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Month: May 2022

Finance Ministry Grants Grace Period to Vehicle Assembler, Taxi Drivers Left in Limbo

Posted on by Web Master

Federal authorities have granted a domestic vehicle assembler a grace period before the seizure of knocked-down parts that have been stored at three customs bonded warehouses for four months.

Eyob Tekalign (PhD), a state minister for Finance, instructed officials of the Customs Commission last week to permit Elauto Engineering Plc to keep the knocked down parts sufficient to assemble 270 vehicles at the warehouses until further notice. The company ordered the parts after the Ministry of Finance issued a directive in May last year, providing duty exemptions for disassembled vehicles brought in for public transport service.

Gideon Timothewos (PhD), minister of Justice, ruled the directive void, contending that it contradicts a prevailing customs law last amended in 2019.

The disassembled vehicles arrived following Minister Gideon’s decision; they have since been stored at three bonded warehouses under the Customs Commission. Imported goods can stay at a bonded warehouse for no longer than four months before subjection to seizure.

Elauto Engineering had been pleading with the Addis Abeba Transport Bureau for an extension, Bekele Abebe, general manager, disclosed to Fortune.

The State Minister told customs officials to hold the parts until the directive that provides duty exemptions is approved by the Council of Ministers. The directive granting duty privileges to domestic assemblers is still in the making, people close to the process told Fortune.

Under the supervision of Debele Kebeta, the Customs Commission runs 16 branch offices and employs close to 8,000 people. It is also responsible for permitting over 150 bonded warehouses where imported goods with unpaid duties are stored. Among these is a bonded warehouse under the supervision of the Qality Customs Branch Office in Addis Abeba. Some of Elauto’s parts are stored there.

“We were instructed to allow the parts to stay for an additional month,” said Alemayu Anticho, general manager of the Branch Office.

Elauto Engineering brought the knocked-down parts to assemble vehicles to be deployed to address Addis Abeba’s public transport crisis.

It is a plan experts criticise as “unwise” to rely on expanding taxi fleets.

“It doesn’t consider the road infrastructure or the earnings of many residents,” said Engida Tadie, a lecturer of transportation management at Kotebe Metropolitan University.

He recommends that officials provide duty-free privileges to assemblers of mass transit vehicles to satisfy the capital’s transport needs. Close to 2.5 million commuters use public transport in Addis Abeba each day. However, the 10,131 public transport vehicles, many blue-and-white painted, fall short of satisfying demand.

The city’s administration rolled out a plan to replace aged blue-and-white taxis (commonly referred to as Lada) with new vehicles three years ago. The city’s transport bureau facilitated loans from the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) to import 10,000 disassembled vehicles for taxi services.

It coincided with the rapid expansion of ride-hailing services, which have grown to over 40 and pose a severe threat to the blue-and-white taxi owners. Over 10,000 vehicles are registered with the ride-hailing businesses in Addis Abeba. Several taxi associations and vehicle assemblers moved quickly to take advantage of the scheme.

Ze-Lucy Metre Taxi, a consortium of taxi associations, has imported 751 vehicles, while HelloTaxi, an importer of metre taxis, partnering with O’Clock General Motors, has delivered cars to 36 taxi associations members. The initiative later expanded to include privileges to buy locally-assembled vehicles composed of parts imported duty-free after the Finance Ministry issued the directive.

A year ago, officials approved proposals submitted by 23 taxi associations interested in buying vehicles from domestic assemblers with a seating capacity of between four and 10 passengers. Another 17 associations secured support from the Ministry of Transport, a prerequisite for the duty-free privilege.

There are 45 taxi associations registered by the Addis Abeba Transport Bureau, each comprising 55 vehicle owners.

Incorporated four years ago, Elauto Engineering Plc has shown interest in entering a deal with 23 of these associations. Elauto Engineering has thus far assembled and sold 60 seven-seat vehicles at the cost of 1.3 million Br apiece. However, the buyers were not taxi associations.

“They were sold to individuals willing to pay the duties,” said Bekele.

However, officials of the Customs Commission ordered the company to cease assembly and sales three months ago. This has left members of 19 Star, one of seven taxi associations that partnered with Elauto a year ago, in despair. The company consented to assemble and deliver four types of vehicles with prices ranging from 650,000 Br to 720,000 Br. Close to 50 members of the association paid 30pc of the value of the cars up front.

