FORTUNE+ VIDEO SPONSORED CONTENTS ADVERTORIALS FORTUNE AUDIO Fortune Careers New TRADE AFRICA New

Fortune Logo

Month: June 2025

Addis Abeba’s Urban Facelift Paves Over Its Informal Soul

Posted on by Digital Editor

At dawn, a typical pedestrian in Addis Abeba begins what locals call “the sidewalk slalom.” She skirts an open manhole, hops a fresh trench, threads between scaffold poles and bargains with a fruit-cart vendor. Pavement here is less a right-of-way than an improvised stage where business and choreography meet.

Economists would call it a textbook tragedy of the commons. Garrett Hardin coined the term to describe pastures ruined by unrestricted grazing. He never set foot in Addis Abeba, yet his warning fits the strip of concrete outside a café. A public good that belongs to everyone but is unpoliced quickly becomes overused, then left to crumble.

Sidewalks, in theory, are for walking. In practice, they are primarily used by businesses. Not an inch lies idle. A shoe shiner claims one slab, a mannequin in knockoff couture another, and a vendor hawking belts from a sack the next. Addis Abeba’s public space is not contested so much as endlessly repurposed.

The city thus operates under what residents refer to as a political economy of absence. The municipality drafts plans, contractors dig channels, vendors ply trade, and residents complain. However, almost nobody maintains. Regulations exist, but they are often ineffective and misdirected, much like the rainy season. One morning, officials stage a sweep of informal traders; by evening, the same traders are back. Enforcement is less a rule of law than rule by rotation.

The economics are equally blunt. Sidewalks offer rent-free real estate, making them the ultimate expression of urban informality.

Why pay thousands of Birr a month for a kiosk when the pavement costs a few Birr in tribute and a game of hide-and-seek with inspectors?

In a city of opaque permits and zoning, informality feels less like rebellion than rational adaptation. That adaptation carries a cost. A common good becomes a venue for petty extraction. Individuals pocket gains yet contribute nothing to upkeep. Obstructions, litter and exposed rebar become externalities absorbed by passers-by. The pavement records the privatisation of benefits and the socialisation of risk.

Where, then, is the city administration?

Governance in Addis Abeba is contradictory. After decades of sprawl and decay, officials have re-emerged not to restore shared ownership but to impose top-down order. Along Africa Avenue (Bole neighbourhood) around Unity Park and on stretches of Churchill Avenue, new corridors sparkle with imported granite, manicured hedges and evenly spaced bins. These walks are clean, symmetrical, and smooth, more like a showroom floor than a public way, designed for visitors and dignitaries.

Their stools and shoeshine boxes, light enough to whisk away in a hurry, form the city’s most portable supply chain. Beyond the city centre, in Aqaqi, Jemo and Kolfe, the sheen evaporates. Pavement dissolves into potholed trails, half-finished trenches and drainage channels. Women with market bags and children with dust-caked shoes navigate parked minibuses, stagnant puddles and construction rubble. The municipality that choreographs marble tiles downtown leaves the margins to fend for themselves.

However, the many other neglected sidewalks illustrate Hardin’s tragedy. The gleaming lanes reveal a perilous opposite, an aesthetic overreach. In trying to “fix” public space, managers confuse gloss for stewardship and order for ownership. Half a century ago, urbanist Jane Jacobs cautioned against that instinct. Sidewalks, she wrote, are vital social infrastructure, animated by “eyes on the street” and everyday negotiation.

They are where civic trust is built, urban life is practised, and a city learns to live with itself.

Today’s refurbished corridors may dazzle, but they are socially vacant. Shoeshine boys, pensioners, vendors and idlers are gone. In their place stand stone planters, imported tiles and LED-festooned lamps. These are sidewalks without sidewalk life, causing Addis Abeba to slip into an enclosure. Medieval commons were once fenced off in the name of efficiency. Today’s sidewalks are cleared and curated in the name of modernity. The logic is familiar. Displace the informal, sanitise the organic, regulate the unplanned.

Officials defend the showcase corridors as proof of momentum. Design sketches circulate on social media, all drone angles and sunset filters. The experience is different. A marble ribbon that ends abruptly in gravel, a hedge uprooted so a parked Land Cruiser can mount the curb. Gloss seldom travels more than a few blocks before reality intrudes.

Regulars say the pattern repeats each construction season. Crews arrive to install water pipes or fibre cables, jackhammer slabs, and leave a ribbon of dirt before departing. Months pass before anyone returns to pour concrete; by then, the trench has filled with rainwater and candy wrappers. Pedestrians soon trace informal paths. When utilities come knocking again, the cycle starts anew, always shy of completion.

However, the informal economy adapts. Vendors retreat a few meters, returning at dusk when inspectors clock out.

