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Month: October 2020

Local E-Commerce Industry Making up for Lost Time

Posted on by Web Master

After moving to Addis Abeba a year and a half ago, Abiy Selassie was genuinely surprised at the lack of foot traffic while visiting shopping malls in the capital.

He was in Century Mall and saw few consumers purchasing goods, he told Fortune.

The former director of realty strategic analytics and business intelligence at the world’s largest retail company, Walmart, Abiy quickly realised the limited level of commercial activity in the capital and saw the potential for a door-to-door delivery service. He immediately began thinking of establishing an e-commerce company.

In July 2019, he embarked on his long-awaited project and established Addis Mercato, an e-commerce and logistics company. It took him only two months to fully launch online shopping and delivery services, giving customers the option of payment using credit cards.

Addis Mercato, which runs its own warehouse in Ayat, works in partnership with close to 30 vendors. It uses a private fleet of eight vans and two drones to deliver orders. The company offers one-day delivery services to customers in the capital, Bishoftu and Adama; and next-day delivery to Hawassa, Bahir Dar, Dire Dawa, Meqelle, Gonder, Jimma, Jigjiga, Dessie, Kombolcha, Axum, Assosa and Shire.

It has also introduced a real-time tracking application that allows customers to check the status of their order from placement to delivery via GPS.

“We’ve been improving our service quality in terms of technology, innovation and products depending on timeliness and need,” said Abiy, who has over 27 years of experience in the fintech industry.

While working at Walmart in a senior management position between 2013 and 2015, Abiy advocated for the effective utilisation of artificial intelligence.

“At that time Walmart had over 5,000 stores,” said Abiy. “We proposed the closure of 212 stores and using innovations in technology to further penetrate the market via online transactions.”

While international companies are working to take online sales to a new level on par with technological advancements, the trend has been lagging in Ethiopia. However, over the past couple of months, the government has shown a strong commitment to promoting a digital-led economy by legislating laws that promote e-commerce.

Following this, companies that provide internet-based shopping, digital payment systems and delivery services have mushroomed. Addis Path Trading Plc, a company engaged in the merchandise, importing and wholesale business, is one of the beneficiaries.

The courier service provider transformed itself into an e-commerce company after developing a website named Addisber 15 months ago. It recruited university graduates to develop its online shopping portal.

“We understood that the digital economy is becoming accessible and inevitable,” said Fitsum Hailu, the founder and general manager at Addis Path.

Addisber receives five to 15 orders daily, each worth anywhere between 100 Br to 700,000 Br. It operates a warehouse where it wholesales and retails products. It stockpiles its merchandise through importation, sourcing from local manufacturers, as well as procuring from other importers.

As a marketing strategy, the company sources the goods from manufacturers to compete with physical retailers and sell commodities at affordable prices, according to the general manager.

“This avoids intermediaries in the transaction,” he said.

Useful product descriptions are another method the firm utilises to attract potential consumers, allowing them to compare the prices of products with other retailers before purchasing.

“We need the price to be available to buyers before they order goods,” he said.

The e-commerce company, which has working capital of 15 million Br, offers online and cash-on-delivery payment services. It works with YenePay, a payment gateway provider, and banks such as Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Awash and Lion. The portal was previously available only in English, but it has recently added Amharic, French and Arabic language options.

“We’ll add Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya to the portal soon,” Fitsum said.

The major challenge currently facing e-commerce companies is payment. Unavailability of online payment options as recently as a few years ago led some companies to fail. BaleSuq, an online shopping platform of traditional clothes and artefacts, commenced service seven years back but failed and closed within a year.

Due to the absence of online payment services, BaleSuq was limited to a cash-on-delivery service model.

“We were tired of fake orders and inefficient addressing systems,” said Nurhassen Mensur, co-founder and business development & communications director at YenePay Financial Technologies, which replaced BaleSuq. “At that time, there was no Google Maps, and people often didn’t answer their phone after they’d ordered.”

What the e-commerce industry has been sorely missing is real-time online payment systems, according to Samson Tsedeke, managing director and fintech consultant at Multilink Consulting.

“Although there are some payment gateway firms and platforms, there are no online real-time payment systems which are the most vital to the sector,” said Samson.

The payment gateways use primitive mobile banking systems rather than credit cards, debit cards or voucher card transactions, according to Samson.

“Interoperability needs regulatory frameworks of cybersecurity and electronic transaction,” he says.

Delivery firms still operate on a cash-on-delivery basis due to the absence of well-developed and efficient digital payment solutions, explained Samson.

The expert points to problems such as IT infrastructure insufficiency, an inept legal framework, absence of developed trust between suppliers and buyers, and lack of awareness among the general public.

He argues that there was no enabling legal framework to license and regulate the e-commerce industry. The government has recently crafted laws to deal with the problems though.

“We learned that there needed to be an online payment system for e-commerce to avoid fake orders,” said Nurhassen.

