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Month: September 2020

Like sheep to the slaughter Media

Posted on by Web Master

The media can be quite addictive. But we cannot help but participate in perpetuating its profound entanglement with our daily lives, spending our precious time glued to our screens when we could be living our lives.

A week ago, I had the chance to meet inspiring people at an orientation I was taking. Even though all of us came from different backgrounds and experiences, we had one thing in common – we are consumers of media.

One of the training participants told the story of the time she lost her job and the depression that attended it. She binge-watched TV all day, almost becoming mentally paralysed. But after taking some time to think and evaluate her circumstance, she decided to detach. This meant unplugging everything, including putting away her TV. After that, she was able to get back to her normal self and started going out and hunting jobs.

She could not believe that TV could have such a negative impact on her. It was only ironic that the orientation was for an anchoring job on TV.

But the effects are undeniable. I relate to her story because there was a time in my life when all I did was watch TV. It did make me feel useful, distracting me from thinking about my future, but I felt like I was throwing my life away. The frightening part is that the media, in many cases, is only a tool for selling goods.

The advertisements between every programme create unwilling consumers even when we have no knowledge of it or have no initial intention of buying a product. Food adverts are the worst. They make us crave the food – which is usually junk food – through visual cues. It is like cigarette ads – which are banned almost everywhere because of their ability to create cravings – but legal in the case of food advertisements.

It is not just food. It is a whole host of goods and services that we often do not need but are advertised to make us believe they are a means of securing a certain status. They turn us into beings that attempt to fulfill their satisfaction through material gains. But materialistic tendencies are likely to create an appetite that can never be filled.

With advances in technology, however, the media has evolved. TV and radio are now considered traditional media. The new kid on the block is social media, which seems to have perfected the creation of easily accessible but heavily addictive content into a tool for selling goods and services.

The Social Dilemma, a Netflix documentary that tells us much of what we already know, stresses this point. One of the participants in the orientation that saw the film said she became afraid to log onto her social media platforms afterwards. She felt like her every move was being monitored.

The film tells of how the various social media platforms were purposely designed to make us addicts. The impact is worse on the youth – they turn to it for validation, proof of their social worth. The people who used to work for various social media platforms and were featured in the documentary talk about how they do not let their children have accounts.

“If you are getting something for free then you are the product,” a sentence that stuck with me after our discussions on the effect of media.

Ever noticed how the items we search on Google or content we “liked” show up in different forms, perhaps as an ad, on our social media accounts? How do they know we want these things?

It is because these platforms gather our information and exchange it among themselves to sell to companies that in turn want us to buy something. Technically, to the social media companies, we are not just the customers. We are the products.

On the trailers to the documentary on YouTube, the comments show an acknowledgement of the intents of the social media companies. All of us seem to know what is happening, and yet cannot help but engage.

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software,” said one commentator, quoting Edward Tufte, an American statistician.

We should remain optimists nonetheless. Media is not bad as long as we know how to limit our engagements. We can use these platforms to learn, entertain and interact with others. Friendship and relationships that last are born from these interactions, and some experiences might even change our lives for the better.

Many also use media to educate and inspire others. Social media has been used as a force for social change, with people speaking truth to power with the knowledge that they have been freed of the monopolised nature of traditional media. It is thus up to us to self-regulate our consumption of what we find on our screen.

Ineffective Boards: At the Root of Unsuccessful Organisations

Posted on by Web Master

Public policies, precise in their formulation, might be executed to produce unintended effects or fall prey to corruption and ineptitude. The problem might, in the end, be attributed to lack of resources or political malfeasance, but all of these mean only one thing – poor governance.

Governance is defined as how societies make and implement collective decisions through the establishment of polices, strategic decisions and activities for the effectiveness of an institution. Effective governance greatly assists the systems and organisation, as it allows a constructive conflict of ideas that find their resolution in the green lighting of the most optimal move forward, and in focused, integrated and synergistic approaches that preserve effective organisational structures.

Many organisations, representative of or owned by many shareholders, are governed through the establishment of boards that are empowered to make collective decisions and exert authority in a way that is strategic and significant to the organisation. Governing boards have the broad responsibility of protecting limited resources to accommodate the needs of the organisation and ensure their cost-effective utilisation. Such boards are in effect legally responsible governing bodies with an oversight role in setting the tone of the organisation and have a major say in its performance and effectiveness.