Although 19-Star members were aware that Elauto Engineering sold the vehicles to other buyers, there was nothing they could do.

“Not a single member can afford to pay,” said Wondafraw Girma, founder of the taxi association.

Abraham Getachew, who moved back to Addis Abeba from Qatar with his wife and child six years ago, is a member. Last year, he heard about Elauto’s offer and paid the 30pc (190,000 Br) downpayment. He was confident the vehicle would be delivered to him in six months, as the management of Elauto Engineering had pledged. It is a promise in waiting. Abraham finds himself in dire straits as his wife recently gave birth to their second child. The money he had saved up from working as a construction machinery operator in Qatar is running out.

“Even if the company delivers the vehicle, I’ve no money to pay for the balance,” he told Fortune.

He now makes a living as a construction foreman, earning 250 Br a day while his wife washes clothes for additional income.

Fisseha Desta, More Honest VP from Dark Times

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Nothing says “end of an era” about the Dergue like the successive passing of its senior officials. In 2019, it was Legesse Asfaw, a major military figure, and in 2020, it was Fikreselassie Wogderes, former prime minister. The most recent was the passing of Fisseha Desta (Col.), former vice president, who remembered and held his friends in high regard, and spoke more honestly than they might have liked.

He called Fikreselassie “people-centric” and a man who, “thought independently and liked to speak his mind,” even if “Mengistu [Hailemariam] might not have liked it.” Fisseha’s passing, too, would inspire well wishes and debate about his legacy and the impact upon the country during his tenure. His boss, Mengistu, chairman of the Dergue and then president, was, upon hearing the news, measured in his statement but emphatic of his attributes.

“Comrade Fisseha was a public servant who loved his country and people, unsullied by corruption and free from ethnic and tribal mentality,” Mengistu said from Harare, Zimbabwe.

While Fisseha’s reflections about the Dergue era have become nuanced, few, if any, would accuse him of lacking Ethiopian nationalism. He was never shy about his hope to see a country which was prosperous and its territorial integrity and independence respected, including in his 2015 autobiography, “The Revolution and My Memories.” Until his passing on May 6, 2022, his career and aspirations were proof of his convictions.

He was born in an otherwise different world in 1941, while the country was still under Italian occupation, and would return to Emperor Haile Selassie’s rule for the next 33 years. Hailing from Adwa town, Fisseha spent his young years until his secondary school in the Tigray region. Only in his teens did he come to Addis Abeba to finish high school. His decision in the late 1950s to join the Harar Military Academy marked his career and life trajectory for decades to come.

There were other students who would go on to change the political face of the country at the Academy, among them Mengistu and Legesse Asfaw. These were among the most elite military officers the Emperor was nurturing in his hometown, Harar. Both Mengistu and Fisseha also received training in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the student movement was laying the groundwork for the revolution that would bring the Dergue to power.

The future vice president did make an effort to expand his career outside the military, taking law classes at the Haile Selassie I University, now Addis Abeba University. The explosion of the revolution in 1974 changed these plans, as it did for millions of Ethiopians who had but a clue they were entering what was probably the darkest era in the country’s modern history.

Fisseha’s highest appointment came in the last four years of Dergue’s time in power, but he was a senior official throughout the rest. The military junta did some good things. It ended the feudalistic monarchy and created a republic; land ownership became more progressive; state and religion were separated; and a national literacy campaign was introduced. Its brutal military authoritarianism is what stands out, nonetheless.

The 17 years of Dergue was also a time of civil war and unending conflicts. Three chief failures exasperated the situation. One was the The Red Terror, which accelerated in intensity when Mengistu came became party chairman. A political repression campaign that saw torture and extrajudicial killings against suspected dissidents, it wiped out youth intellectuals of the era. Another was the military junta’s failure to respond to the famine in the northern part of the country in the 1980s. On the economic side, the slew of nationalisations, collectivisation and ban on private ownership crippled an already poor country.

Fisseha was most notable for a more sober reflection of the times than his colleagues. Soon after the fall of the Dergue, he was humbled by the experience of incarceration until he was released on parole after “20 years, four months, six days and 11 hours,” as he remembered in his 2015 book.

