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Month: January 2019

Hasty Millennials

Posted on by Web Master

Instant gratification seems to be the theme of the world that we are currently living in, according to Simon Sinek, a British-American motivational speaker and author of five books, including “Start With Why.”

He goes on to explain that millennials have become attuned to brief and easy instances and experiences of satisfaction to the point that the art of patience has been lost on them.

This is indeed a generation that two months after entering the workforce is baffled by the fact that they have not been made a company executive. Our minds are boggled with the idea that we are not changing the world, becoming an employee of the month, getting a bonus and improving the worth of the company beyond its owners’ dreams, especially after having put into it what seems to be to us a great deal of work.

But our problems do not start nor end with work. The same theme applies to our social and personal lives. We are not accustomed to messages that take weeks or a month to reach their intended recipients or the selfless, spiritual passion of Romeo and Juliet, especially when we can swipe right or left for love.

Most scholars interested in millennials define them as a group of kids pontificating, “I want to be the one who comes up with the idea, not the person who executes on it.”

We are the generation that is irritated and angry. Mental health issues affect us more than other generations. We are more likely to commit suicide or be depressed and anxious, issues that cut across national, cultural, religious, gender and class lines.

We have forgotten the difference between love and co-dependence, dependent on the words that carry empty promises. Our relationship with time has been profoundly affected with the illusion of us manipulating it, and the inability to comprehend its value has brought us to the conclusion that we need to slow down.

But there is incoherence between the image of the millennials that is projected, that we lack patience, and the solution that is ascribed to it, having to slow down.

The intolerance, which even millennials admit to, comes in not getting what they want when they want it, according to Lucy Stanney in her paper “Because We Can: A Study of Millennial Impatience and The Rise of Next Day Delivery.” She describes that delay, in any form, causes agitation and frustration among this group.

This impatience, which is frequently attached to millennials, goes beyond minor dissatisfaction witnessed in everyday life. The spillover effect is seen in different aspects of life, including the workplace. Millennials’ infatuation with promotion and the idea of changing the world interferes with the actual work being done on the ground.

Being patient comes with crucial factors, most important of which is hard work. It brings with it wisdom and calmness. We need to allow our pallets and the pallets of others to savour the taste of our work as employees in the workplace and cease relying on a few moments of satisfaction as human beings.

It is next to impossible to become Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Chimamanda Ngozi or President Sahleworq Zewdu overnight. There will be times when our work will be torn to pieces along with our hearts – spat on and laughed at.

Every bit of our body and mind will tell us that we are not or will never be good enough. We will encounter sleepless nights and days filled with nightmares, jump from one job to another and dream of one day finding our calling.

If we ever slow down though, we will skid off our tracks. Instead, we need to be patient, which will not make us happy momentarily but will pay off in time.

 

Leather Industry Stumbles in Value Addition

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Abebe Hode, 64, joined the leather industry in the late 1970s, right after graduating from high school.

He first worked for two years in raw leather processing, starting with the removal of hair from the hide or skin. The leather industry at that time was thriving with huge untapped potentials.

Abebe, who now works as quality control supervisor at Colba Tannery, is worried about the industry these days owing to the various challenges he sees. One problem that jumps out at him is the low quality of the raw material that comes in.

“When I started working four decades ago, 80pc of the hide and skin was within grade one to three, and the rejects not meeting export quality were very few,” he said. “Nowadays, the reverse is true as a result of natural or human-caused problems.”

Even though the number of tanneries in the country has grown to 24, the industry’s insiders stress that product quality, lack of access to capital and lack of market integration have created significant roadblocks.

At Colba, where Abebe works, the company has been impacted by these problems leading to production decline. Established in 2009, the tannery produces leather products for shoes, garments, gloves and belts for export to European and Asian countries, and processes up to 6,000 goat and sheep skins and large animal hides daily.

“For the first eight years, we exported up to four containers a month, which is not the case anymore,” said Kebede Amede, a leather technologist at the tannery that employs 300 people.

The company exported products valued at 16 million dollars in 2015. Last year, it saw a dramatic decline that registerd only a third of that figure.

The main cause of the decline in export performance was the directive that made it mandatory to export value-added products.