It is certainly true that few would then object to being board members. Indeed, it is a highly exclusive club. In most cases, the boards of organisations are made up of people who either have fame, riches or are well-connected. Whoever they may be though, their core responsibility remains the same – detect problems and suggest possible interventions.

It is thus the case that the circumstance under which an organisation fails without extreme negligence on the part of the governing board is rare. How effectively the organisation’s mission and true values are met is strongly correlated with the board-level responsibility in combating malfeasance – corruption, misaligned incentives, regulatory capture, conflicts of interest and nepotism – incompetence and poor planning.

In today’s environment, many misunderstandings about the role of governing boards exist. This probably arises from the controversies that board members are often immersed in. The paucity of board meetings due to other commitments, poor preparation when meetings do indeed happen, factions and personal feuds and competing priorities give such boards a bad name. The claim that members are there as favours given to them by powerful allies is not new and remains a potent force in casting doubt over firms’ and enterprises’ activities.

It is difficult to tease out the factors that make board members effective. But well-functioning members develop a climate of respect, trust and coherence. The highest-performing working boards also have progressive members that are flexible in their outlook and are not resistant to change. New ideas, new ways of thinking and flexibility should be embraced, especially in hard times, and the board should be able to reflect that. Besides, transparency, accountability, participation, integrity and capacity should be the centrepiece of the governance.

But such effectiveness is often undermined by personal and political interests. This makes most boards unresponsive to outside feedback, unable to take chances and dependent on managerial expertise for decision-making, making their oversight roles quite superficial. It also does not help that the members sometimes become so in conflict with one another that they begin to undermine one another.

It is time for some fundamentally new thinking about how boards should operate and are evaluated. We need to consider not only how we structure the work of a board but also how we manage the social system that a board actually is. Adherence to procedural rules and holding a progressive outlook is the more pressing need. They need to be determined, high-functioning working groups whose members trust and challenge one another and engage directly with the critical issues of the organisation to serve as value-adding entities.

Goodwill Hunting, in Vain

Posted on by Web Master

An underestimated political resource is goodwill. No amount of lyrically written laws, strictly defined checks and balances or vertical separation of powers can substitute it. It needs to exist between each side of the political aisle as a matter of principle for democracy to function.

Exemplifying this is the current state of politics in many parts of the world, including the United States. In the latter’s case, the matter was brought into sharp focus with the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away earlier this month.

Under the circumstances set forth by the US Constitution, filling her seat should not be a complicated issue. After all, the Supreme Court is supposed to be a body above politics. But politics is everywhere – and Supreme Court nominations are highly contested.

The issue was further complicated by the Republican-controlled Senate’s action back in 2016. The Senate, a legislative body with the power to confirm Supreme Court nominees with a simple majority, would not allow then-President Barack Obama to fill a bench vacancy.

Why?

Because it was an election year, according to the Republican Party, which insisted that an outgoing president should not be allowed to fill a seat. This set a precedent. By this reasoning, President Donald Trump should also not be allowed to push a nomination through the Senate, since he may lose the election slated to be held in early November this year.

But the politics of our time is a great deal more cynical than this. For the Republicans, the passing of Ginsburg, a highly regarded liberal justice, is an opportunity to expand the number of conservative judges sitting on the Supreme Court. It would be a significant political victory since the justices serve for life, and the highest court in the land will be leaning conservative for years, if not decades.

Moral compunction, here as in everywhere, is a political disadvantage, and the Republicans will have none of it.

“Americans re-elected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018, because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary,” said Senate leader Mitch McConnell, rationalising the party’s decision to go forward with Trump’s nomination.

McConnell’s reasoning is logically unsound. The Democrats, the opposition, do not believe it. The Republicans know that everyone knows that they are not sincere in their rationale.

What McConnell wanted to say is that they have no reason to extend goodwill to their contenders. This is war – a battle for the soul of the nation. It is not contention for power with what is good for the country at heart.

Laws, institutions and elections are in place to chasten the personal interests and political agendas of individuals and groups. It is to ensure that, whatever the circumstances, citizens will be protected from the excesses of the state and powerful entities.

But such checks could not possibly cover every single facet of political and economic engagement. Laws and institutions are at best vehicles. They still require someone at the wheel, willing to drive responsibly and determined not to run over someone even when they see it fit to advancing their political agendas.

Ethiopia’s story is one where almost every contender refuses to extend goodwill to their political opponents. What we have is a political culture where state power is used primarily for the advancement of political goals. It is an instrument for accumulating influence, economic rent and instrumentalising a political agenda at the expense of every possible opponent.