“He accepted his fate,” says Azeb Gebreselassie, his sister-in-law. “He never became bitter.”

He had a down to earth disposition, according to Azeb. He greeted people by bowing to them and spoke to anyone, young and old, like an adult deserving of attention and regard. Perhaps such modesty led him to be more nuanced with a statement rarely heard from men – and most are men – that occupied status similar to his.

“As glad as I am about the Dergue’s positive work, I take full responsibility and apologise to Ethiopians for wrongdoing perpetrated consciously, unconsciously, with overconfidence or by mistake,” reads a passage from his autobiography.

Time has been the jury. Most people, in their view of Fisseha, are more likely to be on either side of the extreme on the spectrum than somewhere in the middle.

Realising Africa’s Sustainable Energy Future

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Growing economies and growing populations mean growing energy needs. The international community must collaborate with developing countries to meet those needs through universal access to energy that is affordable, reliable, and clean. At the same time, we must enable a just and equitable transition away from coal and other fossil fuels, in accordance with the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Nowhere is this truer than in Africa, which has rich solar- and wind-energy potential and has made great progress using other renewable sources, including hydro, geothermal, and biofuels. But without international support, including investment at scale, African countries will not be able to expand energy access to all and still reach their climate goals.

The alternative – increased reliance on coal – would have devastating consequences. Globally, coal is the single biggest contributor to climate change, and increasing coal use will make communities even more vulnerable to its effects. Burning coal and other fossil fuels also spews deadly chemicals into the air and water, contributing to the more than one million deaths globally from fossil-fuel combustion each year.

Choosing clean energy over coal will thus yield immediate health benefits. It will also create new jobs and spur economic growth. Coal is increasingly more expensive than solar and wind, even before its terrible and costly effects on public health are factored in. Because coal plants become even more expensive to operate as they age, the costs of investing in coal will only grow for many years to come. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted countries’ urgent need to reduce their reliance on imported fossil fuels.

Clean energy promises even greater opportunities in Africa, where many communities are removed from centralised grids and extending the grid to reach everyone may not be financially possible. Decentralised clean energy offers a faster and more affordable way to expand energy access, thereby spreading opportunity and further accelerating Africa’s economic growth. Mini-grids using solar and wind can fuel not only homes but also local hospitals, schools, businesses, and other critical community resources.

Wealthy countries – including the United States – have a responsibility to help Africa seize those opportunities. They have benefited from more than a century of carbon-intensive development that now puts populations in Africa and throughout the developing world at great risk. African countries, which account for two to three percent of current global carbon dioxide emissions, have contributed the least to the climate crisis but face the most devastating consequences.

In 2009, rich countries pledged to provide 100 billion dollars annually to help the developing world fight climate change and prepare for its effects, but that promise has never been fulfilled. That must change right away, but more must be done. Governments, multilateral banks, private investment firms, and philanthropists must increase their efforts to drive clean-energy financing to developing countries that may otherwise be forced to rely on carbon-intensive solutions.

At the ongoing 2022 Sustainable Energy for All Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, which brings together African and other global leaders, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a new investment of 242 million dollars to speed up clean-energy progress in 10 developing countries. Four are in Africa: Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa. Each of these countries has enormous renewable-energy resources and can set an example for others around the world.

In partnership with Sustainable Energy for All, the International Solar Alliance, and other organizations, this funding will help those countries turbocharge clean-energy investment and avoid having to build new polluting coal plants. Together, we will help countries develop smart policies, attract new financing, establish clean-energy pilot projects, engage the public to encourage leaders to embrace clean energy, and provide the data and research those leaders will need to frame the most effective policies.

We have seen that it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions and increase access to affordable, clean energy at the same time, and to do so quickly. Working with partners, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Beyond Coal campaign has helped to close more than two-thirds of US coal plants and more than half of Europe’s. We must spread that success around the world.

There are promising clean-energy developments across Africa. For example, the presidency of last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and the Energy Transition Council brought together governments, development institutions, and financiers to create a supportive investment framework for Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan. Kenya’s electrification strategy has focused on a variety of renewable energy sources, tapping into multiple public and private funding channels and strategies for industrial, rural, and on-grid and off-grid alternatives to coal.

