alternatehistory.com

Yesterday evening, I ended a day with a friend with Toronto with Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant, a long-established Ethiopian restaurant on Bloor Street West. We split one of their $C 25 platters, served on a round sheet of injera bread, and pronounced ourselves quite satisfied.



Ethiopian cuisine, we agreed, deseres to be known worldwide as one of the great cuisines. Ethiopia the country generally seems to be doing pretty well, now in the second decade of the 21st century. Rural areas remain vulnerable to famine, but the Ethiopian economy seems to be on the verge of takeoff, as investors from around the world make investments in a stable African countries with a large domestic market within easy reach of other world markets. (The Chinese model actually seems to be working.)

As Ethiopia's economy continues its development, it wouldn't be very surprising to me if elements of Ethiopian culture--the food, for instance, or the music--get picked up by discerning consumers. Ethiopia may be starting to move away from its grim reputation in the 1980s as a country of lethal poverty towards something more nuanced. India may be further along in its own similar transition, having shifted in the Western imagination from being a place notable for its poverty towards a more mixed and favourable perception, as a burgeoning superpower with both unattractive and attractive features.

Is there any way Ethiopia can be made to have the transition that India made, and that Ethiopia OTL is only having now, with a post-1900 POD? Probably a prerequisite is to have the Ethiopian monarchy of the mid-20th century more capably rule the country, at least to the point of preventing revolution and the rise of the Derg. Was Haile Selassie at all capable of this?
Top