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Month: October 2019

Corporation Prepares for Technical Training Centre in Modjo

Posted on by Web Master

The Ethiopian Construction Works Corporation is constructing a technical training centre at Modjo town in Oromia Regional State for an estimated 85 million Br.

The construction of the training centre is planned to have an administrative building, lecture theatres, dormitory, cafeteria, library, a designated area for practical training, technical laboratory and conference hall. The centre is also intended to provide between a week to a month of training in automotive transmission, auto electricity, electro-mechanics, hydraulics and surveying.

It will also have three to five buildings and the capacity to provide training for up to 500 trainees at a time.

The centre, which will rest on 60,000Sqm of land, will also provide 39 types of short trainings in leadership, management and project management.

Construction of the centre is scheduled to be started after three months, once the ongoing bidding process to hire a construction firm is completed. The Corporation, which was re-established in 2015 with an authorized capital of 20 billion Br, floated a tender at the end of last month looking for a company for consultancy services.

Fully financed by the Corporation, the project is expected to be completed at the end of 2021.

Enhancing employee’s technical knowledge to support the construction sector with trained human resources and minimising the cost that is spent for training are the two major aims of the project, according to Tinfu Muche, communications head at the Corporation, which has 16,304 employees.

“Interest and knowledge gaps are the criteria to select the trainees,” Tinfu added.

After completing the courses, the trainees will be assigned to different departments of the Corporation. They will also take a Centre of Competence exam to ensure they are qualified. If they do not pass the exam, they must re-take the course.

For the construction of the centre, the Ethiopian Water Works Construction Enterprise, which mainly works on water well drilling, conducted a feasibility study in 2014.

However, the project was delayed since the land and the title deed were not transferred to the Corporation in a timely manner, according to Tinfu.

Besides the employees of the Corporation, the centre will provide training for those who are engaged in the construction sector, which contributes 16pc to the country’s GDP.

Established to engage in domestic and overseas construction – in particular upgrading and maintenance of roads, bridges, dams and irrigation projects – the Corporation is currently constructing the Tendaho Dam & Irrigation Development Project at a cost of 4.1 billion Br.

When the project is completed, it will have the capacity of holding 1.8 billion cubic metres of water. The project also includes the construction of a 72Km-long canal that feeds into the main one.

Messele Haile (PhD), an assistant professor at the Civil Engineering Department at Addis Abeba University, says that the training centre will play an immense role in addressing the knowledge gap in the sector.

“The training centre comes at the right time to contribute to the construction sector by providing trained and skilled manpower and fills the gap seen in the sector,” Messele said.

Adama Welcomes Haile Resorts

Posted on by Web Master

Haile Hotels & Resorts, a local company founded by prominent athlete Haile G. Selassie built its seventh hotel in Adama, Oromia Regional State, with a total investment of 403 million Br.

The fourth property for the operator in Oromia Regional State, Haile Hotel Adama is located right at the gate of the city near Aba Geda Conference Centre. It is expected to be operational as of January 2020, and currently 85pc of the construction of the hotel is finished.

Haile Hotel Adama is a five-storey building resting on an 11,500Sqm plot of land. It will have 120 rooms, six conference and event halls with a capacity of up to 500 people, two bars, two restaurants and a coffee shop, as well as food and beverage outlets. It will also feature a health club, dry sauna, steam, spa, swimming pools, massage services, wellness centre, outdoor and children’s playgrounds and parking capacity for 200 cars.

For the construction of the hotel, the company leased the plot for 18 million Br. Different companies have constructed the hotel. Geretta Consulting Architects & Engineers, a local firm that has previously designed and supervised the construction of Burkina Faso Embassy, the Oromo Cultural Centre, Snap Plaza and the Zefmesh Grand Mall among others, supervised the project.

Once the hotel becomes fully operational, it is expected to create job opportunities for 300 people.

Haile Hotels & Resorts started its first operation by opening Haile Resorts Hawassa in 2010. It is a four-star resort resting on 52,000Sqm of land. It features 126 guest rooms, eight food and beverage outlets and five ballrooms that can accommodate between 25 to 2,000 attendees.

Currently, Haile operates resorts in Debre Berhan, Arba Minch, Ziway, Shashemene and Sululta Yaya Village. Haile Palace Addis Abeba, Haile Hotel Adama, Konso and Wolayta Sodo are under construction.

The Hotel’s mission is to deliver memorable guest services, according to Melkamu Makonnen, director of Hotels & Resorts at Haile & Alem International Plc, which has been operating for nearly two decades in real estate, hospitality, hotels, resorts, tour and travel operations, a hotel management school, cinemas, gyms and spa businesses.

“We sell memories,” said Melkamu.

Nationwide, there are 600 starred hotels, while Addis Abeba has 164 starred hotels that have a total of 8,000 rooms to 10,000 beds. The city also has 1,129 non-star level hotels.

The number of tourists flowing to the country is also growing. Five years ago, the country generated 2.8 billion dollars from 770,428 tourists that visited the country. Last year, the revenue reached 3.5 billion dollars from 933,000 tourists.

Fisseha Asres, a hotel expert who has worked in management positions in different hotels, says that the hotel should work on making the country a destination of tourism and conferences.

“Before opening hotels, the owners of the hotel should learn about who their target clients are and work consistently to meet their needs,” Fisseha said.

