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Month: November 2020

Eternal Vigilance: The Price of Liberty

Posted on by Web Master

There is a saying for almost any event, behaviour or phenomenon in Amharic. Many are hard to translate into English without being too literal or losing the contextual or poetic flair.

“A gold bar at hand is akin to a piece of brass,” this one goes. It is close in meaning to the term, “You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”

It is a profound saying when applied to the concept of democracy. Here in Ethiopia, our political history is an example of the struggle to realise justice, impeded by several moments of shock that send us back reeling for submission (or at least reticence) to authority. We are well aware of the price it exacts and cognisant of the fact that transition toward democracy would require the sort of sacrifice that we have time and again proven that we are unwilling to pay.

It is thus with immense astonishment that we regard the state of US democracy in the context of the 2020 presidential election, which saw President Donald Trump lose to former Vice-President Joe Biden. There is a rather widespread agreement among observers that the country will indeed see a smooth transition of power come January 2021 and that Trump will grudgingly vacate the White House following Biden’s swearing-in.

But there is no denying that Trump’s claim that the election was stolen from him and his refusal to concede are unprecedented. It is no small matter. The US may not be new to contested elections –- there was the whole Gore-Bush controversy over vote counts in Florida just two decades ago –- but what is happening now is no small matter.

Yanis Varoufakis, one of the original and independent thinkers of our time, once said that democracy is not a piece of furniture we can reliably expect would be there every time we turn around to take a seat. It is only to a populace that has become used to democracy as the default state of political order that there is no absolute panic at even the remotest odds that Trump may refuse to hand over power.

Consider this. There are currently only a handful of Republican senators now acknowledging Biden as president-elect. More worryingly, the president-elect and his team have not been allowed access to secure communications and classified briefings, at least by the middle of last week.

“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also recently said, appearing to give credence to Trump’s taunt that he was actually re-elected, a baseless claim as far as any reasonable person can see.

Sure, all of this could be a case of the Republican Party not wanting to antagonise Trump, considering how he could energise Republican supporters to vote. The Georgia state run-off for the Senate, which is yet to come and will decide which party controls the chamber of congress, may explain this.

It also may not. An indicator of this was the rather large demonstration in Washington, DC a week ago by Trump supporters. They backed his refusal to concede to Biden.

What explains this? Are they also hoping that he would help out with the Georgia elections?

It is unlikely. It is a sign of how severely impacted trust in institutions has become that millions now believe Trump’s allegations without any meaningful evidence. If there is one thing that we Ethiopians, living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, can coroborate, it is that once the institutions are gone, there is little else remaining to ensure democracy. If there is a lesson that can be taken from our state of political affairs, it is that none of the different types of nationalisms or political movements and organisations are reliable guardians of democracy.

There is a good chance that Biden will be sitting in the Oval Office in a few months to come. But there is also a terrifying possibility that, without remedy, the days of American democracy are numbered. The Greeks lost their democracy, and the Romans their republic after that. The Americans are just another empire.

“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance,” John Philpot Curran, Irish lawyer and judge, once said.

They are words that those lucky enough to have liberty and democracy should heed.

In Contemporary Talent Shows, Gold Age of Music Lives On

Posted on by Web Master

Once inside a public bus during my college days, a fare dodger was apprehended. We all gave our ears to the ensuing mêlée. Amidst the rumbling, a raspy voice dominated, and we all calmed down. In a flash, I learned that it was Lemma Gebrehiwot, a legendary, gravelly-voiced traditional singer and an iconic rhymer with his Mesenkomusical instrument, known for epic poetry and wordiness.

“Gash Lemma! Are you still alive?” the ticket controller joked.

His comeback whining whimper kicked me with nostalgia, as in those days his songs were barred as others of his type from the media. He bemoaned the contemporary infatuation with foreign musical bands, expressed visually in the imagery of artists on t-shirts, cups and inside taxis.

It was followed with a tremendous mise en scène — our bus was shifted into one with fans wild-eyed with their idol.

