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ETHIOPIA celebrated the beginning of it's third millennium seven years after the rest of the world last week, amid lavish celebrations, religious fervor and messages of hope from the country's leaders.
Ethiopians gathered in churches, family homes, clubs and on the streets to countdown the end of the past millennium and welcome the new millennium.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in a speech to the nation voiced his hope that the new millennium would usher in a new era of prosperity for the Horn of Africa nation, which has been mired in conflict and poverty.
"The last few centuries of the millennium have not been as glorious," Meles said at an official ceremony attended by several other heads of state.
"Every generation of Ethiopians during those centuries has paid in blood to maintain our independence."
"We have came from being one of the most advanced nations on earth to being one of the poorest," he said, adding nevertheless: "We have begun to fight back the poverty."
The head of the African Union Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, expressed hope for peace in Africa when congratulating Ethiopians.
"We need peace at home ... We need peace in Somalia, in Darfur, in Eritrea ... The new Ethiopia is advancing. Long live Ethiopia, long live Africa for the Africans," he said.
The African Union has its headquarters in Addis Ababa. Several heads of state also attended the ceremony, including Sudan's Omar al- Beshir, Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Kenya's Mwai Kibaki.
Amid a tight police deployment, tens of thousands of Ethiopians from across the country and the diaspora flocked to the city to take part in the country's biggest ever party.
"I'm very excited, I consider myself lucky to perform at a new year marking a turn of a thousand years," 19-yearold dancer Bethelhem Belay said before going on stage to perform in one of the many events being held across Addis Ababa.
"I hope everyone will be entertained, every Ethopian deserves happiness as the country has had its fair share of troubles. I hope for prosperity, much employment opportunities for people," he said.
The privileged few who could afford tickets costing as much as average annual per capita income of 160 dollars were seated in a venue built for the occasion and financed by Ethiopian-Saudi billionaire Sheikh al-Amoudi.
One of the highlights of the event was a concert by US hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas.
Ethiopia is the only African nation never to have been colonised and is fiercely nationalistic, but the celebrations could not completely conceal the country's divisions.
Ethiopia was one of the first Christian kingdoms in history but around half of its current population of 81 million is Muslim and the millennium buzz was lost on many.
The country's vast southeastern Ogaden region -- populated by Somali-ethnic Muslims -- is engulfed in civil strife and humanitarian crisis.
The Meles administration has been marred by the repression of opposition figures since contested 2005 polls, and entangled in the invasion of Somalia, where its troops rescued a weak interim government fighting Islamists.
Regular Ethiopians also have mixed feelings towards the millennium party, arguing that money used for a temporary concert hall could have been better spent.
But officials were keen to make the year-long celebrations that kicked off Wednesday an opportunity to convey a different image of their country to the rest of the world.
"What Ethiopia is known for abroad, like droughts and famines, doesn't reflect the reality of our country," Tourism Minister Mohammed Dirir said before the celebrations started.
"The millennium is a good opportunity to change the image of Ethiopia, certainly a sub-Saharan country currently struggling against poverty, but with a steady growth and a multi-religious country," he added.
Ethiopian President Girma Woldegiorgis pardoned nearly 18,000 prisoners to mark the arrival of the new millenium, the official Ethiopian news agency (ENA) reported.
The calendars of the entire world are based on the work of the old Egyptian astronomers who discovered - as early as three to four thousand years BC - that the solar or sidereal year lasted slightly less than 365 ¼ days.
However, it was left to the astronomers of the Alexandrian school to incorporate this knowledge into some sort of calendar; and it was these astronomers who also came up with the idea of leap years.
Subsequently, the Romans under Julius Caesar borrowed their reformed calendar from the Alexandrian science and adopted it to the western world. Then the Copts inherited this science as a right and built upon it themselves.
In due course, the Copts handed this calendar, together with their method of computing the date of Easter, on to their descendant Church in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian year therefore has something in common with the western year, having been derived from the same source.
So much so that the Ethiopian calendar retains the old Egyptian system whereby the year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each plus one additional month of five days (six days in leap years). Ethiopian dates therefore, fall 7- 8 years behind western dates and have done so since early Christian times. This discrepancy results from differences between the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church as to the date of the creation of the world.
Each Ethiopian year is dedicated to one of the four Evangelists according to the cycle: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The year of St. Luke is Leap Year, and therefore always has six days in the thirteenth month of the Ethiopian calendar
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