The result is a two-speed city, one curated for the camera and one endured in dust. Public investment follows visibility, not vulnerability. What gets paved is what best performs the promise of a “rising city.” Sidewalks cease to be infrastructure; they become props in a pageant of prestige urbanism.

Repairing a sidewalk that no one owns requires more than another edict. It demands political clarity and democratic accountability. The paths need guardians, local councils, tenant associations, community hearings, backed by transparent zoning and steady enforcement. These tools are mundane, but they beat the next press release about a “beautified corridor.”

If the public is to protect the commons, planners should treat pavement neither as an afterthought nor a spectacle. Durable infrastructure lives in the middle ground, neither abandoned nor overdesigned, but co-owned, co-managed and responsive to how people actually inhabit space.

Facing the Mirror in Turmoil, Change the World

Posted on by Digital Editor

A recent BBC documentary spotlighted a familiar face in war-torn Port Sudan—a city now bearing the scars of a protracted civil war. It was Husam Abdulsalam, a violinist I had come to know from his spellbinding performances at the African Jazz Village in Addis Ababa.

He had often taken the stage as a guest performer, captivating the room with his rendition of “Mashaina / We Went,” a classic by the legendary Nubian trio, Al Balabil. When Husam bowed his strings, time seemed to slow. The club stood still. Waves of nostalgia swept over the audience, especially those who had lived through the 1970s and 80s.

Another night, his arrangement wove together John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things, the haunting folk tune Yematibela Wef (The Bird that cannot be eaten) by the late Masenko maestro Assefa Abate, and his own violin flourishes. After one show, we took a selfie and exchanged numbers. He became a recurring presence on the jazz stage, a rare soul whose artistry felt timeless.

But toward the end of his stay in Addis, Husam grew increasingly anxious. He spoke of Port Sudan with worry, asking about routes home as though planning a mission through war zones, which, in fact, he was. Through Facebook posts, I learned he had arrived. His updates grew somber: instability, safety fears, and immense humanitarian need – food, medicine, shelter. The lofty artistic soul I once watched transport an audience now carried a different burden, channeling his energy into securing meals for the most vulnerable.

That same Husam – artist, academic, now activist – was featured in a BBC report. The footage showed him not merely coordinating logistics, but also cooking and serving food to displaced communities. In his interview, he described the unbearable conditions and the tireless work of volunteers trying make life a little more tolerable to those caught in crisis. Watching him, I was reminded of Churchill’s tribute to the Royal Air Force (RAF): “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Indeed, this was Husam: compassionate, committed, resolute.

He was not the only Sudanese soul to leave an imprint on Addis.

One night at the Jazz Club, a mellow bouncing reggae beat introduced Sarah Solo, a Sudanese vocalist with a stage presence that defied rehearsal. She told us she had never played with the band before, just a jam session. Yet the room hung on her every note. Her voice, dreamy, meditative and undulating, had the power of an aria and the softness of a lullaby.

She moved with elegance and ease, her presence silencing the crowd in reverent attention. Sarah was completely immersed in the music, letting her guard down and becoming oblivious to her surroundings. The audience was instantly captivated, not only by the sheer beauty of her voice but also by her measured, graceful movements on stage, gliding as smoothly as silk.

Applause followed applause as Sarah quickly became the centre of the room’s energy. People watched in reverent silence, drawn in with a deep, almost spiritual connection. She commanded the moment, making it feel timeless. Her soft, caressing voice washed over the room, transporting listeners to her homeland near the Red Sea.

After the show, I joined a long line of admirers who flocked to show her appreciation. Her radiant smile greeted us all like old friends. When we took a photo together, it captured more than a moment – it captured a kindred connection, two strangers bound by art and empathy. Just like my photo with Husam, it held a shared light.

The Sudanese, I’ve observed, have a soul attuned to friendship, open to bonds across borders. Ethiopia remembers their generosity, decades of hospitality during our own turmoil. Now, sadly, they find themselves displaced. But in Addis, their spirit still shines; kind, hopeful, undeterred.

Sarah, I later learned, is also a medical doctor. I teasingly mentioned Anton Chekhov’s famous quip: “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other.” She laughed, knowingly. The quote though light-hearted on the surface is a poignant reminder of many who oscillate their time and energy between their profession and passion.

Her music, deeply personal, soul-rich, tinged with reggae and Sudanese rhythm, is available on SoundCloud. One track, “I Am a Refugee, a VIP,” stands out. Written in quieter times, it now echoes her lived reality; exile, disillusionment, and yet, dignity. The longing in her song bears an iconic semblance with that of Ethiopian artists like Menelik Wossenachew, Aster Aweke, and Ephrem Tamiru, many of whom once walked the streets of Khartoum and called Sudan a second home.