“The measure is not bad but requires market integration and great financial capacity on the part of the factories to develop the necessary technological capacity to produce competitive finished products and to meet the quality requirements of the importing countries,” argues Kebede.

To succeed in the export of finished leather products, the factory has to be well-equipped with suitable machinery and have a better financial profile, according to professionals working in the industry. They add that this will enable the companies to procure the necessary raw material and cope with the constantly varying needs of clients that follow a frequently changing fashion industry.

Low-quality raw hides and skins collected from local markets are considered one of the major obstacles in the production of quality finished products.

Hides and skins are easily damaged by external parasites that live on the skins of small animals and hides of cattle. Damage also occurs during slaughtering and handling of the raw material prior to its arrival at the tanneries.

“We have stopped engaging in the first stages of raw skin processing because of low-quality raw hides and skins,” said Demberu Yohannes, production head at Friendship Tannery Plc, a Chinese company established almost a decade ago that produces suede, a type of finished leather commonly used for jackets, shoes, shirts, purses and furniture.

“We couldn’t be competitive in the world market with the low-grade hides and skins, so we import wet blue and raw products from Sudan and Saudi Arabia for further processing and manufacturing of our products,” he adds.

The raw materials pass through multiples stages before they come out as finished products. Raw hides and skins are preserved with salt in the first stages and pass through machines and chemicals to be pickled. Then they are processed further and treated with chromium to end up as wet blue hides and skins.

The value of the highest grade of semi-processed hides is three dollars for every square foot and 1.30 dollars for those with lower grades.

Andrea Squillace, 61, an Italian who runs a family-owned leather business from Milan that specialises in gloves and a client of Colba suggests local manufacturers can only gradually become engaged in the production of finished products.

“The leather industry doesn’t need too many heavy industries but many small factories that process semi-finished leathers that feed the heavy industry,” says Squillace, who has five decades of experience in the leather industry. “The process of converting semi-finished leather needs a lot of capital and resources.”

The Ethiopian leather industry should have focused on a high-end, high-quality niche market, according to another businessman who has supplied tanneries for over two decades.

He cannot see the prospect of Ethiopian leather companies competing in the semi-finished market against companies in China.

The United Nations Conference on Trade & Development had a similar view as industry professionals in its assessment for the National Green Export Review of Ethiopia last year.

The leather sector is overwhelmed with structural problems ranging from unorganised hide and skin collection systems upstream to poor marketing infrastructure downstream, according to the report.

The report also asserts that Ethiopia has a large comparative advantage in the export of raw hides and skins but not in the export of finished leather products because of a lack of skilled human power and unavailability of needed inputs such as chemicals and high-quality hides and skins.

“The real value addition is still not implemented,” says an expert with vast experience in the leather industry. “The rawhide and skin quality has been declining due to the low attention given by the respective government bodies.”

The expert believes that value addition has not been well executed since there were not support packages given to the factories, when the law that obliged companies to add value was legislated.

The government did not help tanneries create market value chains or aid in sharing the costs of environmental protection and technology, according to the expert.

“Due to these failures, the expectation of the government did not actually materialise,” the expert said.

Ethiopia earned 134 million dollars from leather and leather product exports, according to the Livestock Industry Development Institute, below the targets set by the Second Edition of the Growth & Transformation Plan (GTP II), which is around 280 million dollars.

Raw hides and skins sourced from foreign markets make up 15pc of the market.

Mohammed Aman, assistant professor at Haramaya University’s School of Agricultural Economy & Agribusiness for more than a decade, believes the sector needs an integrated effort between the government and stakeholders.

“The country is losing its known brand of genetic wealth once associated with special breeds that supplied high-quality raw hides and skins to the world tannery market.

The expert recommends that a livestock genetic bank should be established to conserve indigenous cattle. “There must be a win-win strategy that can incentivise the industry as well as ensure that some of the negative impacts such as environmental pollution are addressed.”

Abebe agrees with the view of the expert, especially on the importance of quality cattle breeding. His memories are fresh from the times when strict follow-ups and support for animal husbandry were practiced to protect the hides and skins from parasites and other diseases to sustain quality input.

 

“It’s a lie.”

Posted on by Web Master

Tefera Mamo (B.Gen) told Zemen, the Amharic monthly, about the reforms that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s (PhD) administration says it is implementing within the military. An indication of this is unrest in various regions of the country, according to him.

