Geoffrey Lipman, Chairman of the Green Global Village and President of the International Council of Tourism Partners, has protested about the recent repeat broadcast of the BBC documentary, Ethiopia: A Journey with Michael Buerk, which makes a number of incorrect assertions about the current situation in the East African country.

Mr Lipman, who is also Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization, said during his many trips to Ethiopia, he has observed a government and private sector committed to a modern African democracy, which has made dramatic positive changes, particularly in food security, poverty alleviations and education.

Lipman voiced some concern at the repeated documentary, which selectively picked areas in which change has not been fast enough.

In his letter to Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, Lipman said, “surely this is a moment to exercise some caution in re-airing a dated and controversial view of a country which needs objective support in its quest for development.”

"You may not have fully thought through the implications of airing this programme at this delicate moment in the democratic evolution of Ethiopia itself.”

Lipman urged the BBC to immediately follow with a similar length prime time programme, which would feature businessmen and international experts familiar with Ethiopia, who could express differing views to that continually repeated in the documentary.

For the past eight months, Mr Lipman has been working on a project, with the support of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, to use tourism as an important accelerant for the social development of the country and the war on poverty.

Attached to his letter to the BBC, Mr Lipman also sent a copy of the Tourism – A creative Industry for Africa report, which Prime Minister Meles presented to the Commission for Africa

In that paper Prime Minister Meles underscored both the potential of the sector as a development agent and the commitment of the government to the transparency and democracy that an open tourism policy requires.

ENDS