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Month: January 2022

The Futility of Unconditional Debt Support

Posted on by Web Master

Although the pandemic has caused upheavals and hardship around the world, it has fallen particularly hard on low- and middle-income countries. Vaccine availability has been far more limited in LMICs than in rich countries, and the refrigeration facilities needed to store the most effective vaccines are severely limited. In many LMICs, healthcare workers are scarce, the facilities for treating COVID-19 patients are inadequate and public-health systems are poorly organised, funded and administered.

Nor are the difficulties limited to health. In many LMICs, poor economic-policy choices have led to inflation, fiscal deficits, balance-of-payments difficulties, and heavy debt-servicing obligations. While some financing has been forthcoming from individual high-income countries, international financial institutions and NGOs, it has not been enough.

Moreover, many LMICs would be in severe economic difficulty even without the pandemic. Argentina has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for months to obtain relief from pressing debt-service obligations and shortages of vital imports. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defied the consensus of almost all economists (not to mention common sense) by insisting that high interest rates cause inflation. As a result, interest rates are more than 16 percentage points below the recently reported inflation rate of 30pc, foreign-currency debt is high and rising, and the proportion of Turks in poverty is increasing sharply.

Among the many other countries running into economic trouble are Bolivia, Ghana, Madagascar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zambia. In these cases, COVID-19 has been putting extra pressure on government finances, but it also seems to have provided an excuse for higher fiscal expenditures on other items.

In normal times, a crisis-afflicted country that cannot borrow from private lenders will approach the IMF. Government authorities and IMF officials will then consult and develop a plan for the country to address its problems by altering economic policies, restructuring unsustainable debts and borrowing funds to maintain the provision of basic supplies, such as imports of food, medicine, fuel, and essential intermediate goods.

Many who advocate financial support for LMICs assume that external financial relief will be directed to the desired expenditure categories, such as health care and assistance for the poor, in the case of a pandemic. But such assistance cannot provide sustained relief unless it is accompanied by reforms to the policies that led to excessive expenditures in the first place.

Sri Lanka is a case in point. The country’s economy was performing reasonably well under a reform program until 2019. But then a new government, actually, the “new” president is the younger brother of an ousted authoritarian ruler, came to power and threw caution to the wind, slashing taxes (and thus revenues) while also increasing expenditures. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio quickly rose to 110pc and interest payments climbed to 70pc of total government revenue. A significant portion of the debt is owed to China.

And that was all before the pandemic. When COVID-19 struck, tourism revenues and workers’ remittances fell sharply, driving up inflation and the fiscal and current-account deficits even further. Incomes fell, pushing an estimated 500,000 Sri Lankans into poverty as of 2021.

Worse, the country is now experiencing shortages of essential items, including agricultural products, following a poor harvest this year. The harvest was weak because the government abruptly banned all imports of fertiliser and pesticides in May 2021 in a misguided effort to address the current-account deficit. This policy was not reversed until late November, by which point farmers were unable to buy sufficient supplies.

Nonetheless, the Sri Lankan government has steadfastly refused to approach the IMF and insists that there will be no debt restructuring. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has asked China to postpone Sri Lanka’s scheduled debt service, but it is unclear whether the Chinese have agreed, or on what terms.

Even if the Chinese do provide financial support, Sri Lanka’s economy will be unable to resume normal functioning until its leaders have addressed the underlying macroeconomic problems and introduced measures to alleviate the burden of debt service. In Sri Lanka and other countries confronting similar crises, the situation demands a combination of appropriate economic-policy changes, a debt-restructuring arrangement, and lending sufficient to sustain essential imports.

When a government is determined to continue servicing its debt and refuses policy reform, advocates of continued financial aid should consider the implications. Maintaining support will merely enable payments to public and private creditors while doing little to alleviate hardship or mitigate the economic crisis. In Sri Lanka’s case, there will come a time when the country cannot continue to meet its debt-service obligations. The result will be immiseration of the population, falling output, and persistent inflation.

Yet even if the economic crisis becomes so disastrous that the Sri Lankan government finally approaches the IMF, negotiations over a suitable reform program will be complicated by the need to include the Chinese in any debt restructuring. In this and many other cases, the international community must recognise the futility of ongoing assistance in the absence of accompanying reforms.