The phrasing, inflexion, breathing, timing and spacing of his notes and connection with the audience were incredible. He had a voice marked with passion and excellent lyrical composition –a mark of his time’s musical golden age.

Among a few of the distinguished mathematics professors I have had in college, one is a lifelong devotee of the leading voice in Ethiopian music for more than half a century. The numbers man was also a connoisseur that exalted Lemma’s incredible beauty and song styles, brought out every time he sang with majestic, rich instrumentation.

Yet to this mathematics professor, it was Tilahun Gessesse’s lyrical content that varied according to the spatio-temporal context of their creation. They were embellished all the more with anecdotes, parables, proverbs, puns, riddles, stanzas, tales, fables and themes of love, family, friendship, liberty, unity, justice and hard work.

These are only two from Ethiopia’s golden age of music, a time when the music repertoire was truly timeless and would outlive that age. With the passing of the decades, many of the musicians stretched into a sad memory; from a sad memory into storied and haunting anecdotes now.

However, this golden age now finds its expression in the fresh-faced youth that appear in vocal talent shows. They try to make a case for their talents by endlessly covering the music of that age. Take Balageru Mert, the TV show, where singing aspirants are challenged with what it takes to sing. Voice resonance and use of harmonics inside of the vocal tract and mouth; space and size to produce the desired sound timbre and approach notes with the correct and consistent air supply; a sense of pitch and how to hit the high notes –- all of these are scrutinised.

They are supposed to prove this in a mere number of minutes, though volumes of music books can be written about each element that goes into making a good piece of music. Thus, the contestants repeatedly turn to the cover versions of the golden age, which they hope makes a case for their musical talents.

The list of hopefuls with an understanding of a chosen cover is terrific. However, there is a need for a considerable time of hard work. Explaining why the golden era’s musical pieces make many of us feel less strange while being elsewhere, less isolated and less alone while listening to them, is barely comprehended.

A great deal of today’s music takes its significance from that time. It is characterised by sombre tunes and lyrics, often about the life of the down-and-out, ingrained with a sentiment of resignation, fate and melancholia or longing, symbolising a feeling of loss.

Shows such as Balageru Mirt help us make sense of the loss of the golden age blend of our music through a renewed focus on continuity and expanding the song genres. It is also uplifting, watching not only judges debating and resolving differences through agreeing and agreeing to disagree. At home, members of households follow suit, arguing who is better, why and what makes for a good vocalist.

The Global South’s Pandemic Path to Self-Reliance

Posted on by Web Master

The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to have a devastating impact on public health and to rattle the global economy with structural shocks. The pandemic has now killed more than one million people, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that global GDP will shrink by 4.4pc in 2020. But strange as it may seem, the current crisis could offer developing countries a path toward greater economic self-reliance.

This is partly because developed countries have in general borne the brunt of the pandemic’s health effects so far. Many advanced Western economies have experienced more COVID-19 cases and deaths relative to their populations than have developing countries of the Global South, despite their superior healthcare systems and stronger social safety nets. For example, India’s health system ranks 112th globally, while that of the United States ranks 37th. But whereas India has so far reported about 6,400 COVID-19 cases per million population, America’s tally is more than four times higher.

Some developing countries like Vietnam combated COVID-19 effectively by introducing strict testing, tracing and quarantine measures at a very early stage – something most developed countries failed to do. Even after allowing for possible underreporting and data inaccuracies in poorer countries, the relative performance of developed economies remains a paradox.

Moreover, development financing has already started to plummet as richer countries focus on engineering domestic post-pandemic recoveries. The OECD estimates that external private finance inflows to developing economies could decrease by 700 billion dollars year-on-year in 2020, exceeding the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis by 60pc. Non-resident portfolio outflows from emerging markets totalled 83.3 billion dollars in March 2020 alone, according to the Institute of International Finance. And the OECD thinks global foreign direct investment (FDI) will drop by at least 30pc this year, with flows to developing economies likely to fall even more. Such trends imply a grim outlook for Global South countries that historically have largely relied on development aid from the Global North.