What we have is only a little bit removed from the might-makes-right politics of old when almost every group attempted to rob their contenders of the right to fair play and exercise agency. No sort of constitution will address this. The only solution is infusing the political culture with a sense of goodwill.

COVID-19 Reminds of Need to Humanise Global Patent System

Posted on by Web Master

The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted the economic and political status quo besides its immediate health impacts. It has exposed the gaps and weaknesses of our national and international systems. Similarly, it has also made us question the effectiveness of the existing global legal and innovative structures, especially in the public medical science and public health arena.

Since its outbreak, the virus has been puzzling scientists. We still do not have a clear understanding of how to curb its spread. Many, however, are convinced that the ultimate solution is to develop a vaccine. As a result, several medical actors across the globe are in a rush to come up with a safe and effective vaccine. Thus far, there has been promising progress.

Despite the positive efforts to develop a vaccine, however, the significance of making the vaccine and medical supplies accessible to all seems to be neglected. This has in large part to do with medical patents and innovation.

The recognition of COVID-19 as a global pandemic compels integrated and innovative measures to protect people’s human security. Of such measures, utilising inventions and innovations sheltered through intellectual property laws is among the most important.

The rationale for global intellectual property (IP) rights protection is for the common good – public disclosure of innovations in return for the exclusive right of use for a limited period. This is believed to promote innovation. Biopharmaceutical companies thrive on this notion.

Patents provide legitimate rights to inventors to prohibit others from utilising, selling, exporting or importing their inventions for a fixed period until they become generic drugs. Patents have become the emerging institutions that regulate the disruptive aspects of the commercial use of biopharmaceutical products. This means that they are crucial in terms of influencing the way benefits are engendered and distributed in the biopharmaceutical industry.

While patents can be enormously important economic assets for firms, the system allows for the unequal distribution and concentration of patent and imbalanced share of benefits obtained from medical inventions. This is exacerbated by the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement that enables firms to control markets and place restrictions on access to and utilisation of their products and technologies.

The contemporary IP system appears to silently bar judicious use of medical inventions to save lives, especially during pandemics such as COVID-19. Arguably, our current global medical-industrial complex can adequately address the public health crisis. The main question is what happens if a patented treatment proves to be effective against COVID-19. The excluding nature of our patent system, unless addressed by curative measures, could hamper worldwide usage of and accessibility to forthcoming vaccines.

In the past, the global public health system was blamed for its failures associated with the H1N1 virus, which was responsible for the swine flu outbreak. This included the inaccessibility of the treatment, monopoly, unreasonably high costs and unequal distribution.

In the same token, we already are seeing pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi expressing plans to provide medical supplies primarily to the country – the United States – that is paying for them. This is although the firm is a French company. This has been opposed by some, including the European Union and French officials that argued that the vaccine should be a global public good. Such controversies follow on the heels of the unequal distribution of medical supplies such as testing kits, respirators or medical-grade masks across the globe.

To have legitimate concern regarding the behaviour of the profit-driven global medical-industrial complex to provide satisfactory access to new biopharmaceutical inventions for all is justified. Private “owners” of the inventions can restrict access based on commercial considerations. As a result, higher prices for biopharmaceuticals and other healthcare inventions could prevent low-income consumers in developing countries from obtaining life-saving medications and equipment.

To overcome such a risk, multilateral governance and regional integration are required. The association between IP rights, innovation and public health needs to be anchored in promoting inclusive innovation that takes into consideration the needs of the vulnerable as well. This is important to ensure that the medical industry considers all of us, from the medical treatment development stage to the distribution of medicines.

Leaders, international organisations and global influencers have come together and are calling for a global agreement on COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to be under the umbrella of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“Only a people’s vaccine – with equality and solidarity at its core – can protect all of humanity and get our societies safely running again,” they said in a unanimous letter. “A bold international agreement cannot wait.”

Canada has made an exemplary move by introducing a COVID-19 bill that allows the commissioner of patents to authorise the Federal Ministry of Health and others to use patented inventions without legal consequence as needed in fighting the pandemic. Governments in Chile, Ecuador, Germany and Israel have also taken similar steps. Organisations such as the Medecins Sans Frontiers are also voicing their support for any future COVID-19 vaccines to be sold at cost and be made accessible to all.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has also indicated that a COVID-19 vaccine must be considered a global good. Although there are various efforts to develop a treatment locally for COVID-19 in Africa – from Madagascar to Ethiopia – there is a shortage of resources to auction for them in a competitive global market and a human and technological inadequacy to develop an effective vaccine.