Then there was Hanna Abubeker, a young photographer from Port Sudan whom I met at THE SPACE, a contemporary art gallery. Her work, part of the exhibition Migration, Her Story, visually narrates the refugee journey through poignant, often haunting imagery. One display was her passport, layered with visa stamps from East African and Middle Eastern cities. Her English was limited, but her photos spoke volumes. When she saw my selfie with Husam, she asked for one of her own. And there it was again: the smile, the spirit, the vulnerability wrapped in quiet strength.

Husam, Sarah, and Hanna share a remarkable trait: a refusal to be defined by their circumstances. In the face of adversity, they have each chosen to rise above, to give generously of themselves, and to carve out hope where despair could easily take root. The hardships they’ve endured have not dimmed their spirit; instead, they continue to believe, to act with compassion, and to build toward something better.

Their resilience and quiet heroism bring to mind the lyrics of Michael Jackson’s call to self-reflection: “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change.”

There is much to learn from these kind neighbours who have graced the city I call home. I wish them peace, strength, and all the goodness the world still has to offer; and above all, a safe return to the home they long for.

Productivity Gains Depend on Bold Firms, Not Broad Reform

Posted on by Digital Editor

Few doubt that productivity growth is good for society. It generally translates into higher wages, consumer surplus (prices below what consumers are willing to pay), larger profits, and greater shareholder value. Less understood, however, is “how” productivity growth is created. New research from the McKinsey Global Institute shows that the lion’s share comes from a few firms making audacious moves.

While the conventional wisdom holds that productivity growth stems from gradual, collective improvements to efficiency across many companies, our analysis suggests otherwise. A tiny number of firms are driving potent bursts of progress, because they have made bold, idiosyncratic strategic moves that force competitors to respond. Rather than a thousand or a million firms moving an inch, the real gains come from a few extraordinary firms moving thousands of miles.

We based our analysis on 8,300 companies in Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US), focusing especially on four sectors: retail, automotive and aerospace, travel and logistics, and computers and electronics. We used these companies to create a “lab economy,” tracking precisely who was creating value and contributing to national productivity growth, and who was destroying value by dragging productivity down.

Although we looked at the relatively stable period between 2011 and 2019, after the global financial crisis but before the COVID-19 pandemic, we found similar patterns in the data from 2019 to 2023.

In our lab economy, we found that fewer than 100 productivity “standouts” account for two-thirds of the sample’s growth. These are firms that added at least one basis point to their respective national sample’s productivity growth between 2011 and 2019. At the same time, an even smaller number of “stragglers” made negative contributions of at least one basis point. This is a much more extreme concentration than the prevailing view of productivity would suggest.

What sets standouts apart?

In our sample, they pursued five strategic plays, often in combination, to power ahead: scaling more productive business models or technologies (such as e-commerce or low-cost carrier models); shifting regional and product portfolios toward the most productive businesses or even adjacent opportunities; reshaping customer value propositions in both mass and niche markets; building scale and network effects; and transforming operations to boost labour efficiency and reduce cost.

Thus, our case studies highlight Apple’s strategic expansion into services; EasyJet shaping the discount airline trend; and, Zalando pioneering apparel e-commerce.

This lens on productivity helps us see more clearly why some countries pull ahead while others stall. While we already knew that the United States leads major European economies in terms of productivity growth, a closer look at the firms in our lab economy confirms why. Between 2011 and 2019, US productivity grew by 2.1pc a year within our sample, compared to 0.2pc in Germany and a flat zero in the United Kingdom, because the 44 US standouts outnumbered the 14 stragglers by a factor of three. By contrast, the UK had a more even distribution, with 30 standouts and 25 stragglers, whereas Germany had 13 standouts and 16 stragglers.

But it is not only about having standouts; resources should be shifted toward them. The US was itself a standout in this respect, with half its productivity growth coming from reallocating labour away from stragglers and toward the vanguard of productivity growth. In Europe, job mobility was more subdued, and the stragglers dragged down productivity growth.

This insight has major implications for policymaking.

Many current policies aim to boost welfare by supporting small firms and spreading best practices. But, if a handful of firms drive most of the gains, we need asymmetric strategies to match the pattern we observe. That means enabling faster reallocation of capital and labour, and building ecosystems that help winners scale up. Consider: If Germany could have counted 19 more standouts like the retailer REWE in the period analysed, its private-sector productivity growth would have more than doubled.

Encouraging bold moves could be even more consequential in emerging economies, where standout firms have the potential to leapfrog some of the technologies and business models deployed in advanced economies. If the kind of firms that can become standouts are fewer and further between, fast productivity growth may be difficult to achieve without deliberately nurturing potential standouts’ emergence and success.

Business leaders, for their part, should stop treating productivity as a byproduct of operations and start managing it as a strategic outcome. That means tracking it, investing in it, and making gutsy calls, accompanied by resource shifts, on where to grow and where to pull back.