Raising Children for Today’s World

Posted on by Web Master

The young person wrote in an anonymous Ethiopian health group, “Where would I be able to find anxiety medicine without prescription?”

Within the past few years I have been hearing people self-diagnose with various serious mental illnesses. Mental health awareness week is observed in October every year. Few institutions use this time to dismantle preconceived notions of mental illness.

In a country like Ethiopia, with the highly religious and cultural fibers strongly intertwined, subjects such as mental health are rarely spoken about. Yet within today’s youth exposed to online campaigns on the information, they begin to act in half informed manners.

The dangers of self-diagnosing and falling victim to Cyberchondria is that the person becomes convinced of having an illness instead of seeking professional help. The youth in Ethiopia today have very little guidance, and they seek answers wherever they can.

A community’s responsibility should be, as much as possible, to provide the guidance necessary. Parenthood is an immense load of responsibility, and no parent needs to be reminded more of that. Yet in today’s globalized world, Ethiopian parents and their children need more help than before.

Shielding children has long been the motto of parenthood. I remember in a wake that was happening at our house, my parents never once acknowledged what was happening. My aunt comically told us that everyone was gathered, because someone was sick. No one had an idea of how to deal with teaching children about death.

We leave off difficult and defining conversations to be had outside of our homes. Even the schools we attend do not feel fit to teach about this subject. So where do children and young people learn about mortality, sexuality and mental health?

When those who are responsible for children do not take the time to address the conversations that need to be had, they give space for young people to learn all this on their own. While social media platforms can be helpful tools, they can also be very dangerous to those in search of answers. An unmediated platform such as Facebook or Instagram is a portal of unimaginably diverse and dangerous content.

As some Ethiopians would like to argue to shutdown social media access, what is evident is that we are a community that has not yet grasped our own identities. Parents today are better at engaging their children than those before them. Yet unless they are able to move forward with the times, we will have youth who are lost and being brought up by outside influences.

It is in this state of mind that parents and guardians should be confronting the problems facing young people today. Parenthood can now begin with listening and learning. As many Ethiopian’s parental instincts are to dismiss children’s voices, we fall short of being a real supportive force for them in the process.

“You know in the old days, the women and children eat after the patriarchs are finished. In some families they only get the leftovers.” I was about ten when I first heard this story or when the story first made sense to me. At the dinner, all of us ladies and girls were being asked to be grateful for our place on that table. Everything that does not belong in the linear patriarchal narrative, in that tiny box of assumptions that compiles our identity, was not welcome.

Asking to feel grateful for being forwarded decency is not progress. Progress is being able to listen to the youth around us and legitimising their feelings and guiding them to adulthood.

As parents would take their children with physical ailments to the hospital, they should do the same if a child is exhibiting signs of mental illness – they should be able to take them to a professional. When a child has a problem, we should encourage them to come to adults to be guided through making the right decisions. Today we have youth that make mistakes and are so terrified of their parents they would rather hide their mistakes and fall deeper than put trust in their parents.

We have a world that needs its youth to be proactive decision makers. When we shield children from the world, they grow up unprepared for a world that does not cater to their lack of preparation.

Ethiopian parents should take a step in the shoes of their children. Instead of checking on the eternal checklist of Ethiopian success – graduations, marriage and grandchildren that all families seem invested in – we could care a bit more on what makes the child happy. Learning this simple fact can be the guiding force that brings families together.

Africa Must Shift to Mechanisation to Attain Sustainable Development

Posted on by Web Master

Africa is not on track to meet both the Malabo Declaration calling for the eradication of hunger and malnutrition by the year 2025 or the Sustainable Development Goals that aim to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition by 2030.

Despite being crucial to Africa’s development, the agriculture sector is performing well below its potential. Even with the highest area of uncultivated arable land in the world, which is about 50pc of the global total, productivity lags far behind other developing regions.

Currently, human muscles provide over 60pc of farm power, mostly from women, the elderly and children. The drudgery of traditional farming practices contributes to the widening gender gap in African agriculture. As a result, women lack the resources and opportunities they need to make the most productive use of their time, which hinders their productivity and reduces their contributions to the agriculture sector and the achievement of broader economic and social development goals.

To reverse the situation, mechanization is the low-hanging fruit to increasing agriculture productivity, as highlighted in recent studies and high-level dialogues. Development actors including the African Union Commission (AUC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have been working towards pushing the agenda to the highest-level policymakers.

FAO and AUC have jointly developed a framework that aims to increase agricultural efficiency and reduce drudgery by helping countries in Africa to develop strategies for sustainable farm mechanisation. “Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization: A Framework for Africa” is a result of continuous and thorough discussions among high-level policymakers and experts of the AU Member States, the AUC, FAO and other partners in the fields of food and agriculture.

Inspired by the former AU Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s (PhD) campaign to “confine the hand-held hoe to the museum”, the AUC and FAO in collaboration with the Government of Burkina Faso, held a symbolic event with the erection of a monument in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, on October 15, 2019. The event aimed to sensitise policymakers to influence policies that promote agricultural mechanization in Africa to reduce the drudgery in agriculture, especially by women.

Moving forward, farmers in Africa should be able to use modern agricultural technology, both digital and mechanical, to boost the agricultural sector sustainably. Doubling agricultural productivity and eliminating hunger and malnutrition in Africa by 2025 will be no more than a mirage unless mechanization is accorded utmost importance. Crop yields must increase substantially over the coming decades to keep pace with food demand driven by population growth and rapid urbanisation in Africa.