Although these efforts are to be appreciated, a strong and unified global coordinated effort is needed from all governments. This requires balancing context-specific responses to respond to occurrences that threaten fundamental human security needs. Yet for governments to adequately fulfil their responsibility, a global system that duly makes access a priority needs to be instituted. This also calls for the use of a rights-based approach as an underlying justification for interventions aimed at protecting the public and as a catalyst by state and non-state actors to strengthen their capacity to respond and be accountable in protecting, respecting and fulfilling human rights.

The urgency of saving lives, especially during pandemics, entails humanising the contemporary patent laws and innovation systems as well as engineering sound and proactive protection schemes. The epidemic, here too, is acting as a dire reminder of how broken global systems and institutions are.

In Defense of the Infamous Eucalyptus Tree

Posted on by Web Master

Confused with my earlier dotty categorisation of trees, as though they all are the same, except in looks, I was at an impasse to tell what differentiates them. Then I started to vet what comes first to my mind, something intertwined with my formative days.

I stared at a 1960s aerial image of our village, where I am from. There is a glimpse of the house where I was born, impeding a road that was yet to come, with all the eucalyptus trees rising from the rich shady groves. Who knows, at the exact moment that photo was taken, I was bathing in the morning sun, in my mom’s lap, breathing the trees’ scented air.

This is not to mention the ambience set by the eucalyptus trees at the main entrance of Hilton Addis, reminiscent of my childhood days. The sun back then was very different.

I cannot think of my childhood without it, nor is it easy to reminisce about Addis Abeba without them. The genus of trees is laced with stories of how they were introduced in Ethiopia during the reign of Emperor Menilek II from Australia. They were considered valuable for sourcing wood, for fuel and constructing mud houses, for the new but growing capital city – Addis Abeba.

It was not hard to see its appeal. Its renown as easily the tallest of all trees – currently, the record for the tallest of them all is an almost 100m Australian tree called Centurian.

A large, fast-growing evergreen, indigenous to Australia, it is the most planted tree species across the world, owing to its fast growth and rising demand for paper and plywood. There remains a widening gap between supply and demand, creating an incentive for planting it instead of agricultural crops.

But the tree is considered bad for the environment in its own right as well. It drains water resources, enhances soil erosion, depletes the soil of its nutrients, and has the unusual inability to provide habitat or food for native wildlife. Neither is it appreciated for changing the soil’s acidity levels, reducing the diversity and productivity of understory species. This is why the tree is considered invasive and shines a light on why planners in Addis Abeba have come to regret the decisions of their predecessors.

But the eucalyptus never gave in; it threw its hat into the ring with a strong statement. It has too many advantages to be placed aside. Extenuating remarks in its manifold environmental and socioeconomic benefits swirl. It grows fast, requires minimal care, thrives in poor environmental and ecological areas, is resistant to environmental stress and diseases, and produces seeds easy to collect and sow.

It is also a safeguard against many, including farmers that are between a rock and a hard place on land unsuited to sustainable agriculture. Their answer could be eucalyptus trees, which can survive in some of the worst soil compositions, endure terrible weather conditions and still make themselves useful to meet the heavy demand for fuel, construction and furniture.

They also look great, a plus for a city that already has them. Take Entoto Mountain, which is made lush green by this genus of tree. Its aesthetic quality is revealed evermore by the landmark stride being made by the government to preserve public spaces as tourist attractions. The revamping of the area into Entoto Park is a showcase of the potential of the trees to espouse elegance.

It should thus be obvious that eucalyptus trees should not be discarded out of hand. As concluded from detailed studies, to avoid or minimise the pain from sitting on the horns of the eucalyptus dilemma, environmentalists, researchers and policymakers must hold hands to come to an understanding. They should, in fact, support growers, but with the caveat that the appropriate place to plant it – such as degraded land, steep slopes and waterlogging – are carefully selected.

As it is observed from the interactions between local communities and state forests, through the exploration of how it is affecting them and the underlying causes, the eucalyptus comes in handy in diffusing tensions between forest managers and surrounding communities.

As a result, illegal timber trading, which will always exist as long as the demand exists and will not be addressed through policing alone, can benefit from such interventions. It is only when the two parties come together, and the local communities are empowered, that the process of development and conservation of state forests can be realised.