But we urgently need more action and investment, and the Sustainable Energy for All Forum is a chance to accelerate it. The event is reinforcing the importance of supporting Africa in its climate efforts and highlighting African leadership in the global Race to Zero emissions. All of this is happening in the lead-up to COP27 in Egypt this November – the first global climate summit in Africa since 2016.

African countries can show the way forward by powering their economies’ growth with clean energy. But they should not have to act alone.

Addis Abeba’s Societies Evolve from Glossy Bole to Old Piazza

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Addis Abeba is a fascinating city. I frequented different societies and observed that from one neighbourhood to another, the vision of the world could change radically. From Jemo to Bole through Sarbet. Young and old, western expats, members of the diaspora, employees of the African Union and Ethiopians from all over the country. Unemployed, retired, working, artists, students, and entrepreneurs. I experienced the different social realities of Addis Abeba.

One quickly realises that the different worlds do not mix. Often, one can get a good idea of a person’s social position by the place where they meet for a cup of coffee: rather Piazza or the neighbourhood café, Bole Millennium or the big hotels. Each site brings encounters with different people: from hip places like the many lounges where the diasporas meet, to more artistic places like Fendika.

Some parties always bring their share of Western expats, like editions of Zema Mezekir or Zoya. I met Ethiopians who spoke English without an accent even though they had never been out of the country – the only country where I could observe this phenomenon so far. Likewise, there were locals who did not speak English very well with whom we communicated in a mixture of English and stammering Amharic around coffee shops.

And do not forget the African diasporas, with whom I got on well and who socialise mainly by nationality. They are not easy to find. The fact that will have impressed me the most was that each group was unaware of the others. One of the groups that I did not manage to integrate was composed of Ethiopian-born people who Europeans adopted at an early age. They mix very little and go out in community.

Hanging out with the diaspora group was an enriching experience. These Ethiopians have managed to create a Western life for themselves while keeping some aspects of Ethiopian culture in their lives. They usually live with their families when they are not married and most often socialise with other members of the diaspora. They rarely mix with expats or locals. They have their own places and activities for socialising. I remember a brunch at a hotel in Megagnagna where I was the only foreigner among diasporans who had lived in North America.

Ethiopians in the diaspora, born and raised in Ethiopia and educated in the West, are mainly people who invest in the local economy through real estate or entrepreneurial activity. The pandemic has also enabled some of them to return to the country and work remotely for periods, thus irrigating the Ethiopian economy with their foreign currency. Other social groups in Addis Ababa may look at them with envy. Still, one cannot take away from the diasporas that their economic presence is beneficial in these economically challenging times.

The variation in prices from one neighbourhood to another is a classic emanation of the spatial division of these worlds, each of which occupies Addis in its own way. Expenses can range widely depending on the neighbourhood. I have seen diasporas spending in one evening what the average Ethiopian earns in a month’s work and even have brunches for prices close to those in North America; others have juices in juice bets and street coffee, often good quality traditional coffee at a democratic price of no more than 10 Br.

I sometimes felt like I was living in parallel worlds where I could spend 45 Br for a juice here and more than five times that for the same juice somewhere else. Another aspect of socio-spatial distance is that one often has to drive to get to certain places at night, especially those that are still open after 8pm and where one can have a drink or dinner. Public transport becomes scarce after dark and even invisible after 9pm. This accentuates the gaps between the different strata of society that can socialise after dark. The most popular classes go home on the last buses. Only those who can afford a cab, taxi hailing or have a car are left in the open bars and clubs.

The societies of Addis continue to evolve in parallel day and night. It is the privilege of the outsider to be in a position to witness the unique societal dynamics that cross the Ethiopian capital.

The Paul Volcker Hammer

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Inflation has been reintroduced into discussions in the rich world. Since the 1990s, inflation was a phenomenon of bygone eras that did not affect highly sophisticated economies. By the 2010s, central banks were having a hard time reaching their inflation targets and were led to reducing interest rates to near-zero – a policy that led to an unprecedented time of cheap money in the global financial system.