Engineering Opportunity Scheme Trips

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Last month Melaku Feleke, a 40-year-old entrepreneur who is in the process of obtaining a building permit for a new house, was at Bole District administrative office in Megenagna, near AMCE.

With plans in hand, he came to the Permit Office of the District to submit his documents for review and approval.

Melaku is presenting a seven-year-old plan already rejected by the Office that needs to be updated. He was also planning to visit one of the government engineers or architects working at the Office to revise his design.

Different engineers and architects provide plan designs and revisions, but recently the city administration has drafted a new directive to involve new university graduates in engineering, architecture, sanitation and electricity in the construction industry.

Recently, the City Construction Bureau drafted a directive that stipulates three categories of opportunity creation – construction input, sub-contracting and consultancy, which includes the design and supervision of projects.

The directive was drafted with a plan of creating opportunities for the 20,000 graduates, according to Amare Mekonnen, communications director.

The Bureau then trained and certified 396 young graduates as consultants and organised them into 99 associations or enterprises. Each association consists of four professionals, and they were assigned to different district and wereda construction permitting offices across the capital.

The trainees were registered and recruited by the Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) after submitting certification of competence and professional licenses obtained from the Ministry of Urban Development & Construction and after receiving tax identification numbers.

Bole district administration, where Melaku was processing his application, has assigned nine enterprises representing 36 newly certified professionals.

They also took a short orientation on forming new enterprises focusing on internal procedures, the construction directives, regulations and staff communication.

The scope of work and duties of the newly organised enterprises has two levels, depending on the extent of their experience.

Consultants assigned as Special Consultant One have a minimum of two years experience in construction work. They are permitted to handle design and supervision tasks for one-storey buildings with an aggregate project value of five million Birr or less.

Special Consultant Two are professionals who can handle consultancy projects on single-residence housing, minor construction and maintenance projects

The consulting rates and progress payments, which include a pre-payment of 20pc and retention payments of 30pc, are outlined in the directive.

But, the plan seems to bear hardly any fruit.

Three young architects and electrical engineers, all in their twenties and beneficiaries of the city’s opportunity creation efforts, claim to have received no project reference in the past month since they completed the registration and training programs.

“We’re distributing fliers with our contact information to potential clients, but we haven’t had any business yet,” one of them said. “We are beginning to be frustrated.”

Although a month had passed since their assignment and a long line of service-seekers appear daily at the Office, the graduates have received no project references.

Even though the office of Bole district has posted a notice at the entrance with contact information about the graduates, Melaku is hesitant to use them.

He is worried because the government professionals in charge at the Office would be partial to any work prepared by the graduates and submitted for review.

“It is cutting into the self-interest of the government professionals of the bureau and the new assignees,” he said.

Most people are used to dealing with the professional staff in the office to prepare the designs, because they see advantages and have confidence in the outcome if everything is handled by the officials, according to him.

The Bureau has allowed the graduates to post a placard with their contact information at the entrance of the districts.

“And they have also distributed their fliers announcing their services,” said Henok Regassa, construction permit & supervision head.

In addition to the opportunity creation scheme, the aim of initiating the program was to combat unethical practices at the district and weredaoffices, where clients were solicited for work by government professionals, according to Amare Mekonnen, director of communications at the Bureau.

“The Bureau has issued ethical directives to the construction staff prohibiting corrupt acts,” said Mekonnen.

Once they are found, they may not receive any project opportunities. Their licenses could also be revoked, and they would not be able to work any other places.

But the directive was far from being implemented as Fortuneobserved in Yeka District where a long queue of clients and other consultants were present.

An attendant at the information desk confirmed to Fortunethat if a client arrives with a concept plan for approval, the design will normally be prepared by one of the government professionals at the construction office.

The initial zoning clearance by the Office is assigned to a professional where issues of the number of floors and land-use are resolved for the proposed lot in compliance with the city’s master plan.

The client then must submit to District a completed design plan for construction permit approval.

That is the point when clients must decide whether to give the job to the district professionals who work for extra income to other established consultants or to the newly formed enterprises.