A year after the closure of BaleSuq, the six co-founders, including Nurhassen, established YenePay in October 2015. YenePay, which started operations with 30,000 Br in capital and is now worth around 1.2 million Br, currently processes over 20,000 annual online transactions via wallet accounts. It works with banks including Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Dashen, Anbessa, Wegagen and Awash, as well as with the mobile money service M-Birr.

YenePay provides its service through a wallet account and is waiting for approval from the National Bank of Ethiopia to introduce card and core banking payment systems in which payment is made directly from bank accounts. It accommodates 80 daily transactions on average.

Payment solution providers such as Moneta Technologies have also entered the e-commerce transaction market, allowing consumers and vendors to complete transactions online. The company developed an online payment solution named Amole in July 2018. It enables buyers to open a payment account at a Dashen Bank branch and then purchase goods online using the Amole app and Amole telegram bot.

Amole evolved from Fettan, an electronic payment system functioning via various gift cards, according to Samson Getu, vice president of operations at Moneta.

Over 8,000 merchants and 3.9 million consumers now have an Amole account. Furthermore, people with Amole accounts can send and receive money. Moneta is now working with Ethswitch, an e-payment share company co-owned by all banks in Ethiopia, to enable an integrated payment system.

Flomart Ethiopia, a subsidiary of London-based digital payment service provider Flocash, is the latest firm to join the business of providing online payment and transaction platforms. FloMart operates in over 40 countries and cooperates with 60 banks engaging in online book shopping, music catalogues, airtime, events, gift cards and other services.

Flomart has become involved in the local digital payments and online shopping markets with a mobile app. It operates a supermarket and also partners with 15 restaurants and two logistics companies to supply consumers. Flomart facilitates the online payment system with E-Birr, a mobile financial service provider.

Although there is potential for the e-commerce business in the country, it is still in its infancy stage, according to Samson Tsedeke.

“Only marketplace e-commerce sites characterise the industry,” said Samson.

A better day is coming for digital payment solutions and electronic commerce service providers, according to Abiyot Bayou (PhD), director of the digital transformation programme at the Ministry of Innovation & Technology.

He mentions the digital transformation strategy, Digital Ethiopia: 2025, that was recently launched in order to digitise the economy.

“To transform the economy, there are comprehensive reforms including telecom reform, digital literacy programmes, digitisation for employment, and e-commerce,” said Abiyot.

Since the adoption of digital transformation policies and strategies, new companies are entering the e-commerce business, according to Abiyot.

The government identifies underdeveloped financial and logistics sectors, weak regulation and coordination systems, low internet adoption, and unreliable service as challenges to the e-commerce industry, according to Abiyot.

“We’re working on the three components of e-commerce to help the sector: digital platforms, digital payment systems and delivery,” said Abiyot.

Companies in the e-commerce business also see a better future. Looking forward to exploiting the potential and expand its horizons, Addis Mercato has established warehouses in Bahir Dar and Gonder.

Addis Mercato, in partnership with the Indian tech firm TechEagle, has also launched drone delivery services in an area from Ayat to Legetafo covering approximately 14Km between the warehouse in Ayat and the customers’ location.

The drone delivery service reduces one way delivery time from 40 minutes to only eight minutes. It can decrease delivery costs by half with reduced energy consumption compared with road transportation, according to Abiy.

The Research-Practice Chasm Stares Down Industries, Policymakers

Posted on by Web Master

Research is not like any other intervention – it is the main pillar for the future. However, there is a considerable mismatch between the number and focus of research undertakings, on the one hand, and the need for evidence by managers and policymakers, on the other.

Therein arises a strong need to align research priorities in universities and research institutes with the national development needs of the country. The urgency lies in establishing a mechanism to promote, coordinate, regulate and manage research.

In Ethiopia, with the flourishing of universities and research centres in the last two decades, the number of researchers and their output is on the rise as evidenced by an increase in the number of published articles in PubMed, a biomedical and life sciences journal archive, where cited articles rose from 172 in 2000 to more than 3,188 in 2020.

In addition, research-based postgraduate training programmes are also increasing. The number of PhD candidates enrolled has also increased five-fold over the past decade, having reached almost 4,000 in 2017-18. This is in a country whose higher learning institutions invest under a tenth of their annual budget in research.

However, research activities in most universities are initiated as a purely academic exercise with little to no regard to their policy relevance. It makes a case for the need to align research priorities in universities and research institutes with the needs of industry players and policymakers of the country.

Producing research that is actually utilised requires a congruent effort by both producers and users along with a conducive policy environment. The recommendations of Mulu Nega Kahsay (PhD), renowned researcher and current state minister of Science & Higher Education, in his 2017 article, “The Links between Academic Research and Economic Development in Ethiopia: The Case of Addis Abeba University,” could serve to reduce the research-practice chasm.

He suggested analysing the experience and expectations of the research institutions, research users and the legal and policy environment to unpack the challenge and propose context specific solutions.