No more. It seems that the old monetarists are having the last laugh. It turns out printing lots of money, whatever the growth level of an economy, does lead to inflation. But not so fast. While it is dangerous to increase the money supply too much, it was probably still a better trade in the face of the impacts of COVID-19. Somewhere in the multiverse, there is an earth with mass unemployment and global productivity decline not seen since the Great Depression because central banks failed to stimulate national economies. If central banks are to be criticised, it is for their assumption that the inflation was “transitory” and failing to tighten earlier.

Now that the trade has been made, and there is no going back, what can be done?

Growth in the money supply is not the only driver of inflation at the moment. There is also a massive supply shock to basic items such as fuel, edible oil, wheat and fertiliser. But this was also the case in the 1970s and ‘80s. In the US, high levels of spending (social support and the Vietnam War) combined with oil supply shocks that arose as a result of the 1973 oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian revolution produced stubborn inflation. It was bad luck and a bit of policy miscalculation.

It is still no excuse for central banks to fail to act. Now that inflation is back, most central bankers look to the lessons of a peculiar looking fellow, the late Paul Volcker. He stood at over two meters tall and had to look down at the US presidents he met; the massive rectangular frame glasses he wore over a very prominent nose gave him a distinct feature.

Volcker made his name as the chair of the Federal Reserve, the equivalent of a central bank in the US. He was hired for the job at a time of stagflation. He introduced his hammer and made it his duty to bring down inflation by hook or crook. His weapon of choice was interest rates. Against double-digit inflation, he nearly doubled the rate at which banks lend to one another. The prime lending rate (which is similar to average lending rates in Ethiopia) also rose to 21.5pc. Both of these went above the peak of the US rate of inflation, which was almost 15pc. But, in the aftermath of the war between inflation and the central banker, inflation went down to three percent in a few years. Volcker is largely credited for this.

But no war is without its costs, even to the victor. There is another trade to stamping down inflation so ruthlessly and effectively, and this is recession. During his time, the high borrowing costs led to recession and high unemployment rates. Combined with Reagonomic tax cuts, it also led to a rise in sovereign debt the US grapples with decades later.

The lessons should be invaluable for officials at the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE). They are between a rock and a hard place. The public hates inflation, which should lead the central bankers to assume that they need to wage war against the phenomenon by raising interest rates. The floor of the benchmark savings interest rate needs to be at least doubled. But this will further dampen business activity and worsen unemployment. The public will also not like this. It is a headache. But nobody said the job of central banks is easy.

Times May be Hard but Fear, Resignation Does No Good

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Distance is never an issue for people looking for new ideas. John Trudgen introduced the Trudgen stroke to Europe in 1893, after seeing it used in South America. The stroke, employing a double over arm motion and a scissors kick, is the first successful above-water arm action used in swimming. He popularised the idea of minimising water resistance by bringing both arms out of the water, which paved the way for the reception of the now common Australian crawl adopted from South Sea natives.

Yet, very few have what it takes to be a synonym for the word invention through their imagination. But when it happens, it awes the world. When Thomas Edison died in 1931, aged 84, The New York Times devoted four and a half full pages to his obituary. Edison had less than three months of formal schooling and had a hearing impairment; his schoolteacher and mother educated him.

His unquenchable thirst for finding new ways of dealing with the physical world debunk the exaggerated claims about how socio-political and economic issues hold us back.

The entrepreneurial spirit is almost non-existent in Ethiopia. Recently, I chatted with a friend about the number of industries in Ethiopia that are at a “crossroad,” in his words, and the challenges they are facing, while we had coffee last week. As he started the list, first came telecom and banking and then the manufacturing industries.

They are at “crossroads,” he exclaimed.

His repeated mentioning of the word “crossroad,” clicked in my mind as a manifestation of our increasingly hypochondriac culture. It is a synonym for people morbidly anxious about their health, as the 19th-century German poet and dramatist Oscar von Redwitz, who reportedly may not have written of suffering as well as the likes of Goethe, but he certainly suffered more – at least in his mind. Probably history’s greatest hypochondriac, he is said to have visited a doctor every day of his life from the time he was 40, complaining of fully 10,000 different ailments or symptoms.

