Gifata Is on UNESCO's List, and Wolaita Spent the Day in the Square

Gifata, the Wolaita new-year festival, has been inscribed by UNESCO as a representative heritage of humanity, and people across the Wolaita zone marked it by taking to public squares, according to reports on Fana Television and Tikvah Ethiopia.

Samuel Tesema, an assistant professor and chief administrator of the Wolaita zone, told Tikvah Ethiopia that the celebrations ran across all areas of the zone. Tilahun Kebede, head of government of Southern Ethiopia, described Gifata as a festival that strengthens brotherhood, speaking as the celebration was held in Wolaita Sodo.

Gifata marks the turn of the year in the Wolaita calendar. The inscription places it alongside Ethiopia's other entries on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and the zone administration is treating it as a national-level occasion rather than a regional one.

What the state is broadcasting

The rest of the day on Fana was government communication rather than reporting.

The Government Communication Service published a season-in-review video, Ethiopia this season, asserting that the country has carried out numerous activities of national importance across politics, diplomacy, and the economic and social sectors. No specific outcomes are enumerated in the broadcast item.

A separate Fana piece presents Addis Abeba's corridor development works as a model for other cities, and says the capital ranks among the ten cleanest cities in Africa. The piece does not name the ranking's source or year.

Read these as the state's account of itself. That is still worth tracking — what a government chooses to say about its own year is information — but it is not an independent finding, and the corridor programme's costs and displacement effects are absent from the telling.

Open

Neither the UNESCO decision document nor the session at which Gifata was inscribed is cited in the broadcast reports. The "ten cleanest cities" claim carries no attribution.

Sources: Fana Television — Gifata · Tikvah Ethiopia — Wolaita celebrations · Fana Television — season in review · Fana Television — Addis corridor development