Unvaryingly, higher education institutions in Ethiopia suffer from inadequate funding, limited research infrastructure and a scant number of skilled researchers in many disciplines. Furthermore, inefficient administration, poor networking with both internal and external collaborators, lack of demand by research users, and poor policy comprehension of researchers are some of the notorious challenges.

Industry players and policymakers are thus left with limited evidence to make decisions due to lack of access to research, inadequate supply of policy-relevant research and limited capacity and time to absorb academic driven research. Just as bad, the limited effective communication and consultation between both and failure to consider the researchers as strategic partners are major reasons from the users’ side that widen the research-practice gap.

The legal and policy environment, including the legislative and regulatory aspects through which the government oversees universities, the research centres and the users play critical roles to address the disconnect. However, misalignments and passive policies with respect to incentivising research and development have widened the research-to-practice chasm. Furthermore, the government’s failure to keep its promise of allocating one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to fund research is a serious implementation gap.

To address such challenges and to benefit from research activities, establishing a national research council as suggested by the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, will be critical. The council will be a national research body to set a systems approach to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the country’s research priorities and strategies. It will also facilitate collaboration and linkages between different research organisations or disciplines.

The council, being a nucleus and interactive system of existing universities and all the sectors, will also be responsible for setting funding and research policy. It will also create opportunities for researchers to access state-of-the-art facilities across the country.

Its value will come in its ability to create a favourable environment for joint agenda setting, communication and translating research outputs into changes in the social, economic and environmental spheres. It will also help to support institutions to develop capacity, mobilise resources for research, and monitor adherence to ethical principles.

One of the most difficult challenges is the lack of funding for a range of research activities in Ethiopia. Central funding is required to procure research supplies to build laboratories, carry out experiments, attend conferences and create linkages with international researchers. The council can address the shortfall through a research fund overseen by its members. This would be critical to playing a central role in establishing centres of excellence and research groups dedicated to a certain problem or issue.

In addition to the government, the council would need to look for contributors – industries, philanthropies and NGOs – for its funding. Reforming research funding toward “strategic” purchasing of research through performance-based activities will also help motivate researchers to produce context-specific output. Building on this would require stimulating a culture of competition among researchers and universities by establishing national rankings to compare performance and drive improvement over time.

Good to Wear Masks, Detrimental to Health to Dispose Improperly

Posted on by Web Master

Ethiopia confirmed its first case of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in March 2020. A few weeks later, a five-month state of emergency (SOE) was declared, and several businesses, schools and theatre halls were closed. People were advised to work from home, including permitting telecommuting for many government officials.

As a means to tackle the spread of the virus, the government opened a campaign for the public to exercise hygiene measures such as washing hands frequently and social distancing.

As COVID-19 cases surged, wearing face masks in public places has become a requirement. Its implementation has been followed up by the police and other law enforcement bodies. Individuals who were not adhering to this order were actually arrested.

Currently, the “wear a face mask in public areas” order seems arguably successful in Addis Abeba. There are reasons for this. The fear of getting arrested or penalised might have been the primary motivator, and the ease of use and affordable price of masks is another. At pharmacies, a disposable surgical face mask goes for just 10 Br. Another reason might have been the tremendous effort of healthcare professionals and public campaigns in creating awareness about the importance of wearing face masks.

The wide usage of this simple preventive measure is all the more important in that dense cities such as Addis Abeba make it hard to adhere to the rule of physical distancing. This is especially the case in marketplaces, bus and taxi stations and places of worship. The frequent water outage in the city also makes hand hygiene a rather difficult task.

Wearing face masks will thus remain the most important preventive measure as businesses and schools reopen. Despite controversies in some countries about their use by the public, recent studies show that they play a pivotal role in the prevention and control of infectious respiratory disease transmission, including COVID-19.

As health professionals and the government insist that people make use of face masks, it is also equally important to give guidance on how to dispose of or recycle them safely.

The urgency of this comes in people’s violations of rules when it comes to disposing of masks they used. It has now become common to see used masks scattered everywhere – on sidewalks and in parking lots. Although rampant littering of plastic bottles, papers and banana skins was the norm before the pandemic, the magnitude of the problem is worsening with the littering of potentially COVID-19 infected masks in public and open spaces.

Public health experts say that improperly discarded masks could be potential sources of the virus if people come into contact with them. In cities like Addis Abeba, where thousands of individuals (including children) make their lives working in the streets, coming into contact with these contaminated face masks becomes easy. In the worst cases, they might even be tempted to use them, if not to wear on their faces but to make use of them in some other way.

This would be very dangerous and can put the health of individuals at great risk if disposed face masks contain respiratory secretions. An environmental disaster seems to be looming in this regard. There is a high chance for masks to get washed away and end up in oceans, rivers and lakes, affecting flora and fauna negatively.

