Shadow of the City 1
Running Head: In the Shadow of the City
Susan Maddox
Cohort: AA338
In the Shadow of the City
Professor: Mark Davis
November 14, 2006
Shorter College ? SPP
Shadow of the City 2
Traces the history of a collaborative effort to create an organization to manage a major international development project in the slums of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Focuses on a serious set of disagreements that develops several months into the project between the two principals, an Ethiopian woman who founded the project, and a British entrepreneur who is the coordinator of the donor consortium. Designed to provide 1) an example of entrepreneurial action in the nonprofit sector, particularly in international development, 2) the opportunity to diagnose problems in the working relationship of two people who have very different backgrounds, and 3) the opportunity to devise plans for each person to take in addressing the problems.
Ethiopia is one of the world's poorest countries. Even in Africa a continent for its poverty, Ethiopia stand out. Its per capita income in the early 1990s was $130, second lowest in Africa next to Mozambique. The Ethiopian economy features a mixture of state control and private enterprise. In one way or another, most of the problems facing Ethiopia today are tied to one simple fact: Many of its people are starving, some to death. Since the 1980's, Ethiopia has been hit by a series of droughts centered in its low- lying regions. Nevertheless, famine and starvation are rarely just the result of drought, human policies, or governments or liberation fonts are just as responsible for some issues Ethiopia is facing. Ho ...