Urban movement meets street-level marketing in this vivid slice of life at Meskel Square. Mobile billboard carts line the roadside, their makeshift frames carrying bursts of advertising energy, while a neat row of parked bicycles sits quietly beside them, adding a softer counterpoint to the hustle. Above, the massive concrete pillars of the elevated light rail rise like steady markers of the city’s direction, with afternoon traffic flowing beneath in a constant, unbroken pulse. Under a bright, hazy sky, the scene captures the city balancing trendy invention and infrastructure, where improvisation at ground level meets the firm geometry of modern transformation overhead.
Month: May 2026
HALF AWAKE
At Somali Tera, narrow street-side stalls with grey corrugated metal doors line a freshly paved cobblestone walkway in a tidy sequence. Most of the shops are still shut, their silence broken only by the occasional opening where clothing is neatly arranged in bright, inviting layers and a shopkeeper sits waiting for passing customers. The scene sits between two rhythms: the hard, utilitarian geometry of the stalls and the slow, familiar movement of residents weaving through the neighborhood on daily errands, treating the space less like a marketplace in full swing and more like a place steadily waking up.
T-Bills Trap Begins in the Federal Government’s Own Budget
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INTERNATIONAL COFFEE PARTNERS
International Coffee Partners (ICP) – comprising Delta Cafés of Portugal, Franck of Croatia, Joh. Johannson Kaffe of Norway, Lavazza of Italy, Lö ergs of Sweden, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe of Germany, and Tchibo of Germany – celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. In 2001, during the devastating coffee crisis, a group of dedicated European coffee companies decided to cooperate pre-competitively to support resilient coffee farming and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farming families. In the past 25 years, the six ICP shareholders have invested 25 million Euros in ICP activities mobilising additional resources from donor organisations and other partners for fostering effective solutions that lead to meaningful change.
Years of Meaningful Change
In 2026, ICP is marking 25 years of continuous support for smallholder farming families and communities. Back in 2001, ICP has embarked on a continuous learning journey with its project work based on the realities of smallholder farmers with all their complexities and needs. The idea is to understand the farmers’ perspectives, meet their expectations, and encourage their ownership. This led to the development of a holistic approach in which ICP focuses its activities not only on productivity and quality of coffee but truly emphasises the comprehensive livelihood situation of smallholder families addressing family business, farmer organisations, climate resilience, youth engagement, gender equity and equal participation of women and men in decision making.
“Our partnership has invested 25 million Euros in ICP activities in the past 25 years promoting meaningful change”, says Rui Miguel Nabeiro, chair of the Steering Committee of International Coffee Partners. “Making coffee farming resilient and securing a more prosperous future for farmer families and communities are issues we all need to work on together. It was and it is clear to us that by bundling know-how and resources among us and with farmer communities we can achieve more.”
Back in 1999, Michael R. Neumann began working towards a joint development initiative, which lead to the foundation of ICP in 2001. The basis was responsible family entrepreneurship on the part of the European shareholders, with the aggregation of each individual shareholder’s sustainability efforts into one package offering clear advantages.
“It is impressive to realise that its entrepreneurial and ethical approach bore fruit for 25 years in 2026. This exemplifies how consistent and collaborative efforts can lead to meaningful holistic change for the benefit of our partners, the smallholder coffee farming communities in Africa and many other countries”, says Michael R. Neumann.
Impact on the Ground: Improved Coffee Farming and Livelihoods
Since 2001, more than 125,700 farming families have been engaged in ICP projects in 13 coffee producing countries. Sustainable agricultural practices and diversified production systems at the farm level have supported smallholder families to improve coffee farming. Tools and practices to support adaptation have enhanced the resilience of farming families in the face of changing climate conditions. Smallholder farmers have been supported in growing additional crops to diversify their production for their own food security and to successfully market their products to generate additional family income, and improve their livelihoods.
“Over the past decade, ICP projects in the Amhara Regional State have pioneered an integrated approach that goes beyond supporting smallholder coffee production. By combining climate-smart coffee production practices, strengthened cooperative governance, youth empowerment, and the Gender Household Approach, the projects have contributed to building more resilient and sustainable smallholder coffee-farming households and communities.”- Rahel Adugna, Co-Country Manger, Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung Ethiopia
To this end, working towards establishing and professionalising farmer organisations and cooperatives has turned out crucial as they provide member farmers access to relevant services and competitive markets. Since 2001, ICP has worked with more than 2,700 farmer organisations across its project regions, supporting the establishment of new organisations and the further development of existing ones.