It does not require one to be an environmental health expert or possess a special knowledge to keep our surroundings clean and appealing. All we need is to be responsible individuals in our routine daily activities. The least we can do is to keep the refuse in our car, luggage or plastic bag until we get a rubbish bin where we can safely dispose of them. If we do not find one on our way, we can throw them into a closed bin when we get back home.

Providing awareness creation programmes would certainly be one way of curbing the problem. The negative impact contaminated face masks would cause on the health of individuals, especially to vulnerable groups, and the harm they would bring to the environment can be concisely presented in short videos or posters. The programme can reach the public through available communication channels such as radio, television or social media platforms.

Preparing guidelines about safe disposal of face masks in particular and personal protective equipment (PPE) in general is highly needed now more than ever. While guidelines regarding proper medical waste management are available in healthcare settings, guidelines for proper face mask disposal is either unavailable or has not reached communities well.

Introducing laws that can prohibit improper disposal of used PPEs could help reduce the problem. The police force and other law enforcement bodies need to closely monitor individuals’ practices regarding improper face mask disposal in every corner of the city. Those who go against the law should receive appropriate punishment.

Important here is the need for more rubbish bins. Awareness campaigns and laws will go unheeded if the necessary infrastructure is not in place to make it easy for people to carry out such tasks.

Elimination of COVID-19 can only be achieved with vaccines, and there are currently none in the market. It has been a long time now since the pandemic has significantly changed our way of life. The “new normal” has officially begun in our city since March 2020. As it is compulsory to wear face masks in public spaces, it should also be our responsibility to dispose of them safely and properly. Unless we do this, we will continue to live under threat to our lives.

From Suffering of Offenders, Society Gains Little

Posted on by Web Master

The Ministry of Women, Children & Youth is, as it should be, worried about the prevalence of sex offences. It is with this view that it plans to introduce a national sex offender registry and notification as a supplement to the sentences served by convicted persons.

The purposes of such a registry would be to act as a deterrent, especially by branding people with the shame of what they have done for the rest of their lives. It also allows the authorities to keep watch over them with greater efficiency. A further advantage the registry could provide is that it allows the public to identify sex offenders and take the necessary precautions.

Indeed, with the mainstream, there are few crimes that coax moral outrage as much as sex offences. This is understandable. Sex offences, especially directed at minors, are unfathomably terrible acts of crime. Our tolerance level for this is very low, and that is with reason. Period.

In Ethiopia, the criminal law does not look lightly upon such crimes – in fact, there are calls for harsher punishments whenever there is a highly publicised case of sex offense. Rape is prosecutable up to 20 years, while offence against minors that causes “grave bodily or mental injury to or death of the victim” is punishable by life imprisonment.

It is far beyond many of us to question the justifiability of such punishment. In most cases, we believe that these people deserve what is coming to them. They have committed a crime, and they should be locked away. This may not help them get rehabilitated, but at least it keeps them away from society.

But it remains incumbent upon us to ask whether a national sex offender registry and notification, which would follow a person wherever they go whatever the likelihood that they might have been rehabilitated, will have positive net effects.

This is not an easy question to answer, but we can start with whether sex offenders deserve society’s sympathy. There are usually two types of criminals. The first type is born with a personality disorder that results in lower levels of empathy and remorse. For such individuals, several countries have what is termed an insanity defence. Any reasonable individual should be on board with the idea that such persons cannot be held responsible for the actions they commit and should indeed be given the appropriate care until they are deemed to no longer serve a threat to themselves or others. There should not be an argument here.

Usually, the criminals that we reserve our contempt for are the individuals that have turned to a life of crime despite having the capacity to tell between what society deems to be right or wrong. But there is a problem here as well. Crime, including sex offences, often correlate with socioeconomic status. Also, antisocial behaviour and crime are profoundly associated with adults that themselves were abused as children. Too many studies have demonstrated this.

No doubt, not every sex offender has some sort of personality disorder or led a harsh childhood. There are outliers. But it should be obvious that there is a need to consider with nuance the thin – sometimes thick – line that separates criminals (who may deserve our sympathy) to their crime (which remains heinous).

But, say, maybe these people do not in fact deserve our sympathy. Let us say that they are bad for us and should be either locked away, kept on the margins of society or shamed for the crime they have committed for the rest of their lives. Let us also assume that our justice system works perfectly – which it obviously does not – and that everyone identified as a sex offender was not wrongfully convicted.

What separating the crime from the criminal does is that it makes evident that offences are at least in part conditioned by socioeconomic circumstances. Without addressing the inequalities created by the socioeconomic systems we have built, then harsher punishment is an ineffective means of lowering crime. This is evident from the fact that countries that have the severest penalties – such as capital punishment – do not necessarily have lower offences committed. A better indicator of the prevalence of offences is actually socioeconomic inequality.

Do public sex offender registries – in a way, another form of severe punishment – then work to deter such crimes?