But studies have shown that development aid and humanitarian assistance do not necessarily foster economic empowerment. A recent OECD survey found that between 48pc and 94pc of respondents in developing countries do not believe that humanitarian assistance helps them to become economically self-reliant. People want financial autonomy, not prolonged assistance.

The debate over the effectiveness of development aid is an old one, with critics claiming that rich countries use aid as a tool to exploit developing economies’ resources, and often attach conditions to ensure that donors reap the bulk of the export receipts. But many developed countries have lost much of their soft power because of their shambolic pandemic responses.

Even before COVID-19 struck, many developing economies had been looking for ways to make a sustainable shift from aid dependency to self-reliance. In 2018, Rwanda banned second-hand clothes imports with the aim of encouraging its domestic textile industry to produce higher value-added garments; the US responded by ending the country’s duty-free export privileges. And last year, the United Kingdom’s government allocated part of its 14-billion-pound aid budget to capacity-building projects intended to help developing countries increase their international trade and attract FDI.

Today, developing countries have more opportunities to become self-reliant. For starters, trade in developing East Asia has declined less sharply than in the West during the pandemic, according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). A key reason for this is that industries producing high value-added goods usually suffer more during downturns. Developing countries’ greater resilience, stemming from their reliance on low value-added manufacturing, is evident in Vietnam’s textile and garment sector, which has remained operational throughout the pandemic and is expected to have a swifter recovery in 2021 compared to their regional competitors.

Second, digitisation will play a crucial role in the post-pandemic recovery by significantly boosting e-commerce, which implies a fairer competitive playing field for producers around the world. Bangladesh’s e-commerce sector grew by 26pc year-on-year by August, and other South Asian countries show a similar trend.

Third, the healthcare and pharmaceuticals sectors are expected to thrive in the post-pandemic economy as people become more aware of the importance of health and fitness. Least developed countries can take advantage of World Trade Organisation provisions by producing more generic drugs, which face no patent-related obstacles.

Finally, governments in the Global South can mobilise domestic resources to offset the decline in external development finance – in particular by transforming their tax policies to generate revenue from fast-growing digital economic activities. Currently, developing countries’ low levels of tax revenue as a share of GDP – typically between 10-20pc, compared to 40pc in high-income countries – hinder development by constraining governments’ ability to invest in public goods like health, infrastructure and education.

Developing countries face several hurdles on the path to self-reliance, not least poor governance, unfavourable business climates, and civil conflicts. But they also must break with the post-1945 paradigm of external development finance, which has been primarily driven by the Global North and shaped by its geopolitical agenda. For far too long, developing countries have had to listen to lectures from those who think they know better. Today, developing-country governments must chart a development agenda that is free from donor conditionality.

Every crisis contains great opportunities, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no different. It offers developing countries nothing less than the chance to reinvent and reboot their economies – and to shake off the disabling legacy of external aid dependency.

The Revenge of the Precariat

Posted on by Web Master

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of low-skilled labor in the economy was assumed to be in decline. In digitally disrupted labor markets, where fancy STEM professions enjoy pride of place, only highly qualified professionals can thrive. Those whose jobs are threatened by new technologies are condemned to precariousness, redundancy, downward mobility, and declining standards of living.

The pandemic has partly debunked this narrative by revealing which workers truly are essential. It turns out that there still are no good technological substitutes for the street cleaners, shopkeepers, utility workers, food deliverers, truckers or bus drivers who have kept the economy running through the darkest days of the crisis. In many cases, these workers perform tasks that require situational adaptability and physical abilities of a kind that cannot easily be coded into software and replicated by a robot.

The fact that these least-skilled workers are resilient to new technologies should not come as a surprise. Previous industrial revolutions followed a similar pattern. At a minimum, human workers are usually still needed to supervise, maintain or complement the machines. And in many cases, they play a key role in the new disruptive business models of any given era. The challenge has always been to close the gap between the social value these workers create and the wages they receive.

