In May 2008 a small group from northern Mursiland spent two weeks visiting the Melako, Sera, Namunyak and Kalama Community Conservancies in Kenya. They learnt about the management, benefits and challenges of these conservancies, and had discussions with members of the Maasai, Rendille and Samburu communities which are actively involved in them.
‘There is no singing and dancing anywhere along the Omo River now. The people are too hungry. The children are quiet. We adults just go into a shelter to sleep, silently........
On 16 May 2010, Ethiopia’s Capital newspaper reported that the Gibe III hydroelectric dam, now under construction in the middle basin of the Omo-Gibe River system, is to receive a long term loan of nearly half a billion USD from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
'Shooting with Mursi', a DFID/UK AID film made by Ben Young with Olisarali Olibui, was selected for screening at the 30th Cinéma du Réel Documentary Film Festival in Paris (24 March – 3 April 2010) and at the 10th Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival (12-16 May 2010).
Speaking in Jinka, capital of South Omo Zone, on 25 January 2011, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced plans to convert 150,000 ha. of the Lower Omo Valley into irrigated sugar cane plantations.
UNESCO's concerns about the impact of the Gibe III dam and irrigation development on Lake Turkana are 'one sided and highly biased', says the Ethiopian Government.
In the five years since it was launched, Mursi Online has become the most widely used source of accurate information about the Mursi on the web and feedback from visitors has been consistently positive.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) have always claimed that there is no evidence of ‘systematic’ human rights abuses being carried out by the Ethiopian government in pursuit of its development plans in the Lower Omo.
In a new paper entitled "What future for lake Turkana: the impact of hydropower and irrigation development on the world’s largest desert lake", the Nairobi based hydrologist and consulting engineer, Dr Sean Avery, considers the impacts on the lake of river basin development in the Omo Valley. The paper is based on reports submitted by Dr Avery to the African Development Bank (2010) and to the African Studies Centre at Oxford University (2012).
'Under the Shade of the Ragai Tree' (Al'Ombra del Ragai') is an exhibition at the Valencia Botanical Gardens (Jardí Botànic de Valencia) running from 3rd April to 2nd June.
The Development Assistance Group (DAG), a body of 27 development agencies working in Ethiopia, has written to the Ethiopian Government about assessment visits it has made over the past two years to resettlement sites in the west, south and east of the country, including the Lower Omo Valley. The letter manages a delicate balancing act.
The lower Omo is set to become the largest irrigation complex in Ethiopia, with the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation’s ‘Kuraz Sugar Development Project’ as its centrepiece. This will require the forced displacement and ‘villagization’ of thousands of agro-pastoralists. Since villagization began in 2012, Edward (Jed) Stevenson and Lucie Buffavand have been studying its impacts on the food security and well-being of the resettlers, using both household surveys and long term ethnographic research.
We are very sorry to have to record the recent death, at Makki, of Kirinomeri (Ulikuri) Tuku, one of the most respected and influential leaders of the northern Mursi during the past forty years. He died on 22 Dec 2017. He will be remembered best, perhaps, for motivating and inspiring the successful migration of members of the Baruba bhuran to Makki in 1979/80, an achievement that will secure his place as a major figure in Mursi history. The following is a personal tribute to Kirinomeri from the anthropologist, Dr Shauna LaTosky (Ngamargo).