The new framework should be translated into action. Member countries should work towards designing and formulating policies and strategies for sustainable agricultural mechanisation in Africa covering three aspects of sustainability of agricultural mechanisation interventions: commercial, environmental and socio-economic.  Countries need to prioritise policy environments that support the establishment and operation of viable and sustainable businesses.

Governments should prioritise profitable value chains for mechanization, and countries should target a few priority commodities that can easily be mechanized, such as cereals (maize, wheat, and rice, for example) that can lead to substantial increases in total factor productivity. Mechanization must be linked to market-oriented enterprises that can generate the necessary cash flow to cover capital costs and facilitate any loan repayments.

Given the small size of many domestic markets for agricultural machinery and implements, regional cooperation will be necessary for the implementation of many activities to attain economies of scale and scope, as well as to create sustainable organisations and institutions.

Strengthening the institutional infrastructure that supports the development of agricultural mechanisation at the national, sub-regional and regional levels is an important step. This would require the strengthening of coordinating mechanisms at all levels.

Africa has to shift to mechanisation from the drudgery of traditional farming to close the gender gap, absorb the growing mass of its young population, for whom agriculture is the best employment prospect, and in the end to meet the Malabo Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals, simultaneously.

 

 

Homegrown Reform: Moving to Substantive Debate

Posted on by Web Master

The recent debates on the government’s Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda are refreshing and encouraging. It is encouraging to know that the government has an overarching framework for its reform agenda. Whether we agree with the government or not, the overall economic policy direction is now clear.

It is also refreshing to see the debate that the Agenda has steered since its launch. Such debates, in particular by well-informed experts, are welcome and very important to inform the broader public and strengthen the policy initiative by providing productive input. I trust that the authorities are putting the initiative in the public eye with this spirit, and they are listening to critics with an open mind.

As much as I enjoyed reading some of the substantive debates in the media, including in this newspaper, I find the tone and focus of some critics pointless and unnecessary to the national policy discourse. Instead of assessing the contents, they focus on rejecting the idea that the reform is “homegrown” based on speculation.

Government representatives are on the record saying, the term is used to refer to the fact that the Reform Agenda is designed to address the country’s current economic challenges; was formulated by the government; and will reflect the views of the domestic public. If we want to make it truly homegrown, let us focus on providing productive and substantive feedback and challenge the government.

The debate on whether the agenda was prepared by the government or was copied from somewhere else is futile as the evidence offered to support such claims are based on speculation or resemblance. A recent critic argues that “there is no credible evidence to suggest that the Economic Reform Agenda was truly homegrown” because “there is no traceable background study”. It sounds like the writer is misinterpreting the absence of evidence (that he could not find a background study) as evidence of absence (that the government did not conduct a background study).

It is true that the government has so far released only a summary of its diagnoses and reform measures.

But does this automatically imply that the government did not conduct a background study? Had the government prepared the Reform Agenda without a background study, it would show up in the quality. The diagnoses would be wrong and the reform measures would not be targeted at the binding constraints facing the economy. If so, why don’t we direct our criticism to such substantive issues as the quality of the reforms instead of spreading a conspiracy theory about who might be behind it?

Other critics assert that it is not homegrown, because it is similar “to a typical IMF program[me] for reforming developing countries” or it is similar “in language and approach to that advocated by the World Bank and the IMF for many years”. By the logic of these critics, anything that resembles an IMF or World Bank policy prescription should have come from these institutions and cannot be considered homegrown.

In other words, a reform agenda that aims to safeguard macro-financial stability through prudent macroeconomic policies cannot be homegrown, because the IMF tends to advocate for similar policies. By the same token, any reform that focuses on promoting private sector development cannot be homegrown, because the World Bank advocates for liberal and private sector oriented policies. These are ideologically motivated criticisms and not reasoned arguments. Sound macroeconomic management and private sector development are almost universally accepted desirable economic policy goals and are not proprietary policies of the IMF and the World Bank.

Even if the government admits that the Reform Agenda was prepared with support from international organisations, would this mere fact discredit the value of the reforms? The important issue is whether the government is in the driver’s seat in setting policy priorities and goals, and not whether it has utilized technical support from foreigners. In fact, many developing countries, including China and India, actively utilize technical support from international organisations.

With this spirit, let me offer my two cents view on the contents of the Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda, focusing on whether it has identified the right set of challenges, reform priorities and goals.

Most of us would agree with the goals of the government’s reform agenda: job creation, inclusive growth, poverty reduction and paving a path to prosperity. The debate is on identification of key bottlenecks to achieving these goals and the policy priorities needed to address them.

On the diagnoses of the bottlenecks, I agree with the government’s assessment that growing macroeconomic imbalances, such as foreign exchange (forex) shortages, inflation, limited access to finance and a high debt burden are threats to the sustainability of the country’s economic progress.

The forex shortage has become so chronic that it is affecting every sector of the economy, including those that are not known to be forex intensive. We are not fully utilizing the industrial zones, upon which billions of Birr has been invested, in most part because the forex shortage has become binding and manufacturers could not easily access forex for imports of raw materials.

Many foreign investors, who have been attracted by Ethiopia’s success in building infrastructure and human capital, are sitting on the fence, waiting until the forex problem is resolved. Getting forex through the banking system has become so difficult that even legitimate importers are resorting to informal means. Consequently, the spread between the official and the parallel exchange rates has widened significantly to about 40pc recently.