Amid today’s economic uncertainty, companies around the world are delaying investment decisions, cutting costs, and otherwise trying to husband their limited resources. Yet the lesson from our research is that they should be doing the opposite. Real productivity growth does not come from playing it safe. It comes from creating the conditions for bold bets to pay off.

Africa Takes the Lead on Global Finance Reform

Posted on by Digital Editor

This year’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have made it clear that the global financial system, strained by repeated crises, is no longer fit for purpose. Growth is decelerating, climate-related volatility is rising, and debt distress is deepening, but the available policy tools remain too cumbersome, fragmented, and inefficient.

Africa has long borne the brunt of these failures. But rather than merely calling for reform, African governments are increasingly advancing solutions, building institutions, and introducing innovations to help create an international financial system that allocates capital more efficiently and is equipped to handle escalating shocks and widening inequalities. While calls for reform are often framed as a matter of fairness, the more pressing issue is efficacy.

The global financial system fails to provide sufficient liquidity during crises, invest in climate adaptation, channel capital to high-return yet underfinanced green-sector opportunities, and resolve sovereign-debt disputes quickly enough to preserve development gains. It is economically dysfunctional and ultimately destabilising.

That is why African countries have championed international debt reform and local-currency financing in recent years, urging multilateral development banks (MDBs) to take on a more active role. These proposals reflect a growing recognition that structural failures raise risk premiums, deter investment, and leave national economies increasingly exposed to external shocks.

Debt distress is the most urgent and systemic threat to global development. More than 30 African countries currently spend more on servicing external debts than on health and education. While the IMF’s Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable Playbook encourages creditors and borrowers to come to the table sooner and emphasises the need for transparency, its impact remains limited by a lack of enforceability. African governments have responded by calling for a debt resolution framework that is predictable, rules-based, and responsive to development needs.

Today’s system, plagued by delays, elevated risk premiums, and poor creditor coordination, fails to align incentives, contain spillovers, and mobilise private investment. Fortunately, South Africa’s G20 presidency provides a unique opportunity for the continent to push for bold reforms that reframe debt not as a liability but as a catalyst for growth.

One notable example of African efforts to redesign the global financial system is the proposal to repurpose special drawing rights (SDRs, the IMF’s reserve asset) as hybrid capital for MDBs. This idea, advanced by the African Development Bank and the G24, would allow SDRs to be leveraged while retaining their reserve-asset status, thereby creating more space for concessional lending. Several MDBs are now considering the proposal as a way to strengthen their balance sheets and expand lending capacity.

Similarly, regional institutions like the Trade & Development Bank and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) are advancing pooled credit enhancements, South-South financing platforms, and climate-finance mechanisms tailored to fragile contexts. These are not just innovations, but they are viable templates that global policymakers should adopt and scale.

To be clear, public financing alone cannot mobilise the volume of investment needed to boost growth, build resilience, and accelerate the climate transition. But private capital flows continue to bypass many African economies, deterred by perceptions of high risk, rising borrowing costs, limited financial instruments, and weak project pipelines.

Instruments like credit guarantees, blended finance, and first-loss capital could help rebalance risk-return profiles and attract private investment. However, to be effective, they should be deployed at scale, rather than confined to pilot projects. Equally critical are upstream reforms that strengthen legal frameworks and institutional capacity in order to develop a strong pipeline of investable projects.

Africa’s experience demonstrates that Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) should support both downstream and upstream investments. A persistent blind spot is the failure to promote local-currency finance and domestic capital market development. Over-reliance on foreign-currency borrowing exposes African countries to market volatility and raises debt-service costs. Yet, MDBs and development partners continue to treat local-currency instruments as fringe or experimental.

They should not.

Brazil’s Tesouro RendA+ and Educa+ programs can serve as a useful model, demonstrating the potential of inflation-adjusted, retail-accessible savings instruments. These tools, delivered through mobile apps and gift cards in increments as low as one dollar, have successfully mobilised long-term domestic capital while encouraging financial inclusion. Likewise, the Pan-African Payment & Settlement System (PAPSS), now operational across multiple central banks, is enabling cross-border trade in local currencies, addressing market frictions, and providing a blueprint for building a more resilient financial system.

To respond effectively to climate-related shocks, Africa needs a comprehensive toolkit that includes debt-for-climate swaps, green bonds, and concessional financing facilities capable of attracting private investment in adaptation measures. While the IMF’s Resilience & Sustainability Trust is a step in the right direction, it should be scaled up substantially. More importantly, it should mobilise greater private-sector investment and climate finance.

The challenge is not only to create new instruments, but also to improve implementation. MDBs and donors should simplify access, enhance coordination, and incorporate climate resilience into national investment strategies.

Africa’s priorities – timely debt resolution, upstream-investment readiness, local-currency borrowing, and large-scale climate finance – are not merely regional demands. They are systemic solutions that would make the global financial system more responsive and better prepared to withstand future crises.