Gov’t Service Digitisation Not Just About Gadgets but Attitude

Posted on by Web Master

It was a while since I had an issue finishing up with a government ministry. This time, I decided to do it online through their website. Sure, there are changes to the portal’s look, and essential updates not common among local sites are present, yet not enough to make my visit in person unnecessary.

It was as I contemplated about going to the office that I went back in time. The news about an upcoming computer training program was running through the grapevine in a public enterprise I used to work with ages ago. We were all ears, waiting for clues about who would be attending.

It gained even more weight as it was also staged at Addis Abeba University. No doubt, though we waited only in vain, those days all eyes peered towards the offices where the recently arrived desktop computers were mounted.

It was all for department heads, while our plea to include some of us young professionals went unheeded. Just a couple of years away from retirement, our department head was tickled pink by his future with the computer. Banging his office desk in a brief discourse, he justified the selection by showcasing how easily he could retrieve any data encoded into the computer with a touch of the button.

Luckily for us young professionals, the time coincided with the launch of big infrastructure projects in the public enterprise we were working at, needing the involvement of a number of young and ambitious engineers. It was then we realised that being proficient in IT had become an indispensable criterion to one’s profession. Thanks to them, they helped us grasp the basic skills to handle office routines.

It is from those days we started to say, “what’s not to like about computers?”

Being upset with the preceding and lack of challenge in our assignments, almost all of us, me with my friends, left the public enterprise. However, as a result of what we went through, IT became more or less an attitude or a passion, and in retrospect, we regret our inability to institutionalise that attitude.

As I moved to the private sector, the environment was very conducive for access to computers. However, as a result of two enterprise resource planning (ERP) – core integration of business process – projects which did not materialise despite highly inflated expectations, individual initiatives were not encouraged. Still, it did not stop us from sorting data for ourselves to make analysis easier. The attitude held strong.

A leading expert in motivation and personality psychology, Carol Dweck, writes mindset is not a minor personality quirk. It creates our whole mental world, explaining how we become optimistic or pessimistic. It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfil our potential.

She says that everyone has one of two essential mindsets.

“If you believe that your qualities are unchangeable — the fixed mindset — you will want to prove yourself correct over and over rather than learning from your mistakes,” she writes. “In the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It is a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.”

I hope government offices come to a similar realisation in developing their human capital. It will make great inroads in helping come up with a more qualified, functional, and accessible process that serves users much better.

Neither should future ERPs be one size fits all. ERP is all about operational and administrative efficiencies and cost-saving. Its virtue needs to be clearly familiarised to workers involved in creating, processing, or recording information, meanwhile making them aware that they are personally responsible for the entry’s integrity. It is then that ERP becomes an attitude among workers, proving the senior management’s growth mindset.

Pay Debt Like A Lannister

Posted on by Web Master

Economics can be heartless. The field’s obsession with numbers and taking the long-term macro view drives social justice activists crazy. Economists general penchant for models and large data sets drives the political left nuts. This disconnect informs the criticism against GDP as a measure of the wellbeing of a country. Aggregate economic output is considered a crude estimate that disregards essential factors such as freedom and equality.

They are not wrong, especially when it comes to the argument for depreciating a country’s currency. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has often been criticised for supporting slashing the value of a currency, and removing subsidies, whenever a country is in financial straits. Combined with prescriptions like higher borrowing costs, such monetary policy will make households poorer while also curbing economic growth.

The problem is that when a country is in deep debt, there are not many alternatives to address fundamental macroeconomic failures other than depreciating the currency. It is this or hoping for debt moratorium or relief, and this does not come about that often. Ethiopia’s government finds itself in a similar situation, and it could be following a time-tested antidote to make it easier to pay off its debt.

This is how there is a tradeoff between the value of a currency and debt obligations. It may seem counterintuitive since foreign currency-denominated debts will become more expensive the more the Birr is depreciated.