Inflation has been running at about 15.5pc a year, on average, for the past 15 years. For one’s purchasing power to have remained the same over the past 15 years, her income should have grown at 15.5pc a year. Unfortunately, income growth for the majority of the population has been so sluggish that their purchasing power has been crushed. Such a high rate of inflation, which has continued to climb in recent months, is also a deterrent to private investment and future growth. Investors cannot plan and commit to long-term projects with confidence if prices are unstable.

Access to finance is also an important issue. Ethiopia is one of the least banked countries in the world with only about 35pc of the adult population having a bank account in 2017, compared to 81pc in Kenya and 59pc in Uganda. As the government’s presentation shows, access to finance stands as one of the main obstacles to doing business, in part due to low domestic savings but also because the government has been crowding out the private sector. We cannot expect the private sector to expand business and create jobs for the rapidly growing labour force if it has access to only a third of the economy’s limited financial resources.

Finally,  close to 40pc of the country’s scarce foreign exchange earned through exports of goods and services (or about 55pc of exports of goods) goes to service our burgeoning external debt. In addition to limiting the government’s ability to borrow further from external lenders, high external debt distress, which is considered one of the early warnings of external crisis, discourages private investment as it creates uncertainty.

The government’s identification of structural and institutional bottlenecks is, however, not comprehensive enough. There is no question about the importance of already identified bottlenecks, such as access to reliable electricity, corruption and government inefficiency, poor internet service and inefficient logistics. The problem is with critical bottlenecks that are omitted from the document, including limitations of the land policy, poor contract enforcement, and (perceived) lack of an independent judiciary system.

The importance of contract enforcement and an independent judiciary is a no-brainer as investors need to have confidence in the independence of the judiciary and its ability to enforce contracts before committing their capital to long-term investment.

On land policy, the government’s reform agenda appears to acknowledge only the procedural difficulties with respect to lease rights. The fundamental problem is, however, the ruling party’s long-held ideological stance, which is also engraved in the Constitution, regarding land ownership. The success of the government’s Reform Agenda in certain areas could be limited if there is no change in land policy.  Without allowing farmers to use their land as collateral for borrowing, I do not see much success in promoting access to finance to rural areas, which is one of the key objectives of the government. Research also shows that land tenure and ownership affect agricultural productivity.

Macroeconomic reforms are clearly outlined and well-targeted to the identified imbalances. However, the structural and sectoral reform priorities look incomplete and lack clarity and specificity.

For instance, the document is not specific enough on contemplated measures to improve governance of public institutions, implementing the telecom sector reform and logistics reform.  Similarly, the plan to develop a legal framework to allow farmers to lease land use rights is not clear, since famers already have the legal right to lease their land. In general, there is a need to clarify how the new structural and sectoral reforms differ from existing policies and practices and how the reforms will transform the priority sectors.

In addition, key structural reforms such as judicial, the commercial law, and civil service reforms are missing. While the government appears to be making headway on judicial reforms and revising the commercial law, the failure of the Economic Reform Agenda to even acknowledge these important areas shows lack of synergy between the economic and legal reform agendas. The document is also tight-lipped on civil service reform, which is critical for modernising the institutional and policy frameworks – one of the key goals of the Agenda.

From the time frame of the Reform Agenda (which is three years) and its emphasis on macroeconomic reforms, it sounds that the priority for the government for the next three years is to correct macroeconomic imbalances. This is understandable considering the fact that macroeconomic imbalances cannot be ignored as they can quickly deteriorate. Furthermore, macroeconomic reforms can be considered low hanging fruit, as they can be implemented easily, most of them with a stroke of a pen.

Structural and institutional reforms, on the other hand, take time as they involve changes in institutional capacity and culture. Hence, I concur with the approach to focus on macroeconomic reforms as a near-term priority while gearing up effort toward addressing structural and institutional challenges over the long haul.

The authorities have stated that they are working on a longer term (10 years) development agenda. If so, I hope to see more granularity and comprehensiveness on structural reforms in the upcoming long-term reform and development agenda.

Appreciation: Good Culture to Cultivate

Posted on by Web Master

We live in an era where people do not like to appreciate others. Most are losing the capacity to distinguish a noble act from political ideology or differences. Often Ethiopian society does not appreciate individuals as it should. We are in the sort of culture that magnifies the sad and the bad, not the good.

Our society generally judges negatively those who achieve something and seek recognition rightfully. Having confidence in oneself is subtly mocked, which leads to low self-esteem and national inefficiency. People work hard to be the same as the person next to them, because having a different idea or aspiring to do things differently is perceived as arrogance or odd.

Society is trying to create people who act and think the same, which is unnatural. Even if we do not recognise it now, the negative long-term consequences of such an attitude are immeasurable.

Believing in our natural abilities to accomplish anything that we put our heart and mind to makes us fruitful change makers. Acknowledging achievements should not be considered arrogance. Disregarding this could hamper our personal and professional growth, not to mention the country’s development.

Research shows that people with truncated self-worth tend to see the world as a hostile planet and themselves as its victims. As a result, they are reluctant to express and assert themselves, miss out on experiences and opportunities and feel powerless to change things for the better.

Identifying oneself with negative thoughts such as powerlessness and hiding accomplishments is perceived to be humility. It is society’s way of knocking down the individual capacity in us with a version that conforms to fruitlessness.