One needs to wonder if we are hypochondriacs about our circumstances. We are ailed day in and day out by every news and possibility. We do not innovate or maintain an entrepreneurial spirit but have accepted whatever fate awaits us as we have come to believe that most things are out of our hands. Efforts in such a culture are considered unnecessary because there are too many “crossroads” to deal with in our paths.

As I was walking home, I started to ponder about the two crossroads I had to cross. I was more than certain which way to go – the shortest route to my home – but grappled with the need to think about it. The challenge we face as a society is amplifying trivial matters to the point they shadow our entire outlook.

In fact, a theory holds that trivia derives from the Roman trivium, or “crossroads,” where people met to discuss small, insignificant things. It was also reported that during the Middle Ages, the seven liberal arts were divided into the quadrivium (consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the trivium (consisting of rhetoric, logic, and grammar). Since the trivium was considered less substantial, and its subjects more superficial, the word trivium eventually gave us the word trivial.

The lesson here is that, once we start actively trying to address our problems, they are not nearly as challenging as we assume. A great deal of effort needs to be exerted by ourselves but the crossroad is passable with a bit of imagination and hard work. An overwhelming number of people now live in a much safer world, fuller and more comfortable to anything that humanity had experienced before throughout its history. It is a disservice to the perseverance and innovativeness of our forbears to be lazy and scared when they have left us a much better world to live in than when they found it.

Has Humanity Reached the Limits to Growth?

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Fifty years ago this spring, one of the most influential books of the twentieth century was published. Written for the Club of Rome by Donella Meadows and colleagues at MIT, “The Limits to Growth” used new computer models to forecast an uncontrollable collapse in the global population and economy if prevailing patterns of environmental resource use and pollution continued. Exponential economic growth could not go on forever; at some point in the next 100 years, it would inevitably run up against Earth’s finite environmental limits.

A half-century later, with a climate and environmental crisis upon us, the debate triggered by “The Limits to Growth” has returned with a vengeance.

In 1972, the book came under immediate fire from economists who claimed that its authors failed to understand basic economics. If a resource becomes scarce, its price will rise, they pointed out. Other resources will then be substituted for it, and it will be used more efficiently. Technological innovation will lead to new, cleaner methods of production. Far from leading to social collapse, economic growth was thus self-correcting – not to mention the only way for countries to develop out of poverty.

So confident were mainstream economists that “The Limits to Growth” was wrong that one of them, Julian Simon, made a bet with the environmentalist Paul R. Ehrlich about the price of five metals over the following decade. Ehrlich bet that their prices would rise as they became scarcer, Simon predicted that they would become cheaper as other materials were substituted for them. Simon won the bet on all five.

But the scarcity of metals – or even fossil fuels – was never really what “The Limits to Growth” was about. As ecological economists Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Herman Daly pointed out, the reason physical limits to growth exist is that the planet’s biosphere cannot grow exponentially. Cut down trees faster than they can grow, and deforestation will result. Take more land for agriculture, and species will disappear. Pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than it can be absorbed, and the planet will heat up.

Simon may have won his ten-year bet, but over the past half-century the predictions in The Limits to Growth have proven remarkably robust. More recent scientific research has shown that, for a range of core life-support systems – including the climate – we are fast approaching, or in some cases may now have exceeded, the “planetary boundaries” within which humanity can safely prosper.

Mainstream economists recognise this, of course. But they note that economic growth is measured in terms of national income and output (GDP), and there is not a simple relationship between these indicators and environmental degradation. Using renewable energy, recycling waste, and shifting consumption from goods to services can make economic growth much less environmentally damaging. We can therefore have “green growth”: higher living standards and a healthier environment, too. Over the past decade, green growth has become the official objective of all the major multilateral economic institutions, including the World Bank and the OECD.

Rich countries’ CO2 emissions have indeed fallen in recent years, even as their economies have grown. But much of this apparent decoupling of GDP growth from environmental damage has been achieved by transferring emissions to China and other emerging economies that now produce most manufactured goods. And in other areas – including deforestation, fish stocks, and soil depletion – there has been little or no absolute decoupling. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Environment Programme have been warning with ever-growing urgency, the world is still headed for environmental disaster.

What must be done to avert it?