Recidivism with sex offenders is high, thus the obvious and necessary need to improve supervision over such persons. In this light, as long as it is only made use of by the authorities, a sex offender registry is justifiable. The problem is that making the registry public is not guaranteed to work. While physical assault, property damage, harassment, job loss and loss of housing are reported by convicted offenders as a result of being included in such a list, it is not proven to deter them from committing crimes again.

“Research to date has been mixed in terms of the impact of SORN [sex offender, registration and notification programmes] on the rates of sex crimes in an implementing jurisdiction, with several studies showing no change in the rate based on SORN, while other studies have demonstrated a decrease in the rate,” stated a 2015 research brief by the US Department of Justice. “In addition, SORN was studied for its impact on the rates of sexual recidivism for registered sex offenders, with the majority of studies demonstrating no impact.”

Perhaps this was the most telling part of the report:

“While it is difficult to track national trends over time, there is little question that the number of sex offenders under correctional supervision in the community has increased substantially over the past 20 years.”

Clearly, public registries have not worked. At best, the consensus is that there is no demonstrable impact gained from enforcing harsher measures against offenders in the form of public national registries and notifications.

So why do such registries exist then? In fact, why does the myth of harsh penalties – in many ways a form of revenge taken on behalf of the public by the government – as a deterrent to crime persist? Why are we eager to employ the state’s institutions and resources to punish criminals — a majority of which are often from low-income households — without sparing a thought for the socioeconomic conditions that led them down such a rabbit hole?

It is about how lazy we are as a society, about how we take the path of least resistance – punishment – as an antidote to acts that offend our sense of moral justice. It is the clearest sign of our moral and rational defeatism that we accept what is intuitive as fact.

Remember, we live in a society that remains by and large proud of the paternalistic system it has built and kneels at the altar of hyper-masculinity through the stories it celebrates. It is nothing less than rich for this same society to attempt to address its problems by putting in place harsher laws while at the same time doing the bare minimum to embrace progressivism.

As Dostoyevsky told us, we do not get judged as a society by how well we treat our Haile Selassies and Tedros Adhanoms but by those we have put on the social margins.

When Marching Bands Meet DJs

Posted on by Web Master

Every Thursday after school, my friends and I used to vivaciously await the majestic whirling drum sticks and percussion rhythm of marching bands as they drew closer to the landmark Mexico Square where our school was located. The playing of the cymbals would generate a pitch that seemed like water from a fountain being catapulted into the air with its chilly freshening sprinkles.

Nonetheless, it used to happen once in a while, all the more exciting whenever it occurred. Hard as I might try to remember what other public event occurred to engage us as much, there was nothing. It was all we had.

Whenever the bands came through we would run around the marching column’s four sides as though to get a mental image of all that goes on. The public that would often surround the band was rarely happy with our raucous activities and would try and shoo us as if we were annoying cats.

The heartwarming clarinets and flutes, the hounding from the trumpets, then in the alto and tenor of my favourites in the saxes, the French horn and tuba all played into the mesmerising sliding majorettes of the trombones and the mightiness of the honks from the sousaphones. The street fanfare was usually accompanied by an ear-splitting rendition of the national anthem of the time.

No matter how dull and unimaginative it may look now, it easily inspires nostalgia in those that lived during those times. Most importantly, these events seem outdated today with the spatiotemporal context of the constantly rushed vibe of the 21st century.

The marching bands have not gone away, but time has left them behind. Today’s live public events are different, even those organised by government offices. A testament to this was the Friendship Square and more recently the Entoto Park inaugurations. The ambience they are expected to give is one of flexibility, while the older ones were more concerned with conformity.

The scene at privately organised events is even more radically different. After a couple of decades of agoraphobia – fear of places and situations – I attended a music event at Ghion Hotel some months ago. The queue for tickets and the ensuing attendance would shock our recently pandemic-influenced sensibilities. But many faces in the crowd were teens eagerly awaiting the start of ceremonies, an appealing sight in its own right to those of us jaded with their rare appearance over the various media.

While the opening live music performances were from local stars, in a musical ensemble, the headliner was a Dutch DJ. The stage being the hotel’s yard, VIPs stood close to the show, and the rest of us three-digit customers stood in the yard, as my friends and I did. Because the huge stage jutted into the yard, the DJ found himself with an audience pressing in on three sides.

Playing off a laptop, with song selections that seemed to predict exactly what the crowd wanted and was feeling, the show was definitely electrifying. The audience was a part of the show, connecting with the DJ through cheers and screams. If I was not claustrophobic, I would have enjoyed the event myself.

Soon after, I stumbled and staggered with the thought of where our collective musical journey brought us. There were just a few vocalists and no musical ensemble whatsoever. There was no orchestra, choir or a musical instrument in sight. It was almost entirely, from lighting to sound, digital.