As the pressure from population growth and poverty worsen, there will be no substitute for community participation in forest management.

Estimates on the amount of land that is currently covered by eucalyptus trees in Ethiopia stands at 500,000 hectares. This may seem like a huge number, but it is less than 0.5pc of the country’s entire land coverage. This is land that cannot just be rid of plants without consequences, thus the need to preserve them. There are also pieces of land suffering from soil erosion, and are inhabitable to almost any other type of tree. This is where the eucalyptus trees can help and contribute positively to the nation’s demand for timber in construction and bio-fuel.

 

In the Era of Mega Risks, Insurance Must Rise to Occasion

Posted on by Web Master

In as far as humans have existed, they have faced risks to their lives and the resources they depend on for survival. What is more, every journey, metaphorical or literal, has required taking on some risks. The more the possibility of hedging these risks, thus, the more likely one will take them.

This is why merchants and sailors are willing to traverse the high seas, braving adverse weather conditions and sea perils, to trade. Together with the availability for insuring one’s property, the appetite to trade grew side-by-side. Once the Europeans began developing it, and its importance to realising competitiveness was recognised, there have been leaps and bounds in the development of modern insurance and risk management theories, principles and philosophies.

Ferdinand Magellan might have faced the sea perils with no possible protection from financial loss, but since Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house where merchants were willing to underwrite one another, the world has not been the same.

The importance of insurance is re-asserting itself in 2020. Act of god accidents, from wildfires to tornadoes, and human-made disasters, including arguably the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, have been the main news of the year. We are now seeing a unique and turbulent time for insurers everywhere as a matter of the magnitude of impact and complexity of such risks. Insurers may, therefore, find themselves in a state of bewilderment and immersed in a dilemma on how this much can be insured.

But governments often find it to their advantage to ensure that their citizens are protected from loss during such times. This is why, in most of the world, health insurance is popular. People are willing to pay not just through their wallets to be insured but through the ballot box as well.

Unfortunately, putting in place an insurance industry able to protect not just operating risks, but acts of God, is easier said than done. Still, it leaves governments, including Ethiopia, with no other choice but to attempt to do as such.

The problem has been brought to the forefront recently by the flooding that is occurring in several parts of the country. Having led to the displacement of one million people and loss of property, its economic impact can only be mitigated through tailor-made insurance policies. This can be done through partnerships between the industry and the government.

Given that global weather conditions are predicted to get worse, this is a conversation that needs to be had. In more developed countries, it would be part of the national discourse. Politicians would argue and develop policy strategies on how such disasters could be insured and losses are protected.

Why can we not be doing this in Ethiopia? How is it possible that COVID-19 has not inspired a heated debate on the state of health insurance in Ethiopia, especially given how medical treatment has become prohibitively expensive these days?

Just as in need of discussions is the loss of life and property we witnessed as a result of political violence in various parts of the country. This is another risk that has become deeply perceptible in Ethiopia and that business would want to be protected against. Indeed, with strategic risk hedging, the financial losses can be compensated through a political and terrorism risk insurance policy.

What should be the response for this and other emerging risks? Should we insure them or not? If yes, at what price? What is the public’s perception of this? Whose responsibility is it?

These have to be answered with a sense of urgency. Both the government and insurance firms must learn from health-related risks after COVID-19, investing further in life and health insurance, as well as orienting focus toward coverage of natural disasters and political violence.

Insurers should work together in devising risk management programmes, mitigation strategies, building up the national re-insurer (Ethio Reinsurance), and advising the government on creating risk and disaster recovery programmes.

Fortunately, the government has been active in reforming the financial industry. Financial inclusion efforts, interest-free insurance, empowering Ethiopian Reinsurance, and green lighting micro-insurance companies have been important moves in the attempt to move forward.

Such reforms are critical for a world that is in shock due to the pandemic and natural disasters such as droughts, wildfires and floods. The insurance industry should thus take the role in developing a strategy, based on the National Bank of Ethiopia’s (NBE) guidelines, to find ways to respond to mega risks.

Risk mitigation is not just a way of protecting certain individuals and businesses from financial ruin. It has positive externalities across the economy and is critical to underwriting competitiveness and innovation.

Without a strong insurance industry, a modern economy cannot function. Its lack constitutes a missing link that will lead to businesses and individuals being wary of taking even the slightest of risks. It is not a choice to put it in place. It is a matter of economic survival.