People are fine with everything until a person starts recognising their good deeds. Appreciating oneself or others is never seen constructively. Perceiving oneself as a unique, special and valuable person is considered a wrong and exaggerated perception of oneself.

Over the weekend, I was watching Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD), who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, give a live televised address during his book launching ceremony. I could not help but notice that he was struggling to bluntly speak about his achievement of winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace deal with Eritrea making Ethiopia the 6th African country after Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Liberia and Ghana to win the Nobel Prize. It’s great that he wants to give the credit to the Ethiopian people, but that should not come at the expense of his achievement. His efforts to bring peace and harmony between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which had developed enmity over two decades, was indeed a big achievement.

As a victim of the Ethio-Eritrea War who grew up apart from my mother and who lost young cousins and relatives from Eritrea, I am very happy to see that the Prime Minister got recognised for choosing peace over hostility, justice over political grandstanding.

The peace now will not bring back the perished lives from both sides, but it brought new hope and a bright future for the two nations. It is a new start for the two nations not to repeat what they have done in the past and not to fail their public once more.

No doubt that Ethiopia has a long way to go, and there is so much to be done to bring unity within the country and to come out of stubborn poverty. But this does not mean that we should not recognise and appreciate progress. The existence of other massive problems within the country should not hide the fix made somewhere. Progress does not come overnight, but it springs up from every great, consistent and intentional act that can bring practical solutions to problems.

Individual efforts should be highlighted so that society can learn we all have our individual roles to play to achieve a common good. We need to take ourselves out of the group mentality that takes credit for the hard work of individuals or takes the blame for the bad deeds of others. It is by doing this that we can get out of this mess once and for all and take responsibility for our actions not in groups but individually. This is how the developed nations prospered. They tap into individual potential and motivate others to rise as well.

Progress is attained when we all do worthwhile things for ourselves and our country and stay committed to those valuable goals. Leaders should encourage this rather than undermine it. The strength to make improvements in our society must come from deep within the very core of our individual being.

If we do not recognise the good deeds in ourselves and in others, we will never be able to see more progress. Despite political differences, all achievements should not be denied by anyone.

We will do a service to ourselves if we never hesitate to appreciate others and change self-limiting cultures. It is important to become conscious of our attitude and guide our focus toward encouraging enlightening actions. We must admit that we all have our talents, skills and abilities that make us extraordinary individuals. Incorporating this awareness into our attitude and personality not only helps us appreciate the good in us but also in other people as well.

 

 

Quit the Blame Game

Posted on by Web Master

I don’t know how many of us attribute our failures and misfortunes to other people and circumstances. It is safe to say I am one of those people. What I often attribute is actually my misfortunes and I usually blame other people.

It is usually petty stuff like I have indigestion and I blame my aunt for making me eat a big meal and insisted on feeding me even though I could have said no and refused to eat. I quit my job and it’s my then-boyfriend now husband’s fault because I could not focus on work and all I wanted to do was spend time with him. The real reason was I was unhappy with my job.

I couldn’t fall asleep because I have a lot on my mind and the TV happens to be on and something interesting caught my ears. Of course, I blame the damn TV for my lack of sleep.  I blame everyone including myself; at times more myself than others for my lack of call it purpose, money, job, wit and everything else I feel like I need to have in my life.

I also happen to know someone who attributes her misfortunes to others. For instance, last time this person was changing the light bulb, it exploded in her face. She was not hurt, but she was in shock. You would think this was an accident. But she was so angry that she started blaming the person who told her to buy the bulb in the first place. “If he hadn’t insisted I buy and change it, this would have never happened,” she said. She even made it sound like the guy purposely told her to buy and change the bulb knowing very well that the bulb was going to explode in her face – as if that was the grand design of the fellow. And being the hypocrite that I am, I said: “First of all, it isn’t his fault; and second of all, stuff happens. Get over it.” But later I found myself thinking if I would have reacted the same way to the problem. I might not have confronted the guy, but I would have made him responsible somehow, especially if the pieces of the bulb from the explosion had harmed me.

I was watching a show the other day that showed a surfer that was hit by a car when he was trying to run after another friend. Later he was taken to the hospital and was told he would never be able to surf again unless he got a very expensive surgery.

The surfer had his entire life planned out. He was going to get a scholarship and go to college and buy his mom a house. But life gets a mind of its own, and the universe has its own way of unfolding. These dreams did not happen for the surfer.

But when the friend came to the hospital to visit him, he was not mad at him. He did not blame him. He was grateful that his friend was trying to raise money for the surgery. Most of us in that position would have reacted differently. We would have said, “I am in this mess, because of you, and now I don’t have a future, which is your fault. You trying to raise money for my surgery doesn’t mean anything considering you’re the one who caused the accident in the first place.”

But not this guy, when asked what he planned to do now that surfing is out of the picture, he said, “find a way to get the surgery, get better and start surfing again. I am not going to give up.”

How many of us share this optimistic view with the surfer? How many of us take full responsibility for whatever happened to us and pick ourselves up and try again?

Because, come to think of it, blaming others for one’s misfortunes takes one nowhere. It is called a misfortune for a reason. Other people cannot really do anything about it even if they want to. You are the only person who can either make or break you. Yes, other people can help, but they cannot do the job for you.