Low-skilled jobs are usually regarded as those that new technologies will co-opt over time. But most of these jobs are themselves by-products of technological progress. Mechanics, electricians, plumbers, and telecommunications installers all owe their occupations to past technological breakthroughs, and it is these workers who now ensure the proper functioning of the world’s machinery, power grids, water systems and the Internet.

Innovation does not alter the traditional pyramid structure of work, whereby a few highly qualified positions at the top oversee a hierarchy of lower-skilled occupations. Rather, what technology changes is the composition of the pyramid, by continuously replenishing it with new and more sophisticated tasks, while removing the most routine ones through automation. There are still assembly lines today; but a job in a factory that is fully controlled by software and populated by intelligent robots is completely different from a job in a state-of-the-art factory in the 1950s.

Behind their sleek digital facades, most of today’s Big Tech companies rely heavily on low-skilled workers. In 2018, the median salary of an Amazon employee was less than 30,000 dollars, reflecting what most of its employees do: manage inventories and fulfill orders in warehouses. The same is true of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, where the median salary was about 56,000 dollars in 2018: around one-third of its employees work in its assembly plants. And while Facebook’s median salary in 2018 was 228,000 dollars, this figure does not account for the tens of thousands of low-wage contract workers that the company relies on for content moderation.

These patterns are especially evident in the gig economy, where software and algorithms provide the platform (a two-sided market) to sell specific services performed by real workers. No matter how sophisticated Uber’s ride-hailing and delivery apps are, the company simply would not exist without its cab drivers and delivery workers.

But all too often, the people working at the end of the platform-economy value chain are treated as second-class labour, not even rising to the level of staff. Unlike the engineers and the programmers designing and updating the apps, they are employed as contractors with scant workplace protection.

Likewise, artificial intelligence, widely seen as the main source of technological unemployment in the future, would not exist without the contributions of millions of digital blue-collar workers – particularly in the developing world – toiling away on the assembly lines of the data economy. Most machine-learning algorithms need to be trained on voluminous data sets that are manually “cleansed” and “tagged” by human annotators who categorise content. For an algorithm to determine that an image of a car is in fact a car, someone generally needs to have tagged the picture accordingly.

Given the realities of the digital economy, there is no excuse for treating low-qualification jobs as synonymous with low-quality jobs. Today’s “low-skilled” workers may not have advanced academic degrees, but many are in fact skilled technicians who have mastered certain knowledge domains and techniques. Acknowledging this will be crucial for re-establishing these workers’ negotiating power and forging a new social contract.

To that end, trade unions have an opportunity to regain influence and push for fairer treatment of the least qualified, including the gig workers who tend to fall off their radar screens. But large corporations (not just in the tech sector) also need to rethink how they assess and reward the contributions of low-skilled workers. It will take pressure from above and below to close the gap (in terms of both salaries and benefits) between those at the top and the bottom of the pyramid.

Finally, governments must do more to support the educational needs of skilled technicians, because even the most basic tasks will evolve over time. Keeping pace with innovation requires continuous upgrading of skills to remain competitive in the labour market. In terms of overall resources, investment in this segment of human capital should be similar to that for skilled professionals, though the two educational paths would of course be structured differently.

Workers with fewer formal qualifications will remain a central and indispensable part of the digital economy. It is political and business decisions – not new technologies – that threaten to push them to the margins.

Armed Conflict: Each Generation’s Tribulation

Posted on by Web Master

It is our sad reality that every generation in Ethiopia sees armed conflict, however justifiable those that engage in it believe it to be. If there is an immediate reason to why we remain divided, poor and uneducated, this is it. In my family, as in many others, this has been the case for three generations.

Around the early years of the Dergue, the Marxist-Leninist leaning military junta that ruled Ethiopia with an iron fist for 17 years, my parents were happily married young newlyweds. They lived through the Red Terror, which wiped out the crème de la crème of that era’s youth, and then the Ethio-Somalia War. This is not to forget the civil war that was raging in the country throughout the entirety of the Dergue’stime in power.