Consider this. Say the federal government needs two billion dollars to cover expenditures for 2022. It has two alternative sources of credit. One is foreign creditors and the other is selling treasury bonds, the latter of which is becoming increasingly popular. It manages to secure one billion dollars in loans from bilateral and multilateral partners. The government borrows the rest from domestic creditors – mostly banks and insurance firms – by selling treasury bonds denominated in Birr (only domestic institutions would be interested in holding debt denominated in such an obscure currency). The government will owe 50 billion Birr to its domestic bondholders at current exchange rates.

Let us assume that interest rates do not apply (which is not unprecedented since borrowing costs have been very low in the developed world). The government also has to settle the entirety of the principal in 2023.

A year later, the debt is due and creditors are knocking on the door. Unfortunately, the government may not have two billion dollars in its treasury at the moment. It scrapes the bottom of the barrel and all it could come up with is 1.5 billion dollars, not enough to cover its debt obligations.

What should it do?

Debt can be restructured, but creditors rarely agree to this. The government could also default but this is a big no-no. Even absolute monarchs knew this was a bad idea. It is not just the fictional Lannisters that have to pay back their debts. But, based on the currency composition of the debt, a country can use its monetary sovereignty over its currency to make payment possible.

There is not much that could be done about the one billion dollars owed to foreign creditors as the government has no power over a dollar, a euro or a renminbi. It has to be paid back in full. The federal government will have 500 million dollars left in its coffers, which amounts to 25 billion Br at 2022 exchange rates. By halving the value of the Ethiopian currency (not that far removed from reality as the Birr has depreciated by a quarter since last year), the half a billion dollars in the fed’s treasury all of a sudden translates to 50 billion Br – the total amount it owes domestic creditors. This way, the government technically pays back its debt and appears creditworthy and the banks that are owed the sum will not be at risk of insolvency.

There is a price nonetheless. Foreign creditors are paid back at the expense of ordinary people – one of the main criticisms against the IMF as it is seen to prioritise Western creditors. Savings will have been halved in value over a year. Anyone with liquid assets as a more significant share of their net worth will lose a large portion of their wealth. It is perhaps the best argument against why the economy should not be left wholly to economists.

Is COVID Exposing the Flaws of Capitalism?

Posted on by Web Master

In his 1776 groundbreaking book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith argued that the free market benefits the whole society because an invisible hand guides decision-making.

“He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it,” he wrote. “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

As compelling as it sounds, this is not always the case. As both the consumers and the producers are market-dependent, there is inevitable competition between producers to make their profits as high as possible by cutting the price first and then increasing it later after creating market dominance.

They could do this either by increasing the surplus-value, which is no longer possible because of maximum hours legal limitation, or using relative surplus-value, increasing intensity, productivity and diminishing wage. COVID-19 has come out as an exhibit of the fault in capitalism.

The pandemic has exposed the flaws of capitalism at least in three ways: inequality between the wage earner and capitalists; monopoly of the market by big firms; and the unemployment rate.

In political-economy, the meaning of “class” has a different conceptual framework than its mainstream understanding. It is not the difference of income between persons rather the source of income. For the working class, the only source of income is wage, which is paid for using labour. Whereas, for capitalists, their main source of income is profit, which in turn is the result of surplus value of labour. Such 10 capitalists in the present time have seen their net worth double to 1.5 trillion dollars since the beginning of the pandemic.

In contrast, the working class is a slave to their wages. Karl Marx, political scientist who put forward the most recognisable argument against capitalism, put it elegantly.

In a perfect world, we should be able “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner,” however, the invisible hand of economic coercion pushed the working force to trade their sovereignty over time for wages.

While the capitalist enjoys the benefit of profit from their activities, the working class still runs the risk of falling below the poverty line. For instance, in a survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, around 38.1 million people in the labour force are designated as working poor. On the other hand, the top one percent of Americans, for instance, has 16 times more wealth than the bottom half. As per the World Inequality report, as the profit of rich people increases, over 100 million people will join the infamous club of extreme poverty. Jeff Bezos could, for instance, pay each employee of Amazon more than a 100,000 dollar bonus and be as wealthy as he was before the pandemic.