The victim mentality will not get us anywhere, but reacting to our problem as one of the setbacks in life that we can overcome puts us in the driver’s seat. We can spin the wheel the way we like and know which routes to take to get to our destination. Of course, accidents happen, but these are glitches. I think life gets much better if we start taking credit for our failures instead of attributing them to other external factors we have no control over.

This does not mean one has to be overly self-critical and take the blame for everything that is wrong in life. There are certain things no one has control over and even some which are beyond one’s ability to perceive. However, for most things in life, human beings are the architects of their own lives if they choose to quit the blame game and take responsibility.

 

ZOMBIELAND: AN UNINSPIRED SEQUEL

Posted on by Web Master

When Ruben Fleischer made Zombieland in 2009, he was obviously inspired. The only name-actor in the movie was Woody Harrelson, while Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone were still only moderately popular and needed to prove themselves. And while an innumerable amount of Zombie movies had come out since the 1960s, they were still restricted to the horror genre in popularity. Armed with a clever and refreshing plot, Zombieland was plenty entertaining.

In the past decade though, Zombie movies have become mainstream. We have had 134 episodes of The Walking Dead and Brad Pitt’s expensive World War Z. Zombies have become so tedious even Jim Jarmusch and a cast including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Iggy Pop could not resuscitate it in The Dead Don’t Die.

What chance did Zombieland: Double Tap have then?

In fact, Double Tap is so anxious about its chances of being entertaining that the film begins with a narration that thanks the audience for choosing the movie over all the other Zombie offerings out there. When a film thanks the audience in its opening scene for watching it, it is not a good sign.

The film opens with Columbus (Eisenberg) identifying the various Zombie mutations ever since the outbreak. There is the “Homer,” which are not bright, the “Hawking,” which are very smart, and the “Ninja,” which are fond of sneaking up on people. Columbus, Tallahassee (Harrelson), Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) have an easy time defeating all of them to set up shop at the White House, which had been abandoned ever since the outbreak.

Unlike the characters in The Walking Dead, the foursome do not look beat-up. Not at all. They seem like they shower, shampoo, shave and get haircuts regularly. Neither do they seem to have been perturbed psychologically by the loss of their family and relatives, the annihilation of the human population and the breakdown of civilisation.

Their problems are actually not that gloomy. Not once in the movie do they talk about a lack of resources they must have been facing in a zombie apocalypse. In fact, a decade since the outbreak, supermarkets are still fully staffed and the convenience food there has apparently not expired.

They even still get electricity, which Columbus justifies by saying, “as long as it keeps raining, the dams keep giving us power.”

It is almost as if the apocalypse does not affect them in any other way than occasionally sending rather easily killable zombies their way. This kind of lightheartedness might have seemed fresh in the first movie, now the whole thing just seems ridiculous.

Probably as a result, the main conflict of the film arises after Wichita runs away from Columbus because she is afraid of a long-term commitment and Red Rock runs away from Tallahassee because he is an overbearing father, and she wants a boyfriend now. It is very easy to mistake the film for a rom-com instead of a horror-comedy.

Double Tap is one in a long line of films that give genre movies a bad name. The roots of cinema never really lied in art but in entertainment, and that is why the plethora of genres have a lighthearted appeal more often than not. Drama may conquer the awards season, but it is making a unique and entertaining genre movie that is the hardest.

And perhaps the most underrated but highly complicated genre is the horror-comedy. This should be obvious as it attempts to combine two highly opposing emotions – fear and joy – in one feature film. There are a handful of good horror-comedy movies in the over a century old history of cinema.

From Evil Dead 2 to Shaun of the Dead and from Bride of Frankenstein to Cabin in the Woods and Slither, this genre is probably the most delightful. The original Zombieland was a fun and endlessly watchable addition to the lighter side of cinema, while this sequel is merely a bad imitation of the original.

Meditating About Leaders : the Ones We See

Posted on by Web Master

Reality is prone to illusory manipulations. Leaders, in general, are torn between the poles of reality and illusion. Somewhere in between must be where vision resides. This is all an attempt to make sense of a psychological bubble. What is real? And for whom?

Dealing with reality is a tough task. We are living in uncertain times. We are not sure what happens next. The future, which is never there, has ceased to provide its pseudo sense of hope. That there is a future and we will be in it are nice ideas with no traction in reality. We seem to be surprised to wake up to the fact that the entire constructed world around us is a mere idea.

The very existence of people, friends and places is fragmenting in front of our own eyes. The way we are bombarded with endless stimuli is triggering our worst fears and anxieties. In such times when all the unconscious is out there with no inhibition, our internal instinct is wired in such a way that we look up to leaders, and at times we actually look for them to save us from all the fear.

Leadership is a tricky thing. It is the product of our wild, creative and developing mind. The trick is that leaders are our own inventions. They are created by our various states of mind. A religious leader and a political leader, for example, are created by two different states of mind, spiritual and material states of mind. As a result, we have the capacity to hold different types of leaders in our mind at the same time. This is the source of both the comfort and despair that occupy us every time we think about leaders.

Our ability to reconcile the different and opposing types of leaders in our mind will determine who we will decide to follow and also who we will feel safe enough to trust. One, of course, has to bear in mind that one leader could have multiple qualities that would add to the complexity.