To an increasingly prominent group of environmentalists, the answer is obvious: Developed economies need to stop growing and start contracting. Only “degrowth,” say authors such as Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, can enable the world to live within its environmental means and leave enough resources for the poorest countries to develop.

Moreover, the degrowthers argue, economic growth is not only environmentally unsustainable but also fails to make us better off. GDP growth in rich countries, they observe, is now correlated with multiple social problems, from rampant inequality to growing mental ill-health.

Unsurprisingly, the economic debate between advocates of green growth and degrowth is also a political argument between pro- and anti-capitalist ideologies. Partly for this reason, a third position – “post-growth” – has emerged in recent years.

Proponents of post-growth economics criticise both green growthers and degrowthers for focusing on GDP. Since GDP does not measure environmental degradation or social well-being, neither growth nor degrowth of it should be a primary economic goal. In a recent report for the OECD, a panel of leading economists argue that economic policy should focus instead on society’s paramount objectives – which in the richer countries today should be environmental sustainability, improved well-being, declining inequality, and greater economic resilience.

Because none of these objectives can any longer be guaranteed by economic growth, policymakers need to go “beyond growth” to target them directly. As Kate Raworth, author of “Doughnut Economics,” puts it, we should be “growth-agnostic.”

A key reason for the rise of post-growth ideas is that advanced economies have in recent years had trouble growing at all. Previously normal two to three percent annual increases in GDP have been largely out of reach, with even modest growth sustained only by ultra-low interest rates and huge injections of central bank money.

Economists puzzle over why this is, but recent economic sluggishness certainly makes it easier to contemplate low rates of growth brought on by environmental policy, if that is indeed what would happen. One does not have to be an environmentalist to recognise the overwhelming priority of curbing the economy’s destructive impact on Earth’s climate and environment.

“The Limits to Growth” was widely dismissed a half-century ago. Had that not happened, we would not need to be having the debate again today.

Professional Code of Ethics: Some Laws Meant to be Broken

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Most professions, including those in medicine, psychology and social work, have rules of governance, procedures and a code of ethics that all practitioners must obey and respect. The rule implies that professions must be practised in accordance with the code of ethics set by the governing body. Otherwise, it would be considered a violation of regulations and the profession is challenged with the risk of losing its acceptance and validity by both internal and external parties and professionals.

For practitioners to apply the code of ethics of their respective profession, educational institutions, including colleges and universities, train students expecting to specialise in the field. For example, if we take social workers and psychiatrists, practitioners have a responsibility to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of clients. In addition, these professionals have an obligation to integrity, objectivity, professional competence and professional behaviour.

Adhering to each professional code of ethics may be difficult for practitioners and clients. A good example is when there are conditions and obligations for breaches of client confidentiality by social workers and psychiatrists. I once visited a family headed by a single mother as part of my studies at Addis Abeba University. I had a field assignment where I had to do a family needs assessment. The mother had five children and divorced the father because he was an alcoholic and did not contribute much to the household expenses. She added that because her ex-husband often came home drunk, he had disrespectful manners.

Once, when the mother left for work, he came home early and raped her 16-year-old daughter. Although the mother found out about the situation later, no one else in the family knew anything about what happened. The mother decided to divorce her husband and raise the children alone.

During the interview with the mother, for the purposes of assessing the needs of the family, she preferred to remain silent about the fact that her daughter had been raped by her biological father. However, when I went to connect her with social workers in her wereda for possible housing support and opportunities to rebuild her family, she whispered in my ear that she was afraid to talk about what her ex-husband did to her daughter.

As a social work student, I myself had some responsibility for what I had learned about the relationship between her daughter and her ex-husband. There are times when maintaining client confidentiality and privacy comes into question. For the safety of the family and respect for the code of ethics of the profession, such situations are to be discussed. Therefore, I had the responsibility to inform the social workers, who could help, despite my obligation to respect the client’s confidentiality and privacy. The code of ethics also allows such exceptions.

Other obligations to breach the code of ethics may exist. For example, romantic relationships between practitioners and clients are restricted. The rule helps the profession remain rational and neutral when offering services to clients. Nevertheless, incidents where clients or practitioners experience unexpected feelings towards one another during counselling are common but not frequent. When such situations occur, both the client and the practitioner are advised not to be hurt by the feelings and to be brave enough with self-control due to the code of ethics.