The perfect economy, which market fundamentalists envisage, could exist under the ideal conditions. But the real world is full of uncertainty, conflict and crisis. The big firms dominate small firms by undercutting the price in their market. This is possible by using their excess capital to survive for longer in an underpriced market than small competitors can afford. The big firms will either swallow the small firms through the mechanisms of merger and acquisition or will kick them out of the market. This, in turn, brings concentration and centralisation of power by the prominent capitalists.

This real competition has a huge impact especially in times of crisis. Since the big firms have easy access to credit and accumulated capital, they can resist testing times. However, the impact on the small firms is tremendous. The COVID-19 pandemic, as tragic as it has been for small businesses and the general public, is equally a blessing in disguise for top capitalists.

A joint poll released by the US Chamber of Commerce and MetLife says that one in four small businesses are at risk of permanently closing forever due to COVID-induced economic meltdown. On the other hand, the top 25 richest people in the world have increased their profit by an overwhelming amount.

For mainstream economists, unemployment is the result of the failure of the person rather than the system. There is unemployment because labourers are seeking prices higher than the market equilibrium and, hence, the only remedy is to make the labour market more flexible. For instance, Michael Strain, economist, made the same case in a paper titled, “The link Between Wages and Productivity is Strong.”

“It is most useful to think of wages as being determined by a combination of competitive market forces, bargaining power, and institutions. Worker productivity is the baseline for which wages are determined,” he wrote.

However, the existing unemployment is the result of systemic failure, not lack of productivity. Unemployment is a twin evil in two senses: the result of and the necessary requirement for the capitalist to exist. Unemployment is the result of capital accumulation. For the capitalist to become more profitable, they invest in the constant capital and decrease the variable labour, resulting in unemployment. It is reported that during the pandemic, many profitable firms have put substantial labour out of the working force and used the profit they generated to increase shareholder dividends.

COVID-19 is a pandemic that took the lives of many of our beloved and left survivors in a desperate and miserable condition. But do not tell this to rich people as life in their orbit has been smooth sailing over the past two years.

A Whiff of Munich

Posted on by Web Master

The Cold War ended 30 years ago. But since the 2007-08 financial crisis, it has not only returned but mutated into a hybrid lukewarm war. And with the United States and its European allies now struggling to manage the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine, the specter of a hot war is looming. The 1938 appeasement of Nazi Germany has become an attractive historical analogy, since that was the moment when the post-World War I cold war mutated decisively, supposedly making a hot conflict inevitable.

Munich will forever be associated with that moment, because that is where Britain, France, and Italy ceded to Germany substantial territory in Czechoslovakia without consulting either the Czechs or the Soviet Union. This episode has been revisited repeatedly, most recently in Christian Schwochow’s brilliant new film Munich: The Edge of War, based on the novelist Robert Harris’s interesting attempt to rehabilitate British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s reputation.

Now that the Biden administration has offered to hold another summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, following weeks of abortive negotiations, are we witnessing a replay of Chamberlain’s efforts in Munich?

A facile dictum emerged from Munich: Never appease dictators. After 1945, this often led to disastrous consequences. In 1956, for example, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden (who had resigned as foreign secretary in 1938, just a few months before Munich) was wrong to treat Egyptian President Gamal Nasser as a new Hitler. Decades later, US Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were wrong to apply the same label to Saddam Hussein. The analogy justified a catastrophic mistake that has profoundly altered the shape of world politics.

There is little doubt that Putin is a disturber of the peace who has already accomplished many of his goals. He has destabilised Ukraine and thereby prevented it from serving as a model for opponents of his authoritarian rule. He has split Europe from the US, shone a harsh and unflattering spotlight on America’s incapacity to respond to Russian initiatives, and highlighted internal divisions within Europe.

In the past, the obvious response to Putin’s threats against Ukraine would be massive economic and financial sanctions imposed by the US and its NATO allies, targeting not only Putin and his cronies but also the entire Russian economy. For example, Russian banks could be barred from SWIFT, the international payments-clearing system.

But Russia has systematically built up its reserves and reduced its financial vulnerabilities, which means that losing access to SWIFT might not be all that painful in the short term (though it would almost certainly cause great hardship in the long run). Worse, weaponising SWIFT could have both far-reaching and immediate implications for the US and its European allies. One obvious risk is if creditors suddenly cannot be repaid, cascading insolvencies could trigger a financial crash and an international credit freeze.