If we are the inventors and followers of leaders, then it is a mystery that we almost always feel a sense of strangeness toward them. When we look at leaders, we see complete strangers. They do not seem to come from our own backyard. Some seem to have lost their entire reality testing. They engage in their own “cow in the sky” fantasy show. While others are lost in the trenches of reality that they forget the presence of others, let alone the truth that they are leaders of people.

We see self-proclaimed leaders calling themselves with curious names like “influencers,” “motivators,” “opinion leaders” and the like. A deeper look shows that they influence for their own interest, motivate for achieving their own goal and they are highly opinionated with no real opinion.

These leaders are everywhere. They exist in the abstract, and they feel that they have the answer to the most important questions of life. They speak with the absolute belief that they know everything and with equal arrogance that nobody else does.

They act like the world was created when they showed up. In a way, that is true for all of us, but under normal developmental circumstances we are supposed to out grow it. One of our childish convictions is that the world is created by us and for us, then by our parents for us and then of course reality and the constructed world kick in.

Self-appointed and self-proclaimed leaders either have an arrested maturational development at an earlier stage or have regressed to a previous developmental stage. Technology may, inadvertently, have created a space for such regression where people may have free rein without the constant parental monitor that shapes and creates a mature individual.

We see illusory leaders as well. Their sole existence seems to be to constantly misperceive reality, misrepresent truth and misguide their followers. These are the most fascinating bunch, because you cannot tell why their perceptual depth is so distorted. The essence of time is lost to them. The simple notions of past, present and future are merged into one. When they talk about the past they do it as if they were in it. The future does not exist for them, and the present is constrained to their size.

They have no problem with reality, but they pick, choose and distort as they see fit to their purpose. Their interpretation of history is their own. They are stimulated by sensation, but they confuse the person for the shadow.

Their development seems to be arrested at the make-believe stage. They will believe and force others to believe in what they think is true, effectively depriving their followers the freedom to trust their own sensory experiences.

There are also grounded leaders. I have sympathy for them. I assume that most leaders in our country will fall under this category. Reality has overwhelmed them. They worry about the immediate environment. They cannot shift their gaze to the future for fear that the ground on which they are standing will swallow them. They are paralyzed by the limitations around them on one side and the collective expectation on the other. Their most important skill is tinkering, fixing the ground at times literally. These are leaders who got “parentified” quite early in their development.

Considering the political history of our country over the past several decades, this should not come as a surprise. The best and the brightest of the nation have gone through unexplainable tragedy. This has left a huge void to be filled with children. This must have forced the creation of grounded leaders – leaders who have energy but lack the know-how. They lead with what they know, and there is the possibility that they may have led the nation into the ground, all with good intention. These leaders suffer the most, because they do not have followers. They have on-lookers.

The rare species of leaders are the visionaries. They are a rare breed in our country for a good reason. They have the habit of showing up at the wrong times when people are neither ready nor interested in accommodating them. They are always in danger of leaving their followers behind, as some would have trouble sharing the vision. They see beyond the ground reality, so they are the opposite of the grounded leaders. They do not only see the future, but they run toward it and crash.

A leader’s vision may end up being a follower’s nightmare in the transition. The reality of leadership is such that you cannot lead without people. Where people are will determine where your vision can go. One may go a longer way with no vision at the right time than with the right vision at the wrong time. Extreme visionaries may have stayed in the fantasy world of childhood where one child could play multiple roles at once. The omnipotence of infancy will sneak into adulthood. The narcissist child in all of us may show up as a visionary leader.

All sorts of combinations and permutations of the various types is possible. One may also add more types and categories. What I did is just for the sake of a mental exercise to help me settle my anxiety about the leaders we see in our everyday life. I also firmly believe that we all are leaders one way or another, so leaders are not the just “the other” we follow. My wish is that we will see more grounded visionaries.

Who are grounded visionaries? Grounded visionaries are the way to go if we are to transition to a civilized society. They will have the essence of time and understand that in the infinite time we are finite beings. The present is as much the consolidation of the past as it is the springboard to the future. They recognize that stagnation through compartmentalization of time is a regression.

They also understand that ground realities are developmental. We may be able to speed up development, but we cannot out jump reality. Just because we live in the age of information and disruption, it does not mean that we can disrupt our way into prosperity. If it took the industrial world a few centuries, it is going to take us some time, because development is incremental even with the help of technology.

The great thing about grounded visionaries is, as much as they are grounded, they are not fixed to the ground. Most importantly they have the capacity to differentiate between what can be changed from what needs to be tolerated. Their most significant attraction will be that they will have no problem in getting followers. People will follow them, some for the ground, some for the vision, some just for the ride and some just because they do not want to be left behind. If we all are in a bus that is grounded to reality and have a destination, the bumps are temporary, but we are going to a good place. If the drivers are trustworthy. Who would not board such a bus?

But how do we reach there? What should happen for us to invent grounded visionaries? We are the innovators of our leaders. When they go bad, we have some hand in it. We do it by omission, commission and indifference.

We are the ones who can make it right. What power do we have? Are we not the helpless and innocent victims of bad leadership?

We have a lot more power than we think. We need to wake up to the reality that we are living in a postmodern world where power is no more only hierarchical but circulates within and among us. We permit what is done to us mostly without knowing it.

Most of our current problems are basically a result of bad and unaccountable leadership. Leaders do whatever they want and what do we do when they continually misbehave?

We never question them. Why? We never ask them what gives them the right to monger fear between us. We never confront them with the question: what is in it for them.

