![\"Ethiopia](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Addis-Ababa-forced-eviction.jpg?fit=780%2C780&ssl=1\")
\nEthiopia has been chosen to host the 2021 World Telecommunication Development Conference, the first time an African country will stage the meeting. The International Telecommunication Union Council approved the choice unanimously at its 2019 session in Geneva. Innovation and Technology Minister Getahun Mekuria, who was in Geneva, announced the decision. He said the conference, held every four years, had not taken place in Africa since it was established in 1994. His ministry thanked member states for backing Ethiopia\u2019s request.<\/p>\n\n
The announcement came while people at home were still living with the effects of an internet block of about eight days. Ethio Telecom, the state operator, later apologised to subscribers and offered compensation packages. It did not give a reason for the cutoff. The government had not commented either. Several reports said access was restricted to stop cheating in national exams that ran through the previous week and ended on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
For a country that had just asked the world to gather in Ethiopia to talk about telecom development, the blackout was the domestic backdrop. Businesses, students, and families had spent days without websites or messages. The council\u2019s vote still stands as the moment Ethiopia secured a conference African hosts had not held before. Service was returning only as the minister\u2019s news from Geneva was spreading.<\/p>\n
The council vote and the blackout belong to the same week, and that is why the hosting decision mattered at home as well as in Geneva. Ethiopia had won the right to gather governments and telecom companies in 2021, on African soil, for a meeting the minister said the continent had never hosted. Subscribers, meanwhile, were being offered compensation for days when the only national network was dark. The exams explanation remained a press account, not an official statement. What was official was the apology from Ethio Telecom and the unanimous approval Getahun Mekuria carried out of the council chamber.<\/p>\n