In a world increasingly plagued by compounding shocks and capital scarcity, African governments are advancing actionable, forward-looking solutions that address the financial system’s most persistent blind spots. South Africa’s G20 presidency is elevating this agenda, sending a clear signal that Africa is not asking to join the global debate. It is helping to shape it.

Chasing GDP Warps Policy, Masks Inequality, Muffles Democracy

Posted on by Digital Editor

In mainstream economics, description is routinely treated as secondary to analysis. Labelling a work as “purely descriptive” conveys dismissiveness. Yet, as Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen observed in a seminal 1980 paper, every act of description involves choices. Whether we are describing a historical event, an individual, or a country, what we choose to include and what we leave out can be critical.

Description shapes perception, and perception, in turn, can profoundly influence behaviour. Describing the state of a country’s economy is a complicated task. In the past, scholars wrote lengthy volumes debating whether one country was doing better than another. But over time, a single measure has come to dominate the conversation. Gross domestic product (GDP) represents the value of all goods and services produced within a country in a given year.

With some adjustments, it also approximates the population’s total income. It is an astonishingly concise metric, often used as shorthand for economic well-being.

As Diane Coyle noted in her 2014 book on the history of GDP, its emergence marked a watershed moment in economic policymaking. Developed by Simon Kuznets in the early 1930s, GDP has brought much-needed rigour to policy debates. Politicians could no longer simply point to tall buildings as evidence of progress (though many still do). Today, assessing a country’s economic performance over time means tracking the growth of its GDP.

To be sure, there are other ways to assess national well-being, such as the United Nations’ Human Development Index and the World Bank’s Shared Prosperity Indicator. But, when it comes to determining whether one economy is outperforming another, GDP (or GDP per capita) remains the default benchmark.

While GDP has undoubtedly played a valuable role in modern economics, its limitations are increasingly difficult to ignore. Over time, it has become an end in itself, enabling politicians to use growth figures as a convenient distraction from persistent social and economic fractures. Growing unease with GDP-centric policy thinking was powerfully articulated in UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterees’s 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, which urged global policymakers to embrace a broader set of progress indicators.

As an economic indicator, GDP has three key weaknesses.

By focusing solely on a country’s total income, it can create the illusion of widespread prosperity, even when inequality is rising. GDP per capita can rise even as a majority becomes worse off. As Joseph E. Stiglitz put it in his 2010 book “Freefall”, “A larger pie does not mean everyone – or even most people – gets a larger slice.” But most people may celebrate GDP growth nonetheless, much like they cheer their country’s Olympic medal count, without questioning who actually benefits.

This concern was highlighted by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance & Social Progress, which was established in 2008 by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy and included Stiglitz, Sen, and other prominent economists. Its final report called for incorporating measures such as income distribution and inequality into the GDP.

The other weakness of GDP is that its maximisation often rewards activities that undermine democratic governance. Being super-rich, after all, involves more than simply owning more cars, mansions, planes, and yachts. Extreme wealth, especially in the age of social media and AI, also means having a louder voice and disproportionate influence over how people think.

In traditional societies, when a feudal lord entered a village council meeting, ordinary people who may have been arguing and pleading for change moments earlier would fall silent. That same dynamic is now playing out on a global scale. As wealth becomes concentrated in fewer hands, and as a handful of online platforms shape what billions of internet users see and hear, many are discovering that they are losing their voice, the most essential instrument of democracy.

Clearly, the time has come to develop new measures of national progress that do not strengthen the forces threatening democracy. As US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously warned, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Lastly, GDP can be inflated at the expense of future generations. We can and do boost GDP growth by engaging in activities that damage the environment and accelerate climate change, leaving our descendants with a scorched earth.

Given this, merely acknowledging the urgency of climate action is no longer enough. To ensure a sustainable future, we should reform our most prominent measure of economic welfare so that sustainability is central to how we define prosperity.

War on Malaria Winnable But Africa Needs a Plan to End It

Posted on by Digital Editor

Despite being preventable and curable, malaria has continued to claim African lives. In 2023, the continent accounted for around 95pc of the 597,000 deaths from malaria worldwide, 76pc of which were children under the age of five.

But eliminating this scourge, which impedes development goals and the realisation of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, is within reach. Nine AU member countries – Algeria, Cabo Verde, Egypt, Lesotho, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, the Seychelles, and Tunisia – have become malaria-free, owing to sustained political commitment and well-targeted public investment in primary healthcare, and disease surveillance and case management.

African countries with a higher malaria burden should heed their example.

Algeria, for example, has invested in effective vector control through indoor residual spraying, universal access to healthcare for malaria diagnosis and treatment, and rapid outbreak-response mechanisms. Cabo Verde’s strategic malaria-elimination plan involved a multisectoral approach, whereby the government worked closely with local communities and international organisations. Egypt’s multipronged strategy included, among other things, robust training programs for primary health workers.