The role of some of the things in life is first and foremost to signify rather than to function. Thus, the symbolic essence, the spectacle of a marching band with its flag raising and lowering and its presence at public functions, the traditional ambience and rituals of celebrating public holidays, including staging cultural songs, signify a certain rigidness. There are unchanging rules based on or extracted from tradition, as in the fact that the marching band will never consider the audience as a part of the music-making experience. Unlike the DJs, for the marching band, they were just there to stand and listen.

However, this fixed and immovable rite in music events shall be garnished with additional experiments, including in connecting with the audience. In spite of this, our recent experiences in this regard are not completely in line. The marching bands are no longer as relevant, and perhaps they have no one but themselves to blame. There remain music listeners, but the new breed insists on being met halfway.

Dev’t Plan Ought to Rise to Occasion of Epoch-making Change

Posted on by Web Master

The government has put a national 10-year development plan forward for discussion. Ministries have been holding forums for their respective industries and sectors, while the Planning & Development Commission has been promoting an economic transformation plan expected to guide the country until 2030.

It is evident that long-term 10-year plans such as this are critical in economic policymaking. The merits accrue in its value in giving long-term direction and vision about the envisioned pursuit of the nation’s growth and development and comprehensive coverage of all major aspects of the nation’s economy. It also allows for the identification of core sectors of the economy for targeted allocation and optimal utilisation of resources for creating complementarities between the sectors for integrated and effective progress.

A 10-year plan will also set the preconditions for coordination of the workings of both public and private investment through forecasts and targeted outputs.

But there is a need to build on the implementation of the 10-year plan by translating it into two three-year and one four-year plan or into two five-year plans, whichever is acceptable to the national planning organ, the Commission. This measure creates possibilities for periodic assessment of progress stretching over the subdivided and consecutive plan periods, eventually leading to the overall success of achievement at the end of the 10 years.

The timeless principle affirms that success is the ultimate measure of performance. But this will not occur in a vacuum. There are prerequisite measures that need to be taken to make the planning successful, including a critical assessment of the current or existing state of the socioeconomic conditions in the country to establish the reality as a point of departure.

While the federal government discharges its responsibility of developing physical and social infrastructure in all its forms, there should be a participative or inclusive review of both the draft plan and full participation in the implementation process involving the private sector, the regional and local authorities and, if possible, the communities at the grassroots level.

Building institutional capacities or competencies at all levels of the hierarchical system in tandem with staffing them by human resources equipped with high-quality knowledge and skills is just as critical. These are basic for effective implementation.

The plan implementation also needs to be decentralised with sectoral coordination at national and regional levels. Growth and development under regional or decentralised – harmonised top-down, bottom-up – planning approaches are the outcome of shared responsibilities and coordinated efforts between the planning organs of the national and regional players. Regional development is inherently resource-based, need-oriented, participative and people-centred.

Critical to the whole process is constant monitoring and milestone-based evaluations during the process of implementation of the plans. The outcome of evaluation at each milestone provides lessons or feedback to be of use in each following stage within the implementation process. Also, careful study of socioeconomic conditions and forecasting for each of the remaining plan periods would serve as an instrument of feedforward.

Challenges will abound during the implementation process without a doubt. Some of the major ones are deficiencies in the plans and in the implementation process and poor or wasteful resource utilisations. It could also be institutional weakness and low-level human capacities that could lead to delays in reacting to symptoms or indications of impending failures. An underdeveloped service sector consisting of financial services, public administration, transportation-cum-communication, the legal system, touristic services, health and education may also complicate the planning beyond what is required.

There are other critical bottlenecks to be recognised in Ethiopia. One of the major ones concerns how the nation’s urban centres are characterised by a skewed distribution across the national space and low economic significance taken on their own. Many are not centres of generative or value-adding industries capable of creating jobs and wealth. The prevailing realities in the urban centres are – despite the massive potential and gradual growth – informal businesses, poverty and inequality. With the existing poor urban qualities and low agricultural productivity, economic interactions between the two sectors are at best rudimentary and at worst non-existent.

The simultaneous existence of growth and poverty is no small matter as well, as is the disparity between economic benefits and social services including quality health and education. The relegated improvement of rural economic performance will be another headache that planners will have to deal with.

Integrity: Hidden Weapon in Business, Politics

Posted on by Web Master

To compromise between the lines is a day-to-day practice. However, “oneness,” that unity of thought that comes rarely, is a character trait built through lots of effort and time. What we say and do implies how we are committed to it.

Critical to such a state of being, in our professional and personal lives, in politics, business or in social settings, is integrity. Being honest, trustworthy and reliable are unmatched character traits that not only improve our likelihood of success but make teamwork and healthy competition possible. It is an advantage that has long been frowned upon by the business elite that grew out of the concept of selfish endeavour as a “winning” tactic.

At some point, people may not like the decision we make, but it is critical we are backed by their trust, especially while it is within our circle of influence. It is like a safety deposit in others’ hearts and minds. It is how we buy the benefit of the doubt – the knowledge and belief that our actions, in the end, do stem from an honest place. This is an indispensable advantage to have in building teams.

