Tag: Nakfa
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Reframing Eritrea’s Post-Independence Paradox
For more than three decades, the story of Eritrea has been told in a narrow and predictable register. It begins with the extraordinary military triumph of 1991, moves quickly to the UN-supervised referendum of 1993, pauses briefly on the promise of constitutional drafting, and then hammers home the familiar conclusion: a descent into authoritarianism and
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The Eritrean Government Admits Its Banking Blunder
In an unusual admission to problems it faces, in yesterday’s edition of Haddas Eritrea, a Tigrinya newspaper it owns, the Eritrean government issued an editorial entitled “Appropriate Correction.” The editorial raises more questions than it answers as it fails to restore the exceeding loss of confidence in the government-owned financial institutions that allows depositors only
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Eritrean Depositors Lose Control of Their Funds
In a move reminiscent of past campaigns, over the last few weeks, the Isaias Afwerki’s government has arrested many people and sealed their businesses. Government sources indicated the reason for the far-reaching arrests is to investigate alleged crimes of corruption. The doors of at least 200 businesses in Asmara and other places in Eritrea have
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Eritrean Businesses: Between Loyalists and Others
In recent months, the Eritrean government has been carrying out a heightened surveillance on the Eritrean commercial sector, and reports of spies working for the security departments is focused on merchants and traders suspected of transacting in cash, in violation of the government directive that requires them to deal in checks and not in cash. Since
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Pirates Of The PFDJ
In 1976, when the Derg announced the change of King Haile Selassie’s birr in Ethiopia, the general public was reluctant to surrender the currency to the bank. People perceived the birr as a currency “guaranteed with gold” though by then the world had long dropped the system of defining the value of currency with gold.