Implementing these coordinated interventions required the political will and, crucially, increased domestic financing.

Overall, Africa’s efforts to control malaria – particularly through the use of insecticide-treated nets, indoor spraying, and seasonal chemoprevention (which involves giving children a monthly course of antimalarial medicines) – have driven a notable decline in malaria deaths on the continent, from 805,000 in 2000 to 569,000 in 2023. (The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the emergence of partial resistance to the well-established malaria medicine artemisinin, caused a brief uptick, to 598,000, in 2020.)

But, these gains are fragile, particularly as new mosquito variants emerge, insecticide resistance grows, climate change worsens, humanitarian crises become more frequent, and, perhaps most importantly, the global malaria-funding gap widens. In 2023, only four billion dollars was mobilised for malaria elimination, far below the 8.3 billion dollars annual target, and a slight drop from the 4.1 billion dollars raised in 2022.

The problem is even more acute in Africa, where external health aid has declined by a whopping 70pc between 2021 and 2025. Most African countries devote less than 10pc of their national budgets to the health sector, well below the 15pc target set by the 2001 Abuja Declaration.

Given the uncertain future of foreign aid, African governments should recognise malaria as a development priority and invest more in efforts to control and eliminate it. That means leveraging untapped resources, including the more than 95 billion dollars in annual remittances from the African diaspora. Innovative financing instruments such as diaspora bonds could support the continent’s public health agenda. Solidarity levies on tobacco, alcohol, mobile transactions, and airline tickets could also generate billions of dollars for health services.

Scaling up national health insurance schemes will be required to expand access to malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Blended finance can unlock private capital for malaria-related research and development, as well as local manufacturing of therapeutics. With Africa’s healthcare market projected to be worth 259 billion dollars by 2030, policymakers should capitalise on this opportunity to create effective public-private partnerships, advance last-mile delivery solutions, and improve surveillance and vector control.

This would be an investment in Africa’s present and future, because every dollar spent on malaria control and elimination generates a remarkable return of 36 dollars in economic growth. A malaria-free population is more likely to access education and contribute to the continent’s socioeconomic development. And let me be clear: investing in the fight to end malaria is not only a health and economic imperative; it is an act of justice. The disease disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable Africans, perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality.

Last year, I joined health ministers from 11 AU member countries with high malaria burdens in committing to accelerate efforts to reduce deaths from the disease. As part of the declaration, we agreed that “no one should die from malaria given the tools and systems available.” The task now is to take concrete action.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control & Prevention is ready to help develop a continental strategy for ending malaria in Africa by 2040. By making smart investments, implementing well-targeted policies, and deepening collaboration, we can ensure that all African countries become malaria-free within the coming generation..

A Dream Taxed to Death

Posted on by Digital Editor

Six years ago, a dear friend took a leap. He poured his life savings into building a business not for quick profits, but to create something enduring. He hired twenty young people, many fresh from rural villages, with no homes in the city. So, he gave them shelter, space to sleep in his office compound, and meals to eat, on top of their salaries.

He did more than build a company. He built a refuge. He also made a vow: no bribes, no shady deals. He walked away from lucrative tenders because he chose integrity over convenience. People admired him. They still do.

Today, that same man is exhausted, desperate, and unable to operate. His company is frozen. Not because he refuses to pay taxes, he acknowledges what he owes, but because the penalties and interest have snowballed into an unpayable mountain.

His accounts, both personal and business, are locked. He has sold his car and household items trying to catch up. He cannot pay his workers. He cannot support his wife and their two sets of twin toddlers. Most painfully, he cannot earn the income needed to repay the state.

The Minister of Revenues has a clear mandate: collect taxes, uphold the law. But when tax enforcement becomes so rigid that it cripples legitimate businesses, it undermines its own purpose. How can a business repay its debt when it is blocked from earnings? How can workers remain employed if their workplace is shuttered? How does the country raise revenue if it starves the very sources of it?

This kind of tax enforcement does not just hurt entrepreneurs, it hurts everyone. The state loses income. Workers lose livelihoods. Honest businesses lose faith. And in the vacuum, corruption thrives.

Most business owners are not looking to evade taxes. They simply cannot survive punitive penalties and daily compounding interest that grow unchecked. They need air to breathe. Instead, they are suffocating.

Walk into any revenue bureau office or commercial bank and you will hear echoes of the same story: frozen companies, bankrupt owners, unpaid employees; not due to fraud, but due to a system that offers no path to redemption. It is like cutting off water to a farmer, then blaming him for the barren fields.

Other countries have faced this dilemma, and acted differently.

Rwanda introduced a Voluntary Tax Disclosure Programme that waives late penalties for businesses that self-declare unpaid taxes and pay within a timeframe. Germany’s 3.2 billion euro “Growth Opportunities Act” offers tax relief and research incentives to keep SMEs hiring and innovating through economic downturns. Singapore allows structured installment plans and penalty waivers for honest disclosure. Canada’s 3.5 billion dollars SR&ED tax credit supports small businesses that invest in innovation, most of its recipients are SMEs.