This scenario has echoes not of 1938 but of 2008, when fears about relatively small subprime mortgage losses led to much greater uncertainty about how major financial institutions would be affected. The result was a massive selloff and generalised panic. Today, the uncertainty is being augmented by new factors, such as the rise of digital currencies and payment systems and the weaponisation of energy trading.

Would shutting off imports of Russian energy to Europe really be an effective retaliatory measure?

Some European countries – notably Germany – would consider such a sanction a greater threat to themselves than to the Russians.

The current menu of financial and economic sanctions thus reprises the Cold War logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The ability to deploy systemically threatening financial and currency instruments is the modern equivalent of nuclear warheads. (Chamberlain was driven by a similar logic: only a generation removed from the horror of WWI, he was committed to preventing a further escalation.)

What does the Russian side of the MAD equation look like today?

Kremlin strategists certainly know that Russia has a great deal to lose from an open conflict in Ukraine. A Russian invasion would encounter substantial Ukrainian resistance, leading to heavy casualties and a further demoralisation of the Russian population. Maintaining control would be difficult. The occupying soldiers would be repressing a civilian population that can speak to them in their own language. It is worth recalling that the first Soviet soldiers in Prague in 1968 needed to be withdrawn because they began to sympathise with the Czechs.

With limited options all around, both sides feel trapped. The real lesson of Munich is that there are ways to deal with the political psychology of entrapment. Hitler won the contest in Munich because he gained unrivalled domination over Eastern and Central Europe. But he soon became frustrated, because the opportunities offered by threatening a conflict had disappeared. As Henry Kissinger convincingly demonstrates in “Diplomacy,” Hitler’s irrationality led him to throw away his advantage by going to war in 1939.

A hot war is not inevitable in a Munich-like negotiation process. While it is true that the aggressor once again seems to be winning, much remains open to interpretation. If Putin’s goal is to expose the West’s weaknesses, he can claim an immediate victory. But viewed another way, peace and even democracy also are winning, because the new logic of MAD shows just how little there is to be gained from an escalating conflict.

Thick Line between Self Confidence, Aggrandisement

Posted on by Web Master

We have all met someone who talks a lot about what they do and what they plan to do. They usually claim to be experts in their field, do not differentiate between personal and business matters, and are very open, pouring their hearts out. Unfortunately, most of the time, they are not even half the things they say they are and whatever they lack in talent, they make up for in inflating their abilities.

Such people even swear by their work and criticise others, only to disappoint later. Modesty is good, but we are not expected to be that way all of the time. Sometimes we have to promote ourselves and the experiences we have gathered. We also need to prize ourselves, but we have to back it up with our work and actions.

Two similar incidents happened to me on two separate occasions. The first one was in a taxi. I was sitting at the back and a guy in front of me was talking nonstop. I do not know if he was trying to impress the girl who was sitting next to him or if he was just full of himself. I could tell that the lady friend was also getting tired of the conversation.

He was talking about how talented he was, what he does and how his clients appreciate his work then he started comparing himself with others in the field. From what I gathered, he makes furniture and other interior designs. It makes me wonder if he was actually any good at his line of work or if he was just exaggerating. I will never find out, but on the second similar incident, I took a mental note that people who praise themselves too much are just talk and probably are not as good as they claim.

The other day I decided to talk to a catering service provider for a friend. I found one so I paid her a visit. She told me how good she was, how she has catered for many customers and how they were satisfied with her work. She also said she does tours as well. I introduced her to my friend, who was impressed and decided to give her the job.

The catering was needed for my friend’s parents anniversary. Her parents have been married for over half a century years. It is a long time to stay in a marriage. Her parents were saying our generation lacks patience. We rush to get married, to start a family and then hurry out when the going gets tougher.

“Your generation thinks it is nice to throw a wedding just for the sake of it. You are all over the place and divided,” my friend’s mother said. “In our days, arranged marriage was a common phenomenon, but we still managed to stay married with respect, understanding more than anything the importance of patience.”