It was a horrific time for them to witness. They saw bodies of the young on the streets almost daily. They lost family members, friends and neighbours. They lived each day trying to forget the last and dreading what may come the next. The unspeakable horrors were too much for anyone to withstand, let alone for children who have not yet developed the strength to weather the ordeal of warfare. There still is a deeply traumatic memory attached to that time. Anyone that lived through them doubtlessly remembers.

It was with this reason that my parents decided not to start a family. They felt guilty to bring us into a country that could not offer hope or was not even ready to protect us.

Toward the end of that war, they believed it was safe enough. When the Derguefinally fell, it seemed that a new light had dawned. In reality, only the battle lines had moved. Before the millennium was over, Ethiopia was at it again. Another war, this time with the newly independent state of Eritrea. Once again, more devastation, loss of lives and economic ruin. By the end, my parents found one another on the other side of the Mereb River, never to see each other until relations were normalised between the two countries two years ago.

We hoped that would be enough. But now, it is my generation’s turn. Even my two-year-old nephew has now technically lived through armed conflict. His mother and father now live with fear of what the day may bring for their children. Instability, panic and conflict are what bind the generations now.

This new danger is the engagement in conflict between the forces of the federal and Tigray regional governments. We saw what unraveled over the past two years as an inevitability. We are now paying witness to a conflict we hope does not get any worse. Once again, our country is the talk of the world, making global headlines for armed violence and the attack on innocent civilians by armed groups.

Just like preceding generations, violence is leading us into anguish, harming those with low incomes the most. Hatred is entrenching itself deep into our hearts, damaging yet another generation.

Ethiopian history is proof that the psychological impact of armed conflicts is profound on the public. It is leading the nation into a vicious cycle of conflict, in which the next generation struggles to rebuild peaceful societies following the trauma of violence.

This lethal mindset will continue to eat away our hope in our country’s future and darkens the light for our collective advancement as people in one multi-culturally diverse nation.

It is a wonder how much lost opportunity, how much tarnished potential there needs to be before we learn to settle our differences amicably and focus on pulling people out of poverty. How long before we notice that such violence keeps making us poorer and a weaker society.

When antagonism becomes our default state, there will not just be economic havoc, but higher levels of criminality and political and social unrest. We will continue to hunger for peace, harmony and development in our stubbornly volatile country.

Ethiopia can thrive if its government acts now to divert their ambition and enthusiasm from armed conflict to build and unite our divided nation. It is never too late to address problems. What is needed is a comprehensive policy agenda and political will to address the political, cultural and economic needs of the majority of Ethiopians that remain destitute and on the margins.

The rule of law must reign supreme, and leaders must learn to compromise to address their differences. The action of Ethiopian governments to address this will be the single most important factor determining whether the next generation becomes lucky enough to grow up in a country that has not seen conflict ever again.

Only Human to Worry

Posted on by Web Master

Sometimes, it is possible to wonder what a life free of worries would be like – aday where we go about our business, enjoy each moment, tackle whatever comes our way with determination and confidence, without the slightest of self-doubts. It seems that is the life.

Worrying is the brain’s way of preparing us for the worst-case scenario or maybe even giving us a precautionary heads up for what could possibly go wrong. Life as we know it would have been completely different if worrying was out of the equation. This is even true of overworrying, because most of us over think, analyse and worry. Mostly we worry about our existence and incidents that can pose a threat to our existence. Even though we all know our life on this earth is temporary and limited, we somehow think we can add a couple of years by obsessing about what could be, could have been, and perhaps what will never be.

I envy people who can just let go and have faith in the universe or even higher power. On the other hand are some of us who cannot help but worry too much. I have caught myself worrying about my worrying and overthinking my over thinking on multiple occasions. The paradox about worrying, nonetheless, is that the more we try not to worry, the more we do worry.