These countries understand a vital truth: helping businesses stay afloat leads to more tax revenue, not less. Enforcement must be firm, yes, but never at the cost of economic suffocation.

Because this is not just a tax issue. It is a jobs issue. A family issue. A survival issue. A national issue.

Struggling companies should be allowed to keep operating under conditional licenses, as long as they are actively paying down their debts, even in installments. Do not wall them out of the economy. Give them a path forward.

The message today’s system sends is chilling: that ethics are costly, that honesty does not pay. My friend, the man who once gave his workers beds and bread, now struggles to put food on his own table. His dream is crumbling, and with it twenty others, along with the tax revenue and employment they once generated.

If this is how Ethiopia treats its ethical entrepreneurs, what hope is there for the rest?

We need more than compassion, we need reform. Practical, courageous reform.

Replace compound penalties with performance-based reductions. Scale them down as businesses show good-faith repayment. Cap maximum liabilities so entrepreneurs can realistically plan repayment. Offer amnesty windows for SMEs to clear penalties and pay base taxes over time.

That is not a handout, it is smart economics. Create incentive programs for clean, compliant businesses. Let integrity be rewarded.

Build a fully integrated tax platform where businesses can view their records, create payment plans, submit appeals, chat with tax officers, and track progress. Transparency is not enough, accessibility matters.

Other countries are showing the way.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s new Direct File platform provides live support and online filing, making taxes less daunting. The U.S. SEC has a Small Business Advisory Committee to ensure policy decisions reflect the lived experience of entrepreneurs.

Ethiopia can do the same. A modern digital tax system. A council that brings SME voices to the table. Not just fixes, but investments in trust and growth.

Tax systems must be firm, but they must also be fair. When they are not, they corrode the very foundation of business trust.

No one is asking for taxes to be waived. But when the penalties and bureaucracy are more damaging than the original debt, something is broken. And it needs fixing.

A nation does not rise by grinding its small businesses to dust. It rises by treating them as partners, not just payers. It rises when it makes room for redemption, for recovery, for those who choose to build clean, even when it costs them.

The choice is simple: block the honest or back them. One path drains the future. The other builds it.

The Dangers We Brew

Posted on by Digital Editor

It is unsettling how often news surfaces of everyday household items leading to accidents, some unexpected, others devastating. A recent report about a moka pot explosion struck a familiar chord, stirring memories of TikTok clips that documented similar incidents involving these stovetop coffee makers. The frequency of such mishaps is alarming. There appears to be a pattern: devices exploding mid-brew, and confusion in their aftermath.

Sharing the report with my husband prompted a pointed observation: “It is because people do not know how to use them properly.” He recalled a disturbing example, someone blocking the steam valve on a moka pot, thinking it would stop a minor leak. The misguided attempt to “fix” the issue only sealed in pressure, turning a harmless coffee maker into a potential bomb. That conversation led to further reading, and everything I found echoed his point.

The risk is not the machine itself; it is the ignorance or neglect that surrounds its use. Moka pots, despite their ubiquitous presence and the rich, aromatic coffee they produce, harbour a rare but significant risk of explosion if not handled with care and understanding.

These pots are built on pressure. The lower boiler heats water until steam forces it upward through coffee grounds and into the upper chamber. For this process to unfold safely, each part – the gasket, the filter basket, the collector, the valve – must function precisely as intended. A clogged or damaged valve, overfilled water reservoir, too-finely ground or over-packed coffee, excessive heat, or a worn-out gasket can each destabilize that balance. When safety valves fail or users override them, what follows can be explosive; literally.

But the moka pot, as it turns out, is merely one example in a broader pattern. My husband often returns to the same point: tools, devices, even basic procedures, are mishandled not from malice but from a fatal mix of unfamiliarity and arrogance. Years ago, during a visit to a garage, he noticed a mechanic omit three essential bolts during a car repair.

When challenged, the mechanic, with a baffling air of authority, dismissed them as “useless.” It took insistent protest to have them reinstalled. “Why,” my husband asked, “would the engineers who painstakingly designed this car include bolts that serve no function?”

The same disbelief surfaced when he described an incident involving a self-described electrician, someone working without rubber-soled shoes on a live, three-phase system. The man connected two positive wires, suffered an electric shock, and fell from the fourth floor. A basic safety measure ignored. A predictable result.

These stories, vivid and unsettling, are not isolated. They accumulate over time, each one reflecting a larger, troubling truth. The assumption that something unnecessary can be discarded without consequence is a persistent flaw in how many approach work, risk, and responsibility. The rationale often boils down to expedience: a desire to “just get it done,” with little patience for procedures deemed “superfluous.”