Are Intellectuals Killing Convergence?

Posted on by Web Master

How the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will affect developing countries’ growth prospects will depend largely on how globalisation – and intellectual support for it – evolves in the pandemic’s aftermath. The prospects are not encouraging.

Even before the pandemic struck, the global merchandise export-to-GDP ratio had been declining for the first time since World War II, falling by about five percentage points since 2008 to about 20pc this year.

This is not the first time that the world has de-globalised. Between World War I and the eve of World War II world trade collapsed, and the export-to-GDP ratio fell from a peak of 16pc in 1913 to just over six percent.

In John Maynard Keynes’s memorable words, this contraction was the result of “the projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion.”

Today’s de-globalisation was brought on by other factors. For starters, new protectionist barriers have been erected, though not at a 1930s scale. The trade restrictions imposed by US President Donald Trump’s administration since 2017 have been relatively limited overall and targeted mainly at China. At the global level, they have been partly offset by ongoing new free trade agreements, such as the Economic Partnership Agreement that the European Union and Japan concluded in 2018.

Another, more important factor behind today’s de-globalisation is the fraying of global value chains, which itself is the result of China’s transformation from a small export-driven economy into a much larger economy more reliant on domestic demand. As such, the past decade can partly be seen as a period of normalisation after years of Chinese exceptionalism. But it was also clearly more than that. If normalisation were the only factor, the global export-to-GDP ratio would have merely flattened, with the share of exports ceded by China being taken over by other developing countries. Instead, we have witnessed a dramatic decline in the ratio, implying severe consequences for many developing countries.

Since the early 1990s until recently, the world had been witnessing an economic “convergence,” whereby developing countries finally (after 200 years) were beginning to catch up with rich ones. Although some countries, especially in East Asia, had already been converging for a long time, only in the past three decades did this become a genuinely global phenomenon.

Expanded opportunities for trade were an important factor driving convergence. The 1990s and 2000s were an era of what Martin Kessler and one of us had called hyper-globalisation, when technological advances, the container revolution, the fall in information and communication costs, and the dismantling of trade barriers sustained widespread economic exuberance.

Among other things, hyper-globalisation drove the global export-to-GDP ratio from 15pc to 25pc over the two decades leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis, and this export boom fueled rapid growth in developing countries. Hence, as the following figure shows, hyper-globalisation and convergence were interlinked phenomena.

Since the two phenomena were connected, the recent return of de-globalisation has substantially moderated the convergence: low and middle-income countries that were growing at about three to four percent per capita annually before the global financial crisis have been averaging one to two percent growth thereafter.

The question now is how the pandemic will influence the process of de-globalisation that was already underway. It is too early to be sure, but two possibilities stand out. One plausible scenario is a generalised retreat in which de-globalisation accelerates as countries and firms reassess the benefits of trade against the risks of import dependence. Alternatively, the next phase of de-globalisation could be more limited and driven by China’s economic transition. In that case, a few developing countries would benefit in the short run but fail to secure a sustained advantage, because the heightened risk of future trade and strategic conflicts would usher in a new climate of deeper uncertainty.

The intellectual response to de-globalisation and the reversal of the historic process of convergence has been a near-deafening silence. Very few academics or policymakers in advanced economies have spoken up in defence of an open global order on behalf of poorer countries. Cosmopolitan elites who previously had been loud and enthusiastic champions of globalisation have sat on their hands.

Indeed, the pendulum may be swinging in the opposite direction, toward a resurgence of older development ideas such as the “Big Push,” whereby developing countries are advised to replace successful export-led growth models with inward-oriented strategies. There are reasons for this, of course, including valid concerns about globalisation’s effects on inequality in advanced economies. Still, the fact remains: the interests of developing countries have been abandoned.

In fact, intellectuals in the developing world have also been silent, offering no real defence for the preservation of open trade. In key developing countries – notably China and India – the intellectual and policy landscape is tilting sharply toward self-reliance and inwardness.