With designated trainings, women and youth have been strengthened to participate in decision-making at all levels and become change agents in their communities. In 2025, 22pc of all training participants were young farmers aged 18 to 35, and 45pc were women.
As part of a long-term and global partnership, all ICP projects are implemented by Hanns R. Neumann Stiung (HRNS), currently in Brazil, Ethiopia, Honduras, Indonesia, Tanzania and Uganda.
“In Indonesia, ICP operates not as a stand-alone project, but as a catalyst for strengthening the farmers’ position in the coffee sector. The most important lesson from the Indonesia experience is that inclusive, long-term engagement is essential to achieve structural change in the coffee sector”, says Arman Ginting, Co-Country Director HRNS Indonesia. “When ICP engagement began in the regions where we work, coffee sourced from these areas was widely perceived as second-class, characterised by low and inconsistent quality. At that time, few companies were willing to source directly from farmers or cooperatives. Today, the situation has changed fundamentally. Many cooperatives effectively bridge farmers and export companies.”
Long-Term Commitment and Sustainable Transformation
In the face of falling yields, rising costs, and growing global uncertainty, ICP remains withdrawn altogether in several countries. These developments highlight the urgency of long-term action and pre-competitive investment.
“ICP remains committed to its long-term approach and continues contributing to the sustainable transformation of the coffee sector”, says Rui Miguel Nabeiro. “By sharing experiences and knowledge gained together with farming families and other sector stakeholders, we provide evidence of what can be achieved when pressing issues in coffee communities and landscapes are addressed pre-competitively and collectively.”
About International Coffee Partners
ICP is a pre-competitive partnership of the leading family-owned European coffee companies, Delta Cafés of Portugal, Franck of Croatia, Joh. Johannson Kaffe of Norway, Lavazza of Italy, Löfbergs of Sweden, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe of Germany, and Tchibo of Germany. It supports smallholder coffee farmers to improve their livelihoods by becoming more competitive, based on sustainable practices. In doing so, ICP aims at contributing to a fair and sustainable coffee sector in all coffee-producing countries.
How I Became a Manufacturing Skeptic
At a gathering of academics and policymakers at Harvard this month, a participant reminded me that I had published a column 15 years ago on “The Manufacturing Imperative”. The piece emphasised the importance of industrialisation in driving economic growth, creating good jobs, and building a middle class.
“This is one of my all-time favourite articles,” the policymaker from Africa told the audience.
There is scarcely a greater reward for a scholar than having his ideas resonate strongly with the people for whom he writes. But in this case, a gentle rebuke came along with the praise. What I had written in that column and many other places at the time seemed to conflict sharply with the arguments I was making at this conference about the limits of manufacturing.
The contradiction was real. In recent years, I have become sceptical about the viability of the traditional industrialisation-led growth model. I have argued for a different model of economic growth, emphasising the development of productive capabilities in labour-absorbing, mostly non-tradable services. I have warned policymakers in Africa and other developing regions that trying to emulate the East Asian model would produce, at best, manufacturing enclaves, with a tiny sliver of productive firms integrated into global value chains while the bulk of the labour force remains stuck in low-productivity activities.
Mexico exemplifies this outcome. As Santiago Levy, a former Mexican deputy minister of Finance, pointed out at the same conference, Mexico’s exports of manufactured goods have increased more than tenfold since the country joined the United States and Canada to form the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. At the doorstep of a giant market and with policymakers determined to promote foreign trade and inward investment, few countries were blessed with better circumstances for export-oriented industrialisation.
Yet Mexico’s overall economic performance has been dismal, even by undemanding Latin American standards, with a declining productivity trajectory.
What made manufacturing the powerful economic escalator it once was was that it could employ large numbers of low-skilled workers while placing limited demands on the governance and infrastructure of low-income countries. Today’s manufacturing is different. Competing successfully on world markets and with China at home requires skills, technologies, and other capabilities that are in short supply in poor countries, precisely because they are poor. Manufacturing no longer offers a shortcut that sidesteps these fundamental constraints.
The result is that even when countries manage to pull more workers into manufacturing, this occurs through the expansion of small-scale, mostly informal enterprises and at the expense of productivity. This is the story of industrialisation in Ethiopia, which once represented the hope that the East Asian model could be transplanted in Africa. Expansion of manufacturing employment and an increase in manufacturing productivity used to go hand in hand in early industrialisers such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They now move in opposite directions in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India, and even Vietnam.