Unfortunately, the politics and business realms seem less interested in such things. To have ulterior motives have become acceptable and the concept of good faith has come to inspire laughter.

Is this the right way to go? Is there a difference between erring without meaning to and approaching an assignment with questionable intent? Is it possible to deal constructively with people in the latter bucket or create a cohesive team with them as a member?

In business, delivering what has been promised is vital. But character is a traceable set of behaviours. At the end, when it comes to people whose integrity is questionable, success in one assignment is rarely a guarantee that the same will occur moving forward. In the same token, in dealing with people that may have failed at one task, it builds faith in their character that we feel comfortable enough assigning them another task even if they have failed the first one. Their integrity makes them a reliable partner to push through with another project. In business, where consistency is vital, such confidence in team members integrity is highly critical.

Further complicating the matter is that integrity is not a trait that pops up at any time in a person’s lifetime. It is discipline shaped from an early age. This is why our education systems may be bringing up students that turn out to be unreliable team members. They predicate learning upon things such as grades – not something to be chased for its own but critical for the attainment of a passing grade.

Integrity is thus commoditised, worth only demonstrating in words. To have a firm adherence to a moral code, unharnessed persistently, becomes hard. Politics and business become less about the ideologies and improved customer service that translates in profits, respectively, and more about who could step on who to get ahead. This is unhealthy, not just for individuals but politics and business as well.

I am not quite sure how many of us could stand out if we are evaluated with this respect by our co-workers, supervisors or subordinates. Most of us belong to a certain culture, and our conformity often signifies whether or not we manage to stay in the institutions. Societal, political and organisational cultures have intoxicating effects that make having integrity an all but fraught venture.

The business and political environments require serious considerations here. After all, we reap what we sow. If the value of integrity is respected in all but name, it is naïve to expect it from even a few individuals.

The importance of healthy competition and cooperation supportive to the greater good needs to be emphasised. Integrity has a cumulative effect while also needing the establishing of a culture to ensure that it remains relevant. While easy to ignore, a lack of integrity exacts a heavy cost in how we cooperate as a society.

Million Ways to Nurture

Posted on by Web Master

 

Everyone seems to have an opinion on how other people’s children should be raised. They swear they know what is best for the children and even insist on making sure their advice is taken and applied.

No doubt, Ethiopians mean good when they do this. It is meant out of care. No matter, it sometimes becomes annoying. It is not just neighbours caring enough to discipline children. In fact, this does not occur often anymore, with parents being more protective of the people their children come into contact with and neighbours being more cognizant of the distance they need to keep.

The annoying part is that the intervention tips for raising children people fire our way fail to respect tact, and neither are they helpful. Take my son’s paediatrician. Her job is to check if he is healthy and just that. But she gives unwarranted advice about everything else except the specific questions I have for her. This is why these days my Google search engine is full of results such as, “how to put your baby to sleep,” “how to know if you baby is attached to you,” “how to teach your baby self-soothing.”

Maybe being a first-time parent is what is making me read too much into the issue. But I have often found that there is no dearth of answers and perspectives to such questions.

Take American-German psychologist Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development. Each child goes through eight of them. For instance, the first stage, from birth to 18 months, is a formative period for developing a predilection for either trust or mistrust. If infants receive reliable and consistent care from their primary caregivers, they tend to develop a sense of trust for the world around them. If this stage is completed successfully, then the virtue acquired will be hope. But if mistrust is developed, infants will grow to be fearful or afraid of the world around them.

Let us also not forget Sigmund Freud’s theories, which are unproven, if not fantastical. Most of us have probably come across it. For instance, poor development of the first stage, which has to do with the mouth part of an infant, manifests itself in fixations such as smoking, overeating or overconsumption of alcohol.

How about the Ferber method, where children are left to cry for time intervals before comforting them?

That way they learn to self soothe and sleep independently, it is claimed. But it is hard to handle watching and hearing one’s children burst into tears even for a few minutes. More crucially, we have a culture specifically negating such detachment, often to the detriment of the self-sufficiency of children.

Parents are often interrupting children’s learning and do not allow them to do things on their own, which later creates emotional dependency. Children would grow up often looking for confirmation and validation for the things they do. We are also afraid of losing the leash on our children. Thus, we keep them from exploring their surroundings.

At the same time, we are great at teaching our children manners and etiquette that the rest of the world would find conservative and traditional. For instance, it is usually frowned upon to brush one’s hair or just groom in the living room. I, having been conditioned by the social forces passed along to me, happen to like such etiquette as it seems justified. There is a reason why hair is not combed in the living room; it is because a strand of hair could find its way into food.

Ultimately, all of our attempts to shape children in a certain way might be for naught. I was standing in a queue waiting for a taxi the other day when I had this conversation with an older guy who was standing behind me. We talked about raising children and if there was a right way of doing it.