Something that goes hand in hand with this is assuming the worst. I often obsess about the possibility of getting into a vehicular accident, especially if I am sitting in the front seat of a car –- not without reason, of course, considering that Ethiopia has one of the highest traffic accident rates in the world. I almost go crazy worrying that something terrible would happen to my son if I leave him home with just the nanny. Every time a family member leaves the house and stays unreasonably late, without informing me, I start to think that they may have gotten themselves hurt, perhaps fatally.

All of these are normal, but what makes them different is their degree and intensity. But like many people, my worrying stems from my fear of death. Everyone has this obviously, but some of us have it worse than others, sometimes to a crippling degree. In particular, it is the fear of losing the people I love; not getting the chance to say my goodbyes properly; living the rest of my life with what I could have done differently.

“What is wrong with you. How could you possibly think that?” the rest say to people like us.

We cannot help it. It is not lost on us that this kind of thinking could lead to anxiety and depression. People who think something terrible will happen to them every time they leave the house, for instance, could avoid going out and outdoor activities, thereby limiting their exposure. In the long run, this could lead to depression. Worse still, by worrying about unrealistic things, we are telling our brain to release cortisol, a stress hormone that may cause long-term health complications.

Why are we like this?

It is controversial, but most likely it has to do with some evolutionary need for survival and reproduction –- almost everything does according to contemporary biology. There is a somewhat more romantic psychological reason for worrying though. When we hold someone dearly, we get overly attached. We point to that love as a reason for our happiness, and the very thought of departing from that object of love terrifies us to the core. The slightest possibility that that could take away our happiness becomes an imminent danger to our being. Indeed, attaching our happiness to people or objects is the main source of disappointment. But at the same time, having no attachment makes life dull. It is another dilemma.

It is not a completely hopeless thing. We can alleviate some of our worrying by taking the time to pay attention to our thoughts and reasoning out with ourselves. Practising mindfulness in this regard seems to help; being in the present and focusing on the here and now keeps our mind from wandering off.

We should also face our fears. This makes us often realise that our fears are blown out of proportion, and it is actually our brains playing tricks on us. If these thoughts get out of hand, it is perhaps best to get professional help. But it is never wise to give up.

To Malt

Posted on by Web Master

Hubert Eze, managing director for Heineken Breweries SC, (far left) and his team stand before an audience inaugurating a new look and taste to its six-year-old Walia brand at the Skylight hotel on November 18, 2020. The new Walia is brewed entirely of malt, according to the company, which employs over a thousand people and partners with around 50,000 farmers across the country.

Market for the Sun

Posted on by Web Master

The sunny season has arrived in Ethiopia after a rather prolonged and heavily rainy number of months. Street vendors have responded with their seasonal offerings of summer clothes and accessories. These ones close to Bole International Airport are selling summer shoes, as well as various styles of sunglasses.

Stand aT Attention

Posted on by Web Master

Employees and local police officers at the Hora Adama Automotive Assembly Arena (H4A), a company that launched a new three-wheeler model, took time off to stand at attention around noon on November 17, 2020. In several parts of the country, there were gatherings and celebrations in response to the call to show support to the National Defense Forces, which are engaging militarily with forces of the Tigray Regional State.

Ministry Secures 6.8m Euros to Enhance Agricultural Investments

Posted on by Web Master

The Ministry of Agriculture and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) have signed a 6.8-million-euro joint project agreement to assist agricultural investments.

The joint project, termed Support Responsible Agricultural Investments, is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation & Development and the European Union. With this project, local government bodies, private sector players, and communities will receive assistance in managing land resources and 511 commercial agricultural investments with greater efficiency, transparency and inclusiveness, according to the German Embassy in Addis Abeba.

The project is also expected to benefit 10,750 marginalised households with regard to access to rural lands in the Amhara, Gambela, and Benishangul-Gumuz regional states. It supports local communities in securing their tenure rights.

GIZ is an international enterprise owned by the German government operating with close to 90 offices around the globe, and it supports organisations, public authorities and private businesses in different sectors.