I became a manufacturing sceptic reluctantly. The evidence was hard to ignore as manufacturing technologies became more sophisticated and the failure of countries outside East Asia to industrialise successfully became increasingly apparent. I began to consider alternative growth strategies not because I came to think of broad-based industrialisation as less desirable, but because I became convinced it was less feasible. As John Maynard Keynes reputedly said, “When the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do, sir?”
Here is a sobering calculation. Of the two billion workers in the developing world today, I estimate that roughly three-quarters (1.5 billion) are in occupations that neither require university education nor are exposed to the international economy through trade or offshoring. These are subsistence farmers, street vendors, retail and food service workers, casual workers, and others in non-traded occupations. Their numbers will only increase in the years ahead, even if their share of the total declines somewhat.
The critical question facing policymakers is how to enhance these workers’ economic opportunities. The numbers make it painfully clear that neither industrialisation nor education can be the answer, as desirable as these may be. Finding ways to increase worker productivity in labour-absorbing services will be crucial. Otherwise, gains in living standards cannot be sustained.
Non-traded services have traditionally been a drag on economic growth. Many policymakers are accordingly pessimistic about their potential. But this may be changing. Something akin to a revolution in service productivity has been underway, most visibly in advanced economies, through organisational innovations, digital platforms, and other new technologies.
For developing economies as a whole, the last three decades have been a rare period of rapid economic growth and convergence with advanced economies. Remarkably, it is services, not manufacturing, that are responsible for this outcome.
As the economists Tianyu Fan, Michael Peters, and Fabrizio Zilibotti show in detailed empirical work, India’s remarkable economic growth has been driven by productivity gains in consumer services such as retail and hospitality produced for local markets, not in skill-intensive, exportable services such as ICT and BPO for which the country is well known. These authors have documented a similar mechanism at work in sub-Saharan Africa’s rapidly growing economies.
The evidence suggests a virtuous cycle of economic growth built on middle-class services. Expansion of the middle class shifts consumer demand toward higher-quality and more productive services, which in turn enables the rise in workers’ incomes that underpins the middle class. But the process is not automatic. It requires an important role for the government in facilitating the requisite productivity enhancements.
As Rohan Sandhu of Harvard Kennedy School and I have argued, many successful experiments around the world already provide proof of concept. They include initiatives that encourage platform companies to employ local inputs and workers, assist micro enterprises with training and certification, and provide customised AI and other technological tools adapted to developing-country circumstances.
Dedicated efforts can build a more reliable, inclusive growth model. Without them, the vast majority of workers in the developing world will be left in precarity, isolated from the high-productivity enclaves linked to the global economy.
A Generation Too Busy to Belong
Growing up, I waited for weekends with unusual excitement. A visit to my grandmother’s house was not a mere visit. It was an entry into another world, loud and familiar, where laughter rose before one reached the door and where people arrived as though the house belonged to everyone.
Some cousins would already be there. Neighbourhood children would drift in later, one by one, until the rooms filled with voices, footsteps, and small disputes. Sleepovers did not require permission slips or planning. Someone would pull out mattresses. Another would find blankets. By night, the floor became a map of children sleeping close together, tired from play and comfort. It was simple, but it gave children a sense that they belonged to many people, not only to one household.
After every holiday, the next day usually belonged to my grandmother’s house. No one announced it as a rule, and no one needed to. Families came carrying food, drinks, and stories from the day before. The adults settled into their usual groups, men in one place, women in another, while the children arranged themselves by age and mood. The younger ones ran through the yard. Teenagers sat apart, talking about school, music, and the future with teenage seriousness.
Looking back, what made those days memorable was not luxury, entertainment, or plans. It was presence! People made time for one another, and that time did not feel like it was stolen from anything else.
That rhythm lasted for years, then loosened slowly. We grew older and entered separate lives. Visits continued, but they lost their old regularity. Weeks became months, and sometimes months became years before everyone gathered again.
At first, I thought the change belonged only to my family. Conversations with friends and people I meet in daily life suggest otherwise. Many households carry similar memories of relatives who were once visited more often, of neighbours who knew one another better, and of family gatherings that happened naturally, without careful negotiation.