Nevertheless, the sentiment expressed can be challenging to control for both practitioners and clients. Unlikely, not all clients are aware of these codes of ethics which prohibit relationships between clients and practitioners.

In cases such as the breach of confidentiality with the father who raped his daughter, there must be exceptions where code of ethics is concerned or the principles must be held above the rule itself. We must ask ourselves what the acceptable exceptions in these circumstances would be and how to manage them.

Got Watery Milk? Or Useless Roach Killers?

Posted on by Web Master

Adulteration is getting out of hand. Consumers in Ethiopia are being left to their own devices, with authorities tasked with consumer protection failing to do their job. Take the little creatures that are impossible to get rid of from our houses. I have been sheltering them at home rent free for almost four months now.

The guests prefer the kitchen as they happen to adore food. I cannot go around the house without noticing their presence. They know that they are not welcome in the house, but they extend their stay and refuse to leave anyway.

But where is my hospitality? Are guests not welcome in my house?

They are, but I am referring to a small species that has infested my home, especially the kitchen – cockroaches. My kids, who often see me killing these creatures by hitting them with my flip-flops, are now my partners in crime. My daughter, unfortunately, thinks they are food. I cannot walk into the kitchen at night and not see them; they do not even sleep. They are always going somewhere as if they are on a mission.

Worse still, none of the gels or sprays sold in the market can kill them. None of them works. I have spent a lot of money trying to get rid of them, but nothing has been successful so far. I can imagine the disappointments many like me experience as the majority of these commercial products are close to useless.

“There is actually more things claiming to kill cockroaches than the cockroaches themselves,” goes a meme on social media. Is false advertising not illegal? Where are the authorities?

At least, the misleading advertising of roach killers is not directly dangerous to individuals. It is not something people consume. It becomes worse when it is food adulteration. Many people have noticed, for instance, that milk does not taste the same lately. The standard milk brands we find in the market taste more like water. This is even though prices have increased by half to 30 Br (even more at some shops).

What is the premium for if it does not at least guarantee a similar taste?

One possible explanation is that it has been tampered with somewhere along the value or supply chain. Some people believe that whoever distributes or makes it adds way too much water to it. I would not be surprised if that were the case because we are used to seeing similar acts being done to injera and berbere. Hopefully, the tamperers have a better conscious than those that combine injera with gypsum, and clay with berbere – hopefully, it is clean water being mixed with the milk.

But why is any of this being tolerated? Why is tampering with products to increase volume, and false advertisement not being put a stop to it by the authorities? Where is the consumer protection authority?

Not long ago, I watched a video on TikTok of a group of people pouring water from a water truck. It was water used to clean the streets into jars and then selling them as drinking water. Can anyone imagine babies as old as six months drinking or taking that kind of water with their food? The repercussions on public health are alarming. I sometimes give milk to my children without boiling it because it is labelled “pasteurized” on the package. These days, I do not know if I still trust those labels or any other locally manufactured product.

The other product that was supposed to be imported but adulterated is bags of rice. It used be reliable, then all of a sudden the taste changed. There is a test one can do to tell whether if it is real organic rice or rice mixed with plastic. It turns out there was plastic in it. Such infractions cannot go unpunished lest they proliferate beyond control.

Leather Industry Struggles to Meet Expectations

Posted on by Web Master

The struggling leather industry managed a little over 33 million dollars in export earnings over the first 10 months of the financial year.

It is less than half of officials’ aspirations to generate 69 million dollars over the same period, and highlights the troubles faced by the industry over the past few years.

Exports from finished leather goods plunged 72pc last year from three years ago. Only eight finished leather manufacturers accounted for 89pc of last year’s export earnings, shipping 22.7 million dollars worth of leather products. The earnings are a symptom of an industry in decline –  leather accounted for 7.2pc of all exports in the 16 years before 2016.

Industry players are grappling with low-quality raw materials, foreign currency shortages, a lack of chemicals necessary for leather processing, and limited skilled manpower. Leather manufacturers have to contend with the imports of leather products as well.

The Ethiopian Leather Manufacturers Association had appealed to authorities two years ago to impose higher tariffs on imported leather goods.