It is remarkable how frequently individuals, professionals included, disregard basic safety measures with startling confidence. In doing so, they endanger not only themselves but those around them. What complicates matters further is the illusion of expertise. Many who take these risks speak with authority, yet their understanding often rests on shaky foundations: a patchwork of observation, partial experience, or insufficient training. The result is a kind of misplaced certainty that can prove more hazardous than ignorance itself.

Yet every component in a machine or structure has a purpose, whether visible or not. Engineers do not add bolts, valves, or wires for decoration. These parts exist because, at some point in the design process, someone anticipated a need, a risk, or a failure point. Without a full grasp of how each component functions, disregarding them is not just careless, it borders on reckless.

The logic applies universally. Consider the drivers who breeze through red lights, convinced no harm will come. Traffic lights are not ornamental. They exist because chaos is the alternative.

There is a strange contradiction embedded in human behaviour. People may revere old traditions or superstitions, fearing that breaking them could invite misfortune. And yet, modern safety regulations, grounded in empirical evidence and often written in the aftermath of tragedy, are routinely ignored.

The disconnect between imagined risks and real dangers, between superstition and science, speaks to a deeper contradiction in how people navigate an increasingly complex world. It is a paradox both sobering and persistent.

Modern life is filled with systems and safeguards designed to keep harm at bay. But those safeguards mean little if ignored. Understanding them is not just helpful, it is essential. Because the tools built to protect can just as easily injure when misunderstood.

“The cluster of bank branches won’t save the people from hardships.”

Posted on by Digital Editor

Brutawit Dawit, CEO of Wegagen Capital Investment, addresses financial illiteracy in rural areas of the country during an interview on the Meri podcast.

Milkii App Disburses 25 Million Br in Collateral-Free Loans in Two Months

Posted on by Digital Editor

Oromia Bank’s new collateral-free digital lending app, Milkii, has disbursed 25 million Br in loans without requiring collateral. Of this, 16 million Br has already been repaid, generating 1.4 million Br in revenue within just two months.

Developed in partnership with Quantum Technology PLC, the app plans to make lending more accessible and inclusive, aligning with Oromia Bank’s contribution to the Digital Ethiopia initiative.

According to a press release, Milkii promotes financial inclusion and empowers citizens through innovative digital lending solutions.

The service offers five separate loan products to meet diverse customer needs: Salary Advance Loans, Milkii Furtuu, Milkii Harmee, Device Financing, and Fuel Credit Service.

Salary Advance Loans are designed for employees of corporate partners, offering quick, collateral-free salary access in advance. Milkii Furtuu targets daily income earners, like laborers and small business owners, providing growth-oriented loans without collateral. Milkii Harmee, also collateral-free, supports women with affordable, low-cost financing to promote nationwide empowerment.

The bank offers a Device Financing (Buy Now, Pay Later) scheme for purchasing phones, electronics, and household items. Its Fuel Credit Service lets users refuel even with low balances, supporting fuel sector digitisation.

Loans typically have a one-year term with a maximum limit of 300,000 Br.

Customers can easily self-register on the Milkii app, no branch visits or collateral needed. Oromia Bank boosts its digital reach through the OrooDigital Omni-Channel Platform, offering seamless services across over eight digital channels.

Oromia Bank officially launched its collateral-free digital lending app, Milkii, at a grand ceremony held Wednesday, last week, at the Hyatt Regency, attended by senior officials and distinguished guests.

Ethiopia Partners with UK to Ease Shipping Bottlenecks

Posted on by Digital Editor

The Ethiopian Freight Forwarders & Shipping Agents Association (EFFSAA) and the British International Freight Association (BIFA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on May 27, 2025, at Hilton Hotel Addis Abeba, to address skills gaps, customs delays, and corridor inefficiencies in the freight and logistics sector.

The partnership focuses on technical cooperation, training, and regulatory reform. With over 90pc of trade dependent on the Djibouti corridor, rising congestion, customs delays, and poor road infrastructure have inflated transport costs and disrupted supply chains. EFFSAA called for investment in alternative routes like Berbera, citing problems such as inconsistent documentation, outdated cargo systems, and lack of automation.

BIFA Director General Steve Parker said the deal is directed towards aligning Ethiopia with global logistics standards, while Trademark Africa’s Matthew Crighton stressed the need for corridor integration and real-time data to cut border delays. EFFSAA President Dawit Woubishet and Trademark Africa Country Director Ewnetu Taye both underscored the need for committed reforms and international partnerships to improve transparency, automation, and customs capacity.

Industry leaders view the agreement as a pivotal step toward a more efficient, transparent, and globally integrated logistics system, with automation, streamlined processes, and customs capacity building as key focus areas for future collaboration. Both associations are expected to begin implementing joint training and digital logistics initiatives in the coming months.