The change has not come from indifference alone. Today’s generation lives in constant motion. Students face academic pressure that feels heavier than before, but much of the weight now comes from within. Many young people feel they must succeed quickly, learn many skills, build a career early, remain productive, and prove their worth even where no contest exists. Good grades do not always feel sufficient. Comparison and fear of falling behind have created difficult, sometimes impossible, standards. Some are expected to support themselves financially earlier than previous generations did, while striving to improve every aspect of their lives.
Adults are pressed in their own way. Living costs rise. Workdays are long after a tiring day on the roads. By the end of the week, many people have little energy for spontaneous visits or meaningful rest. The desire to see family may still be there, but it competes with exhaustion, bills, deadlines, and survival. Modern life has made time feel scarce even when people live nearby.
Technology has changed relationships in ways both helpful and troubling. Mobile phones and social media keep families connected across distance, but they have also reduced the need for physical visits. In the past, a relative might spend an afternoon with someone to check on their well-being or share news. Today, a text message or quick call often does the work. Even inside the same home, quality time has narrowed. People sit together, absorbed in their phones, work, studies, or personal worries. The room is shared, but attention is divided.
Urbanisation has added another layer. In rapidly expanding cities, communities often become temporary. People move between neighbourhoods for work, education, or cheaper rent, and long-term ties become harder to build. Some researchers suggest that rapid urban growth weakens traditional helping cultures because communities become more individualistic and transient. The old familiarity, where everyone knew one another’s family, gives way to apartment buildings filled with strangers who may exchange greetings but little else.
This experience is not limited to Ethiopia. In Japan, researchers and social commentators have long discussed a culture of loneliness shaped by overwork, isolation, and pressure to remain productive. Many employees leave home early and return late, with little time for friendship, family gatherings, or rest. Over time, this pattern has weakened traditional social bonds. Elderly people may live alone for years without frequent visits from relatives, while younger people rely more on digital communication.
Ethiopia still has stronger communal traditions and family ties than many countries. Yet similar signs are becoming visible, especially in cities. The pace of urban life, financial strain, academic competition, and digital distraction are changing how people meet, speak, and care. Family members who once spent evenings together now often sit in the same room, each drawn into a screen or a responsibility. Visits once made without thought are postponed until holidays or special occasions.
The sense of community remains, but busyness is quietly reshaping it, creating emotional distance in places once built around togetherness.
Birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals still bring people together. They remain powerful reminders that human connection has not disappeared. During such moments, conversation becomes easier, laughter returns, and old memories come alive. People remember not only the event before them but also the feeling of belonging to a larger circle. These gatherings reveal that the need for community survives, even if daily life suppresses it.
Perhaps the problem is not that people care less. It is modern life that competes for attention, energy, and time. People are caught between ambition, responsibility, and fatigue. They are trying to survive, improve the future, and keep pace with a world that asks for more. Somewhere in that effort, many quietly miss the warmth of days when doors stayed open longer, neighbours visited without calling first, and weekends felt less hurried. The busy generation is connected more than ever through technology, yet many feel emotionally farther apart.
Social media deepens the illusion. People may know what relatives ate for lunch or where friends travelled, yet they may not have seen each other for months. Digital updates offer information, but not always intimacy. Children are growing up differently, too. Instead of spending afternoons outside with cousins and neighbours, many now spend free time indoors, on screens. Some may never know the collective upbringing that once shaped family culture and community values.
Still, traditions rarely vanish at once. They survive through small efforts repeated often. Preserving connection does not require rejecting modern life. It requires balance. Progress and technology have improved life in many ways, but human beings still need community, presence, and belonging. If families stop making time for one another, future generations may inherit convenience and connectivity while losing the emotional closeness that once held communities together.
The memories many people carry from childhood are not usually about expensive gifts or perfect celebrations. They are about crowded living rooms, shared laughter, and the comfort of always having someone nearby. Those ordinary moments quietly built emotional security, identity, and a lasting sense of belonging within families.
How Africa Can Escape the Debt Trap
The narrative that Africa faces a persistent debt crisis has become entrenched. Despite representing nearly one-fifth of the world’s population, the continent accounts for less than three percent of global sovereign debt.
By contrast, the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) account for a much larger share (nearly 16pc and more than 34pc, respectively). Africa’s average debt-to-GDP ratio, at 67pc, is markedly lower than those of Europe (88.5pc), the US (122.6pc), and Japan (236.7pc).
