Ethiopia is regularly cited by donor nations as an African success story. Its economy is growing, they cry, more children are attending school and health care is improving.

Well, GDP figures and millennium development statistics reveal only a tiny fraction of what is in fact a corrupt and violent picture.

What development there is depends, the Oakland Institute says, on “state force and the denial of human and civil rights”. The country still ranks 173rd out of 187 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index, and around 40 per cent of the population live below the extremely low poverty line of USD1.25 a day – the World Bank worldwide poverty line is USD2 a day.