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Heineken in Ethiopia: An Island of Perfection in a Sea of Misery
Revealing the “Dutch secret” floating in every shiny green bottle
“Dawn. And as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine…”
That 1984 BBC report by Michael Buerk seared Ethiopia into the Western imagination: a place of hunger, hopelessness, and humanitarian urgency. It helped spawn the Live Aid phenomenon, the charity boom, and a generation of global pity.
That image has changed. Or so we’re told.
Today, Ethiopia is branded an economic miracle — a rising “African lion.” From 2004 to 2019, the country enjoyed nearly double-digit growth, and even after war, inflation, and drought, it remains one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. Addis Ababa buzzes with cranes and concrete. Millionaires are multiplying. Light rail lines split the dust like promises of progress.
But peel the surface, and the foundation cracks.