“You can’t really control the individuals your children grow up to become,” he said. “Even if you do everything right by them, they might turn out to be bad.”

Even if we teach them manners, when they go to school, they might meet other children who are raised in a completely different way and diverge significantly in their life path. They may forget what they have been taught.

In the end, it does not really matter, and we should not blame ourselves or feel like we have failed them. While there is a good argument to be made on the effects of the environment on children beyond their immediate family, nurture in a household does matter. The things we instill in them at a young age, the examples we set through our own actions, lays the foundation for the person they will become tomorrow.

Children are like plants. Nurtured with care and loving, they have a greater chance of turning up fine.

As Outbreak Persists, Leaders Should Lead by Example

Posted on by Web Master

Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki came to Ethiopia recently. Together with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD), they visited public places such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the Bishoftu site of the Ethio-Engineering Group, and the Ethiopian Air Force.

To give credit where it is due, the duo wore face masks during their appearance at some of these places. But there were also instances where they were not wearing them. They were even laxer on following physical distancing guidelines, often seen standing close to each other and surrounded by several people.

If indeed Prime Minister Abiy and President Isaias are getting daily Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) tests, it should have been made public. If there is a reason why guidelines such as physical distancing rules do not apply to them, it should have been explained.

The appearance of the leaders in such manners was irresponsibility on their part. It should have been evident that their actions are scrutinised and even imitated by the public. Anyone can make mistakes that are just part of life, and leaders are not immune. Nevertheless, when mistakes become a habit, the negative consequences have far-reaching impacts, inducing public apathy to follow infection prevention guidelines.

During a pandemic, not wearing face masks says much about a person. Not taking preventive measures advised by public health professionals reveals not just passivity but also obliviousness in protecting others. It seems even leaders are having difficulties to accept that the old way of life is gone for the foreseeable future.

We are all in the position of choosing to make daily decisions in our everyday lives that have major consequences on public health. It is disappointing to find leaders on the wrong side of this choice.

We all have it within our power to choose to be safe, and we need to portray responsible lifestyles for others to also take responsibility. Leaders should be the examples implementing safety precautions doing what they preach to us to carry out.

Although there are few people who are cautious in protecting themselves and others, many believe that the threat of the virus has expired with the state of emergency decree and the opening of previously closed places of gathering, such as cinemas. This is even as the proportion of positive COVID-19 cases to the number of tests is going up, sometimes at over 10pc of the whole that gets tested. This shows a deep community transmission rate.

The recently loosened restrictions do not take away the uncertainties we face from the pandemic. This is true even for leaders who have the luxury of sheltering in the most secured and safe environments. The loosening of restrictions is in fact just a response to the heavy hits the economy is taking and should not serve to dissuade us from taking safety precautions.

This is why extreme responsibility needs to be carried out by leaders to act as role models that can make real differences for all citizens to create awareness. Without exemplary and strict implementation of infection safety measures, opportunities to prevent the spread of the virus can be wasted.

Government actions should manifest core infection prevention etiquette, not violate it in front of us. Lack of accountability on the government’s side is a critical issue, because leaders are the face of a nation. When they show a poor culture of accountability to guidelines, reluctance becomes rampant.

In the public’s eye, everything officials do, even when they do not mean it, reverberates within the public. Like it or not, they are representative of the body politic. Their actions speak louder than public health officials’ guides and words. Leaders are simply seen more often, and their actions are more emotionally resonant. But public guidelines mostly come off as aloof and distant. They do not influence us nearly as much in our subconscious.

The only way to change the dangerous hesitancy currently taking place in Ethiopia, where leaders and people are ignoring what is expected of them, is to take health professionals as seriously as possible. Protecting the public from infection requires applying and understanding the broader responsibility we all possess for ourselves and others. We all should actively get involved to prevent the virus from our homes and country, and leaders should not be the exception in this effort.

Central Bank Generates 33.4b Br from T-Bill

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The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has sold 33.4 billion Br worth of treasury bills (T-bill) over the past three months of the current fiscal year.

The budget deficit has been fully covered by the revenues generated from the sale of treasury bills, according to Yinager Dessie (PhD), governor of the central bank.

“The Ministry of Finance has borrowed nothing from the central bank unlike previous times,” said Yinager.

Last December, the central bank reformed the T-Bill market by making the market determine the yield rate of the bill, aiming to attract banks and insurance companies as well as individuals with cash to participate in the primary market through auctions. Previously, the average weighted yield of the T-bills stood at 1.42pc, which is far lower than the minimum deposit interest rate in the market, which stands at eight percent.

“This attracted financial institutions to buy T-bills,” Yinager said.

On behalf of the Ministry of Finance, the central bank has been issuing four types of T-bills with maturities of 28, 91, 182 and 364 days based on the borrowing demand of the Ministry and the liquidity situation as forecasted by NBE.