forms of companies with limited liability-share companies and private limited companies-and cooperatives. The term public enterprises refers to entities owned by the government which provide goods or services for a fee and which are intended to make profits. Except for Ethiopian Airlines, these entities are not usually share companies, so they might have to be restructured before a foreign investor could invest in them.

16. Investment Proclamation, supra note 4, art. 13.

17. Investment Proclamation, supra note 4, art. 14(1).

18. Investment Proclamation, supra note 4, art. 15.

19. Investment Proclamation, supra note 4, art 16.

20. Transfer of Technology Council of Ministers Regulations No. 121/1993, NEGARIT GAZETA, 52nd Year, No. 53, July 31, 1993.

21. Our Economics Correspondent, Some New Areas of Investment in Ethiopia, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), January 10, 1997, at 1; Wasting Time, ADDIS TRIBUNE, January 19, 1996, at 8.

22. Investment Incentives Council of Ministers Regulations No. 7/1996, FEDERAL NEGARIT GAZETA, 2nd Year, No. 29, July 4, 1996.

23. Our Economics Correspondent, Some New Areas of Investment in Ethiopia, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), January 10, 1997, at 1, 4, saying, "Your investment license would soon prove to be no more that a piece of paper with some ineffective seal of authority on it. You will find that out at the Municipality of Addis Ababa where, upon you (sic) request for, say 500, square meters of land, everybody would consider you as somebody who has gone delirious with fantasy born of extreme deprivation, as they know it to be the case with very many people in Addis ! Repeat the request, if you like, but nobody would even so much as look up to talk to you! For all they know, you might be an alien from Mars!"

24. Interview with Mr. Fayez Omar - World Bank Resident Representative, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), January 3, 1997, at. 9, 10.

>25. Yosef B., Backward to "De-kulakization" or Forward to "Farmers" Prosperity?, THE MONITOR (Addis Ababa), April 10, 1997, at 3.

26. Art. 40.4 of the 1994 Constitution reads, "Ethiopian peasants have right to obtain land without payment and the protection against eviction from their possession. The implementation of this provision shall be specified by law."

27. Government Measures Against Businessmen Called Illegal, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), June 6, 1997, at 1; Editorial, Why Did The Strike Fail?, ENTREPRENEUR (Addis Ababa), 28 May 1997, at 4.

28. This may be related to the fact that the governing political party is based in Tigray and that the prime minister is Tigrean.

>29. Investment in Tigray said encouraging, THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD (Addis Ababa), March 20, 1997, at 1.

30. Investment Proclamation, supra note 4, art. 20.

31. CONSTITUTION, Art. 40.8.

32. Interview with Eric. P. Whitaker, Economic/Commercial Officer of the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (May 6, 1997).

33. Government Ownership and Control of the Means of Production Proclamation No. 26/1975, NEGARIT GAZETA, 34th Year, No. 22, art. 7, March 11, 1975.

34. See, e.g., Lawyer Accuses Ethiopian Government Over $40 Million, ENTREPRENEUR (Addis Ababa), April 9, 1997, at 1, for a story of unsuccessful efforts to negotiate payment for property and money seized in 1975.

35. Interview with Eric. P. Whitaker, Economic/Commercial Officer of the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (May 6, 1997).

36. Conversations with Tadesse Kiros, then the Deputy Chief Justice of Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in early 1996.

37. Regional council dismisses 51 officials, judges, THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD (Addis Ababa), March 11, 1997, at 2; Gambella Justice Staff Dismissed, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), April 18, 1997, at 8.

38. Ethiopia also has a modern Penal Code and codes of civil and criminal procedure.

39. Labour Proclamation No. 42/1993, NEGARIT GAZETA, 52nd Year, No. 27, art. 11.3, January 20, 1993.

40. Id., arts. 24 - 30.

41. CIVIL CODE, art. 1670 (Ethiopia).

42. Inventions, Minor Inventions and Industrial Designs Proclamation No. 123/1995, NEGARIT GAZETA, 54th Year, No. 25, art. 16, May 10, 1995.

43. Robert K. Rauth Jr., Special report-How bureaucracy is killing business in Africa, AFRICAN BUSINESS (London), May 1997, at 12, 14.

44. See, e.g., The Corruption Epidemics, THE MONITOR (Addis Ababa), November 9-10, 1996, at 3, and the articles cited in note 21, supra.

45. See Bekele Haileselassie, Salient Features of the Major Ethiopian Income Tax Laws, 15 J. ETH. L. 46, 49 (1992).

46. John Ross and Zemariam Berhe, Compliance with Legal Obligations by Businesses in the Addis Ababa Mercato, 8 J. ETH. L. 560, 563 (1972).

47. Letter from Peter and Linda Jeschofnig to the author, January 1997 (on file with the author).

48. The Bureaucracy Arrests Level of Economic Activity in Addis Ababa, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), June 20, 1997, at 11; Biniam Estifanos, Six Years of EPRDF Rule-A Bird's Eye View of the Balance Sheet, THE MONITOR (Addis Ababa), June 3, 1997, at 3; Corruption Distorts the Mechanics of the Market Economy, ADDIS TRIBUNE, November 1, 1996, at 1; Jeremiad of an Ethiopian Businessman, ADDIS TRIBUNE, February 23, 1996, at 6; Wasting Time, ADDIS TRIBUNE, January 19, 1996, at 8.

49. Former PM Tamrat Faces Court, ADDIS TRIBUNE (Addis Ababa), March 28, 1997, at 1.

50. Eight investors identified by the Investment Authority as American have obtained investment permits. One permit is for a fertilizer factory. This would therefore be required by Art. 7 of the Investment Proclamation to be a minimum investment of $ 20 million and to be made as a joint investment with a domestic investor. Two permits are for soft drinks, the trade name of which have not been revealed, but which are not Coca- Cola or Pepsi, both of which are already in Ethiopia. One of these two permits was issued to an offshore company from the Cayman Islands. Two investment permits are for computer consultancies. One permit is to assemble three wheel vehicles. One permit is for irrigated agriculture, for cotton and horticulture. This investment permit is held jointly by a Jamaican-American and a Saudi Arabian investor (whose mother is Ethiopian and who is reputed to have invested several hundred million dollars in Ethiopia). One investment permit is held by an investor to make food and baby food.