A number of factors contributed to the gradual impoverishment and decline of the Aksumite kingdom. The Arab expansion into Northern Africa cut off the kingdom’s access to the Red-Sea waterway (and to the markets which could be reached through it and on which a large part of the kingdom’s prosperity had been based). There is also evidence to suggest that some of the kingdom’s natural resources, such as gold and ivory, had been depleted. Very little is known about this phase of Ethiopian history and scholars even disagree on the dates of its beginning and end.
The political center of Ethiopia seems to have gradually shifted to the southern and eastern parts of the Tigray region (the northernmost of the nine regions of Ethiopia) in the Post-Aksumite period. A few churches in these areas have been tentatively attributed to this period, but subsequent adaptations combined with the inability to obtain permissions to conduct archaeological surveys make dating difficult. It seems likely that churches continued to be built as well as hewn (cut) out of rock. A group of funerary hypogea (underground chambers) in the Hawzien plain (in northern Ethiopia) may have been transformed into churches during the post-Aksumite period.
If a female student misses 7 days per month because of menstruation, she will miss 70 classes in a ten month academic year. This is a big blow to a single student. Problem of toilet sanitation is a critical problem in urban Ethiopia let alone in the rural parts.