Nonetheless, many countries on the least-indebted and most capital-starved continent remain stuck in a debt trap. On May 12 and 13, Senegal hosted an international conference to address the country’s escalating debt crisis and, crucially, one of its main drivers. The structural asymmetries are embedded in the global financial system. This flawed architecture has obstructed Africa’s access to affordable and long-term capital and prevented the continent from diversifying its sources of economic growth and trade, transforming debt from a manageable development instrument into a self-perpetuating cycle of vulnerability.
In particular, the shift toward costly, short-term, market-based borrowing amid declining concessional lending has trapped African countries in cycles of indebtedness and external dependence. Constrained by fragmented monetary landscapes and underdeveloped domestic financial markets, African countries are forced to borrow in foreign currencies, mainly the US dollar. This leads to currency mismatches and exposes these countries to disorderly capital outflows and exchange-rate and interest-rate risks, especially monetary-policy shifts by the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks.
The balance-of-payments constraint associated with dollar funding creates a negative feedback loop. Exogenous economic shocks trigger capital flight to safe havens, sudden stops in financial inflows, and currency depreciation, all of which exacerbate the debt burden. Policymakers enact fiscal austerity, leading to a further slowdown in economic growth and revenue, making it even harder to service debt in the future.
Credit-rating agencies such as S&P, Fitch, and Moody’s deepen the debt trap by assigning most African countries lower ratings, thereby substantially elevating their borrowing costs and limiting their market access. Sovereign bonds issued by African countries typically yield eight to 15pc, in sharp contrast to yields of one to fve percent in Europe and North America. These spreads impose high macroeconomic costs. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), credit-ratings agencies’ subjective evaluations have cost African countries an estimated 74.5 billion dollars.
These additional costs help create a debt overhang. Interest payments now account for more than 20pc of government revenue in several African countries, including around 40pc in Nigeria and over 70pc in Egypt, thereby imposing considerable opportunity costs on development. Resources that could be allocated to infrastructure, industrial policy, human-capital development, and technological upgrading are instead redirected to debt servicing.
Africa is paying so much not because of the amount of debt it has accumulated, but because of how that debt is structured and perceived. For African countries, borrowing less costs more, setting unrealistic return-on-investment expectations that further undermine debt sustainability. As a result, a growing number of African countries have pursued rollovers and refinancing options, such as issuing new eurobonds, to settle maturing obligations, falling deeper into the debt trap.
This has accelerated the shift in recent decades from long-term concessional loans to short-term commercial debt. Private creditors now hold more than 40pc of Africa’s external public debt, up from 17pc in 2000. Loans with shorter maturities compress repayment timelines, increase refinancing risks, and are misaligned with Africa’s long-term development objectives. They also raise the risk of maturity clustering. This year, for example, African countries face a record 90 billion dollars debt wall driven by maturing eurobonds. Difficult tradeoffs will likely be necessary.
At the same time, Africa faces other economic constraints. The continent loses more than 50 billion dollars annually to illicit financial outflows through trade misinvoicing, abusive transfer pricing, and tax avoidance. The global financial system enables these leakages with secrecy jurisdictions and limited multilateral cooperation on international taxation.
The erosion of human capital and a chronic infrastructure deficit in an austerity-prone operating environment leave many African economies vulnerable to commodity shocks that drive external liabilities higher. When balance-of-payments crises invariably materialise, African governments are compelled to borrow in foreign currencies and implement adjustment programs that prioritise short-term fiscal consolidation over long-term development. (These programs’ procyclical austerity measures can help stabilise public finances, but often weaken state capacity and lower potential economic growth.) Over time, this leads to repeated cycles of borrowing, crisis, and adjustment, the very definition of a debt trap.
To break the cycle of dependency and accelerate development, policymakers should redesign the global financial architecture. Aligning debt maturities with longer-term development objectives requires improving access to concessional financing, which can be achieved by strengthening the capital base of development finance institutions. At the regional level, policymakers can fast-track monetary integration and the development of deeper domestic capital markets to support long-term borrowing in local currencies and address structural mismatches between currency denomination and revenue generation.
It is also crucial to reform credit-ratings agencies’ methodologies to achieve parity in access to affordable development finance, and to reduce the incidence of procyclical policies. This will not only rebuild these institutions’ credibility but also promote economic growth and sustainable development. Lastly, the international community should regard fiscal consolidation and debt sustainability as being in the service of a broader goal, promoting Africa’s economic development.