One of these enterprises run by new graduates rented a small office, four square metres in size, for 4,000 Br a month close to Bole to be near where they are assigned. The office consists of a table, three chairs and a laptop.

“We haven’t been hired by anyone,” one of the architects who was in the office waiting for a call, told Fortune. “They [the Office] don’t have to know that we solicit work publicly.”

The young graduates are not present at all of the weredasof districts. Wereda04 of the Kirkos district, located around Lancha along Sierra Leone Street, has not seen any of the enterprises.

“I have the list of the consultants sent here by the Construction Bureau,” said Yishak Shafi, head of the Wereda04 construction permit. “So far, no one has come and reported to our office, and I’m not sure there will be design work here for them.”

Most of the residences in the weredaare communal houses who occasionally need maintenance work, according to Yishak.

In another wereda, an enterprise run by four graduates was assigned a month and a half ago, but no one has shown up at the permit office.

“They have to come and register in the office in order to work here,” said Abebe Shiferaw, head of Wereda 03 construction permit office.

There was design work for an expansion project, but the customer went to another consultant instead, according to him.

The 17 enterprises assigned to Yeka District held a meeting with officials on November 23, 2018, to discuss the problem they face with the district staff.

The discussion focused on how to forestall what they think is unethical conduct perpetrated by the staff, according to a member of an enterprise.

To expand the opportunity, the meeting resulted in distributing the enterprises across the 14weredasof the Yeka District to provide the participants with a better chance of landing projects. Previously, they were all assigned to a single wereda.

Based on the previous construction reports made at the district office, 10 weredaswere selected to have more construction work and the remaining four weredasto have fewer projects.

“This will increase the possibility of our engagement to find work and introduce ourselves to a number of clients,” said one of the members in Yeka.

At the same time, Woldesenbet Yirga, head of the Yeka District construction bureau, said that he has warned the staff to be ethical and stop dealing with clients and to cooperate with the young entrepreneurs.

The head of the construction office at Yeka District stressed that if the enterprises come up with tangible proof of misconduct, they are ready to take serious measures.

Staff who violate the rules could be subject to termination, loss of benefits, demotions and face criminal charges. If found guilty, they could also face five years in prison and loss of their professional licenses.

Woretaw Bezabih, trainer and consultant on entrepreneurship for more than a decade, likes the idea of creating opportunities in the construction sector, as it has a wide range of work available.

“For the consultants, it is very challenging to be engaged in the construction sector,” he said. “But it is an opportunity for them to show their competency and courage to survive in the industry.”

Abebe Dinku (Prof), a civil engineer and a university lecturer with over three decades of experience, sees the situation from a different perspective. While supporting the job opportunity creation, he disagrees with having the new graduates taking design work for which they have little or no experience.

“The program devised by the construction bureau should be revised,” he stressed. “Design review and amendments require design and construction experience of at least 10 years.”

Bulcha Demeksa: OLF Should Not Stand in the Way of Peace

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Dear Editor,

There is a saying in Amharic expressive of my feelings toward conflict in the Oromia Regional State.

It roughly translates to, “the least loved inherits one’s wealth,” alluding that one’s worst fear sometimes come to pass.

There have been reports for weeks now that there is fighting in Wollega area between members of the same ethnic group. There is even an army presence to confront an organised armed force within the region. This news was a shock for me, because I had never seen infighting between members of the largest ethnic group in the Oromia Regional State.

There have been instances in the past where there have been fighting in the area that constitutes the current administrative unit, up until the creation of modern Ethiopia in the time of Emperor Menelik II and beyond.

After the “terrorist” label against the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) was lifted, and its members were allowed to enter the country, I met the party’s chairperson, Dawud Ibsa, at Elilly International Hotel in Addis Abeba.

Having known each other before, we greeted each other warmly. I asked him about the conditional agreements for their re-entry into the country.

“Like all the others, we came to be together with the rest of our people,” Dawud told me, to which I replied jokingly, “We will all be together.”

For the past few weeks though, I have been hearing that people have been dying close to my place of birth, Gimbi, in the West Wellega Zone of the Oromia Regional State. There are as well reports of unrest in other parts of the region.

There is no doubt that the OLF had been popular in the Oromia Regional State. Those days are gone now, because we have a government that has promised to attend to the hardships of Ethiopians.