The celebration was thus an intimate and significant event for everybody involved. I had a great time at the event but the catering, let us say, was not up to the standards we had hoped. The food was not up to the quality expected at an event. The decorations paled in comparison to what she had promised. This made me wonder if she was any good as a tour guide. Maybe she is, but there was a wide discrepancy between her performance and the loud advertisement of her business.

I have met many others like her. They talk the talk but do not walk the walk. If we are good at something, we should let our work speak for us instead of trying to convince others with our words.

The Incalculable Loss of A Hero, the Weight of Pain

Posted on by Web Master

A few months ago, I saw a nightmare. It was six men in black suits and hats carrying a casket from our home. They took it to a black van parked adjacent to our compound. I woke up bathed in tears and sweat.

Little did I know that on January 9, 2022, I would live to see the nightmare become a reality. Men in black suits and hats did come to our home and carry a casket. But what the nightmare did not reveal was that it would be my father, Sahle Habte, that would be carried out after he passed away in my arms.

He was healthy. The doctors could not verify what went wrong with the person we called “Babiye.” Many who knew my father tried to explain what had occurred.

“The angel was taken with no medical cause or suffering due to his goodness to everyone,” they said.

Words cannot express our family’s grief as we try to process his sudden passing. There is intense and debilitating grief that fills my whole being. Many told me that it seemed I lost my sanity in the way I grieved for my father. Maybe they are correct as I no longer recognise myself. I feel the full weight of pain, shock and ache. The concept of “loss” sounds like an understatement.

Whenever my grief is milder, I am reminded of the hard-working father who was a part of everything I did and planned. We had a deep relationship. He was the only parent I had had for much of my life.

When the Ethio-Eritrea War broke out, and our mother could not come back to Ethiopia, my father took on the role of two parents. There were no house chores he failed to do. He cleaned, washed clothes and dishes, and cooked. He was not just there for our physical needs but also emotionally. He attentively and tirelessly listened to even our silly complaints and ideas and took them seriously. When my siblings and I became adults, he still felt we deserved constant attention, love, and care. We never felt we missed out on anything. He gave us everything until he drew his last peaceful breath.

His passion for reading, education and knowledge about many things compelled my siblings and me to call him “our professor.” There was nothing that he could not fix for us and many families that he supported emotionally and financially. He knew about everything in my life; my successes, failures, fears, wishes and future life expectations. His advice, wisdom, simple outlook, funny jokes, generosity and care was the daily nutrition that helped me navigate life and dream big.

My father’s “women first” principle gave me a lot of privileges at home. Daily he told me I am gorgeous and admired the way I dress. Before meals, he never washed his hands before me, always telling me I came first for all good things as a woman. He made me feel cherished and protected at all times. He believed in me, advising me to set higher goals. He encouraged and pushed me to achieve milestones that I could not have done without him.

Forgiveness was essential to him, making peace with those who hurt him harshly. He taught me the joy of sharing and helping those in need; to be more kind and pray for those unkind to me; the power of love, family and marriage in his faithfulness and love to my mother and his family.

Before he passed, he had been preparing for several months for my wedding, which was to be held in three months’ time. Sadly, our joy turned into grief, leaving us with puzzling questions rather than answers.

I will continue to tell his stories. Since childhood, everyone who knew me was forced to hear about my father as I love to talk about his deeds. I am proud of him and how he raised me, telling me to love and respect everyone irrespective of who they are and how they treat me.

Street Beautifiers

Posted on by Web Master

Street cleaners have collected in a bag what they have swept from in the Megenagna area. There are thousands of workers, most of them women, that labour tirelessly to make Addis Abeba’s streets cleaner. They increased their efforts recently in preparation for the African Union summit of ministers and heads of state to be held in the next week.

Friendship Seedlings

Posted on by Web Master

Construction continues in the area around Friendship Square, part of the Beautifying Sheger river and riverbank rehabilitation project launched in 2018. The workers are unloading seedlings from a truck. They will be planted as part of the landscaping that is the main feature of the project.

SDG Challenge

Posted on by Web Master

Rebecca Yohannes, co-founder of Nopa-illu Trading, shares her experience during a panel discussion at the Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge, which was launched on January 25, 2022, at the Urban Centre. The project focuses on entrepreneurship that supports the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Five applicants will be able to qualify for mentoring and seed-funding.