Math Meets PP Myth: Series Launch
Excerpt
Math Meets PP Myth is where Ethiopia’s wildest statistics finally get their day in court. From GDP growth rates that vanish on contact with reality to tree-planting claims that could reforest the moon, this recurring exposé pulls apart the propaganda, crunches the numbers, and exposes the fiction. The PP regime’s math isn’t sloppy — it’s engineered. And we’re here to make the abacus honest. Got a myth? Send it in. Let’s count truth back into the equation.
When Math Meets PP Myth…
For far too long, the numbers dripping out of the PP regime have been the stuff of head-scratching legend. We used to shrug, imagining they had simply confused a trillion for a billion, a billion for a million, and a million for a thousand — harmless slips of the tongue from officials juggling too many zeros.
But not anymore.
The numbers now aren’t careless — they’re calculated. What’s spewing from the PP propaganda machine isn’t error, it’s engineering: statistics so inflated, so divorced from reality, they could be tethered to a string and floated above the Finfinnee Square.
And worse, this inflation comes wrapped in a smug assumption that the Ethiopian public is too innumerate, too distracted, or too weary to notice — an insult not just to intelligence, but to dignity.
The Birth of a Series
That’s why we’re launching Math Meets PP Myth — a recurring exposé dedicated to dismantling Ethiopia’s most audacious numerical fairy tales. From GDP growth rates that evaporate the moment they touch real-world economics, to tree-planting figures that could blanket not just Ethiopia but the moon itself, we will dissect the arithmetic, unmask the propaganda, and remind the architects of these myths that numbers, when handled honestly, have a memory of their own.
Every instalment will take one claim, run it through the cold logic of mathematics, and return with a verdict: fact, fiction, or fiction so extravagant it deserves its own folklore category.
And here’s the best part: we’re opening the floor. Contributions are welcome — if you’ve stumbled upon a statistical gem that defies belief, send it in. Together, we can make sure that in Ethiopia, numbers are no longer free to wander into the wild without a reality check. And as we go, we’ll build a living compendium of fact-checks that anyone can revisit — neatly tagged under the MMPPM category (yes, you guessed it!), ready to pull up with a single click.
We don’t actually hope for this compendium to grow — because the PP regime’s days should be numbered, and our aim is to help shorten that countdown. Honestly, we wish we didn’t have to do this at all. But as long as the propaganda machine keeps minting myths in bulk, we’ll be here to do the math.
And remember — it doesn’t have to be pure arithmetic debunking. Anything tied to a number can be just as revealing.
- What about that 600-million-Birr price tag for the new CBE logo — does it come with a built-in kickback big enough to inflate the cost for a publicly owned bank?
- Or the suspicious roller-coaster swings in exchange rates — what do they really tell us when examined under an expert lens?
From headline-grabbing billions to quietly buried percentages, anything goes if it educates the public and strips the varnish off official figures. After all, in a country where myths often wear the mask of mathematics, someone has to keep the abacus honest.
Coming Up as Our First Episode
“Math Meets PP Myth: 30-Million Tree Planters—PP’s Logic That Got Lost in the Forest” will kick off the series with a deep dive into one of the most eyebrow-raising claims in recent memory.
According to the PP regime’s official narrative, 30 million people — that’s one in every four Ethiopians — supposedly took part in a single tree-planting drive. We’ll crunch the numbers, cross-check the demographics, and show why this claim belongs more in the realm of folklore than forestry.
Along the way, we’ll ask the questions the propaganda machine won’t: What does “30 million” really look like in practical terms? Could such a mobilisation even happen without bringing the entire economy to a halt? And what do these inflated statistics reveal about the regime’s broader obsession with numerical theatre? Our first instalment will strip away the myth, leaf by leaf, until all that’s left is the bare arithmetic.