When someone is suffering or injured or dies, we have to ask all leaders, but especially the self-appointed ones, what is in it for them?

We all will benefit from challenging them rather than fighting over what they said or did. This probably is one way of creating grounded visionaries: leaders who ensure that the backyard they come from remains safe while they move to the future. Even with an ambitious jump, one is always bound to land.

Misunderstanding Civil Disobedience

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I have a distinct memory of a conversation I had with a friend many moons ago. He is a few years older than myself and someone we looked up to. He was one of the top leaders in our district of the then-popular political movement the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Party (EPRP). When the Dergue’s offensive against EPRP was unleashed, my friend was among only a few leaders in the district that miraculously lived to tell the story after the others were taken to be shot and killed.

Our conversation took place years later after he was released from many years of imprisonment. I was admiringly speaking about the strong popular support the EPRP enjoyed, especially among the youth. He shocked me by retorting: “It was not youth support. It was mostly juvenile delinquency.”

His point, which I later understood only after looking up what the term meant, was that most of the young people that were supporting the EPRP did not do so because they understood what the party stood for. A lot of them probably did not even read, let alone understand what the party manifesto said. They probably had no idea the kind of government it would form and what life would be like if the party won power.

However, at that age, the excitement of being in the middle of the action, breaking windows without it being thought of as breaking the law was just too exciting to pass up. The self-importance and relevance that comes from feeling that one is a part of a big movement that is seen to be cool is irresistible. That is the way young people are all over the world.

It is the role and responsibility of those that claim to be leaders to make sure that their young followers understand the difference between civil disobedience and lawlessness.

Henry David Thoreau is considered the father of the term “civil disobedience,” as he coined it in his 1848 essay. It is an act of passive, non-violent resistance to unjust laws passed by government or an occupying power. The aim is to highlight the unjustness of the status quo and force a concession from the government or occupying power by withdrawing cooperation and resisting unjust oppression.

Many famous movements in history have used this tactic to effect social change. The Boston tea party as one of the movements that contributed to the American Revolution, Gandhi’s resistance to British Rule in India, the US civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the resistance to apartheid in South Africa can be cited as movements that used civil disobedience successfully to fight oppression and bring about seismic change in their societies.

The common feature in all these movements is the strong moral character of their leaders. They had an unshakable commitment to peaceful resistance and abhorred violence. After all, if the resistance is not peaceful, it is just disobedience pure and simple. It is not civil.

Young people will always be attracted by action. It is the responsibility of leaders to rein in destructive youthful impulses and to not use them cynically to achieve political goals.

The other common feature of these leaders was that they had a vision for the future coexistence of people. They were not just focused on tearing down existing power structures. They had post victory plans for reorganising the society they were struggling to change, not a scorched earth policy that would permanently fracture it.

In current day Ethiopia, many claim to be leading political movements that are employing civil disobedience to bring change for their people. But it is hard to see how targeting civilians who have no say or power to change government policy with violence can be considered a just struggle. Even if they were to win everything they want, would it not be a hollow victory if it plants seeds that make coexistence between people nearly impossible?

 

 

Different Shades of Grey

Posted on by Web Master

It is never all about the matter of fact but the matter of one’s perspective. That is why the German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

Back in my college years, I had the chance to travel to the beautiful and sunny Mombasa. Having visited there with my mom, we spent most of our time there doing all the stuff tourists do while in the land of the foreign. One of the things that spoke to me loud and clear was my mom’s reaction toward the attire of the ladies at the beach. She said to me, “What kind of clothing is this? Is there no shame left in this world?”

A fellow traveler followed this comment from my mom by saying, “Isn’t your mom melting? It’s like 100 degrees,” pointing to the heavy cardigan my mom was rocking on the beautiful sunny day.

Perspective, which is a particular attitude toward regarding something, defines how one looks at the entire world. It defines what is scary, friendly or safe and secure, and determined by the way one is raised, by the movies one watches and songs one has heard. It is one of the hardest things to change, since it almost always has a deep and rock-hard foundation to something one holds dear.

In recent weeks we have had the chance to see just that. The Prime Minister recently released his book about unity just days after East African leaders and officials from home and outside the country inaugurated the park dedicated toward the same concept. And following this, whether the book has been read or not, whether the book has been reviewed or not and with little regard to the matter of fact, interpretations flew across the country and the continent.

While some people understood the concept of the book as an instrument that would bring the whole country together, still others, the same people who think that the Prime Minister did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, say this is just another way the premier is promoting himself for the entire world to see.

Even peace, the dream of every beauty pageant, has an entirely different meaning for whoever is looking at it or understanding it.

To this type of scenario, Shannon Alder says, “Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, ‘What else could this mean?’”

This perspective is also experienced when one gets the chance to leave one’s country for various reasons, including work or pleasure. Gestures, language, priorities and even voice alterations change their definition because of the mere fact that the perspectives change among the different sets of individuals spread across the universe.

One might either be the villain or the saint depending on how one reacts toward a certain situation in a certain place and time.

While some of the differences in perspectives might be too small to be considered significant, others could be reasons enough to start wars that claim the lives of thousands if not millions. They take away the middle ground and set the world in pure black or white. However, I, for one, am a true admirer of the beauty in the different shades of grey.

Robertson Davies explains the understanding of each other’s perspectives thus:  “A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”

Perspectives not only differ but also change with time and place.