To some degree, policymakers are making a virtue of necessity, given developing countries’ relative lack of influence on globalisation. But it is also true that the intellectual currents in the West are drifting east, convincing policymakers to summon the ghost of past ideas like import substitution, which famously failed in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the post-pandemic climate, we should expect a continued acceleration of de-globalisation and, unfortunately, intellectual accommodation of this trend. In a best-case scenario, a few developing countries might seize on new export opportunities as major firms look to diversify production away from China. But for most low and middle-income economies, the price will be steep in terms of lost trading opportunities. The growth ladder used by Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, China and Vietnam will be kicked away from still-lagging countries in South and Central Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

For two golden decades, developing countries enjoyed the fruits of hyper-globalisation and convergence. But de-globalisation, meeting little intellectual resistance, is gaining ground, auguring a long-term loss of economic dynamism for the world’s poorer regions.

When the Bureaucrats Fail to be Rational

Posted on by Web Master

For the past two months, my family and I have been frequenting the offices of the state monopoly Ethio telecom to fix our interrupted broadband internet service. There has been some success, but there have also been too many setbacks.

We opted to buy a new internet service – fixed broadband – recently, which created a bit of an ordeal. We waited for a month to get it installed and configured. It was a success, or so it seemed. We had used the internet for 20 days, but it stopped working afterwards.

When we called the maintenance line, we were told that our service number was unknown. All five operators we spoke to insisted that we are not registered on the system. Apparently, the team that came to our house to install the fixed broadband and configured the connection forgot to register us. Luck would have it that the staff who accepted the service payment and issued a receipt similarly forgot to enter our service number on the system.

After days of wrangling, we managed to get our service number registered. A maintenance team came to our house and managed to get the internet back up again. It lasted for 45 minutes before it stopped working once again, and we have been unable to get it fixed since.

True, for a telecom firm that gives service to millions of people, including 23.8 million internet users, there are bound to be glitches here and there. No company is perfect, and Ethio telecom’s performance has been one of corporate evolution that also has to cater to the development agenda of the country.

Over the past two years, in its effort to reposition itself in an industry that is bound to change significantly – especially as a result of plans to liberalise the telecom sector – the state monopoly has been making changes. Popular among these is its cutting of tariffs on calls and internet usage, which has mended its image from a rigid institution to a certain extent. In the last fiscal year, the company’s revenues rose to 47.7 billion Br, 31pc higher than the previous year.

But, as is the case with most organisations, old habits die hard, and stories of inefficient service provision and slow responses to customers have not dissipated. But the shortcomings in responsible and efficient service provision at Ethio telecom is just the tip of the iceberg where customer satisfaction is concerned within the public sector.

The lack of rationalisation within institutions has meant that – in profit-making enterprises as well as the state and federal bureaucracy – luck, or worse, bribes are highly consequential to getting service delivery. While process and procedures exist on paper, customers and citizens have to depend on the goodwill of the bureaucrats and employees of organisations.

It is such inefficiencies that private enterprises are meant to overcome and why their motto of “customer is king” is believed to empower customers, even if this has to be at the expense of the employees.

This was the value that profit-making enterprises were supposed to exhibit. But they lacked autonomy. Coupled with the fact that they remained monopolies meant that they were not faced with any competition. As long as the service they provided was essential to daily personal and professional activities, they did not have an incentive to improve.

This does not just cause annoyance. It presents a huge hit to the economy by limiting productivity. There are negative externalities to other parts of the economy as service is an integral sector that allows industry and agriculture to function smoothly. It seems that the bad institutional culture will continue to linger to the anguish of the public.

This requires structural and policy reforms. On the latter, administrative courts are a significant move forward in empowering citizens and checking the power of bureaucrats in public institutions.

Just as critical would be to incentivise public enterprises to want to improve their services continuously. As long as they remain profit-making institutions, the best way to make the point to them is to make the industries they are a part of competitive through liberalisation. This is why opening up the telecom sector to competition will be a countervailing move by the government.

Rationalised procedures may not be easy to put in place, but they are nonetheless necessary to integrate into a clear institutional process. This will reinforce healthy competition and the delivery of dependable service.

Such strategy shifts are crucial and should not be debatable any longer. The country is in desperate need of institutional adjustments and regulations for the productivity of the nation to rise.

‘EXCELLENT’ COFFEE

Posted on by Web Master

Nigusse Gemeda, coffee farmer, takes a bow after receiving an almost six million Birr prize from Oumer Hussein, Agriculture minister, at the Cup of Excellence competition on September 24, 2020. The event that took place at the Sheraton Addis hotel sees coffee samples that are submitted, scored and auctioned off to buyers. Nigusse was the winner of the Cup of Excellence Ethiopia, having received the highest score of all the coffee samples that were entered and selling for over 185 dollars a pound in an online auction.