International top ups to Ethiopia make covid-19 messages possible in the country

Ethiopia goes through a strange situation for months. And Ethiopian expats help by supporting covid-19 communication besides sending regular talk credit to their folks. According to several publications, including QZ.com and hrw.org, the lockdown came along with internet shutdown. This disrupted communication when people needed it most. You’ll say, yes, but only 1.1% of the population are internet users. Right. So what’s left? Phone and media. Ethio Telecom jumps and what it does these days is to support communication via Ethiopian expats. Thus the company extended the 50% bonus on international top ups to Ethiopia until the end of August 2020. As you can see, the external support impacts the country in two ways now:

• Locals have access to credit while they avoid going out for prepaid credit 
• And every time they place a call, they get educational message about coronavirus prevention

Source: Twitter

Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash

For rural areas, that even before the pandemic were missing a reliable internet infrastructure or an infrastructure at all and even landlines, MOBILES make an essential means of communication. They can thus rely on such official messages we were mentioning in the beginning. And this population represents more than 79% of the total population of Ethiopia.

Even before Ethiopia confirmed its first coronavirus case on March 13, people in the western Oromia region, where the military has conducted operations against a rebel force, faced significant challenges. Access to health care is severely limited, especially for those in rural areas. We recently spoke to a man who in July spent days calling hospitals in West Wellega in search of a ventilator for his sister who was dying of pneumonia; she didn’t survive. Because of the government restrictions, international and local aid groups are unable to monitor disease outbreaks or provide adequate assistance. (Laetitia Bader, hrw.org)