Before the emergence of the present political leadership, Ethiopians were worried about a possible civil war or outright wars among ethnic groups.

But after times changed, when citizens were hoping to see a better day in Ethiopia, how can anyone want to be armed with the exception of the police to ensure that citizens can move about without fear of any renegade group shooting at innocent citizens?

I used to have respect for OLF at a time when there was exploitation and subjugation of the ethnic group the organisation claims to fight for. OLF and I have followed different paths though.

Now we expect that a united Ethiopia will have peace, prosperity and all that a free and united nation can hope for. I do not want this opportunity to be hijacked by a civil war similar to that of Nigeria in the late 1960s.

OLF should not stand in the way of the hope and yearning for peace and prosperity of Ethiopians by engaging in endless quarrels.

Bulcha Demeksa

Veteran politician and business person

TRAFFIC HICCUP

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A truck carrying a container trailed off the road into the divider along the highway from Addis Abeba to Adama, on Thursday, January 25, 2019. It was lifted out in the afternoon after a crane was used to unload the container onto another vehicle before the truck could be disengaged from the highway divider.

ON TAX, INVESTMENT

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Fisseha-Tsion Menghistu (Prof.) (first from the right), a tax and investment expert with half a century of experience, led a conference on the challenges and means of addressing tax collection for promoting investment and nation building on January 25, 2019. Mulu Solomon (fourth from the right), former president of the Addis Abeba Chamber of Commerce, also took part in the discussion.

PREPARATION FOR FESTIVITY

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Women, both carrying children on their backs, are preparing a traditional stew, known as wet, in a pot in Bahir Dar, capital of the Amhara Regional State. The occasion is a religious festivity that commemorates a particular saint. Neighbours and family members are invited to celebrate this traditional holiday.

CBE Scores 9.4b Br Profit in Half Year

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Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) earned a profit of 9.4 billion Br in the first half of this fiscal year.

The state commercial bank mobilised 29.8 billion Br in deposits, meeting 92pc of its plan, according to Bacha Gina, president of CBE.

The state giant has also transacted two billion dollars in remittances, 93pc of the target, and earned 21.8 billion Br from investments on loans and advances, meeting 70pc of its goal. The bank collected three billion dollars in foreign currency.

“Loans to mega projects haven’t had as good returns,” Bacha said.

The bank opened 59 new branches in the first half of the year, which have already seen deposits worth 188.1 million Birr, increasing its physical outlets to 1,346. With over 1.5 million new bank accounts opened, the total amount has reached 20.3 million customers.

The bank added 1,220 additional employees with the total number of employees now reaching 33,558.

The largest and oldest commercial bank in the nation, it underwent a significant executive reshuffling last year, with eight executives leaving in less than half a year.

EU Pledges €130m for Job Creation, Manufacturing

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Ethiopia signed a financing agreement for 130 million euros with the European Union Commission for investments in job creation, energy and manufacturing.

The agreement was signed between Neven Mimica, commissioner for International Cooperation & Development, and Foreign Affairs Minister Workneh Gebeyehu (PhD).

Job creation will take up 50 million euros, while 35 million euros will be used for sustainable energy and the rest for the establishment of agro-industrial parks.

The EU’s development cooperation portfolio in Ethiopia is one of the largest in Africa and the world. For the period between 2014-2020, 715 million euros worth of financing agreements were signed.

Ethiopia is also one of the beneficiaries of the EU Emergency Trust Fund, a fund established to address the causes of migration and irregular displacement.

The EU is providing humanitarian assistance to refugees and internally displaced people in the country, which has amounted to 381 million euros for the four years since 2014.

 Italy Grants €1m to Eritrean Refugees

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Italy granted one million euros to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the assistance of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia.

The funds were made available through the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, which will be used to improve the living conditions of Eritrean refugees and host communities in the Afar Regional State’s Barahle and Aysaita towns.

The funds focus on assisting women and children, who make up 79pc of the population in the refugee camps.

Ethiopia is host to one of the largest refugee populations in Africa, sheltering more than 900,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia.

UNHCR applies strategic activities aimed at facilitating access to energy, supporting the protection of natural resources and environment and improving sanitation, hygiene and access to potable water for refugees.