Far from being heavily indebted, Africa is a victim of deep-seated inequalities, underpinned by an international financial architecture that prevents structural economic transformation and perpetuates debt crises. If the world is to harness Africa’s demographic dividends and unlock its growth potential, both of which are essential to maintaining financial stability worldwide, the institutions, rules, and norms of global governance should become more balanced and development-oriented.
Access to Intelligence, Ethiopia’s Next Divide
The debate over artificial intelligence (AI) has moved quickly from suspicion to practical urgency. A few years ago, public discussion was dominated by fear, mistrust and calls for restraint. Today, the argument is less about whether Ethiopians should use generative AI and more about who can use it seriously, affordably and at scale.
Tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini and DeepSeek are changing how people write, research, design, code, analyse data and solve problems. Ethiopia is not outside this shift. Students use them to support learning. Professionals draft reports and proposals with them. Entrepreneurs test marketing ideas and product concepts. Researchers condense long documents in minutes. Creative workers are experimenting with AI-generated content, turning what was once a specialist tool into an everyday instrument.
The effects are visible where work that once required teams, consultants or weeks of effort can now be compressed into hours. Strategic analysis, proposal writing, consulting support, and the preparation of short books have become more accessible to almost every individual. For many, tasks that looked technically impossible are now within reach.
The adoption points to a broader cultural shift, compelling even public institutions to encourage the use of AI. The recent AI creativity awards organised by the Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute (EAII) showed how the mood has changed. National conversations now focus less on resistance and more on use. AI is no longer treated solely as a technological novelty but has evolved into a productive economic resource.
However, the transition exposes a new inequality in access.
Most global AI platforms offer limited free use, only enough for casual users. It is rarely enough for serious academic, professional or business work. Message caps, slower response times, restricted features and blocked advanced tools impose a ceiling on productivity. Users who cannot pay are not merely inconvenienced but placed at a structural disadvantage.
Many Ethiopians work around these problems. Some move from ChatGPT to Grok, then to Gemini and to another platform when free limits run out. Others open multiple accounts. Many simply slow their work to fit the restrictions. These habits reveal not digital abundance, but digital scarcity.
In advanced economies, AI is becoming basic productivity infrastructure, closer to electricity, internet access or cloud computing than to a luxury service. In Ethiopia, access remains fragmented, costly and difficult to manage. A standard premium subscription of 20 dollars a month can exceed four thousand Birr, depending on exchange rates and transaction costs. For students, startups, researchers and many salaried professionals, that price is hard to justify.
The payment system adds another barrier. Users willing to pay often struggle to access international payment channels. Institutions face their own problem, too. Procurement systems are not designed for recurring digital subscriptions, leading to a system in which AI capability depends less on skill or need than on access to foreign payment mechanisms. It has become a development question, no longer a matter of personal inconvenience.
Countries that failed to secure access to critical technologies have often fallen behind in productivity and industrial transformation. AI could be another such dividing line, with countries that expand access likely to move faster in innovation, research, institutional efficiency, and participation in the global digital economy. Those who do not may settle into digital dependency.
Ethiopia needs a deliberate national AI access strategy. In the short term, regulators, banks and fintech operators should make international subscription payments easier for verified educational, professional and business use. Foreign currency allocation rules may also need to treat AI subscriptions as productive digital inputs rather than as luxury consumption.
Longer-term policy should be more ambitious. Ethiopia should negotiate with major global AI providers for discounted national access for students, universities, startups, researchers, public institutions and local innovators. Similar arrangements already exist for educational software, cloud infrastructure and developer ecosystems. AI access now deserves such strategic attention. Domestic capacity also matters, with national AI computing centres, public datasets, local language models, and university-based research ecosystems that should emerge as part of a broader digital sovereignty agenda. These investments may not immediately replace global systems, but they can reduce dependency and build local capability.
AI is no longer a mere consumer technology because it multiplies human productivity. A country that broadens access to AI broadens the productive capacity of its citizens. The next digital divide may not be about internet access alone. It may be about access to intelligence itself, the computational intelligence that strengthens learning, creativity and economic output. Ethiopia still has time to act, but that window will not stay open indefinitely.
International Climate Law Needs Teeth
Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a legal opinion on climate change with a clarity of purpose not seen since the 2015 Paris agreement. It left no doubt that states have a legal obligation to prevent “significant harm” to the climate system, and that failure to do so carries legal consequences.
My own country, Vanuatu, brought this question to the world and to the ICJ. But we were not alone. We built a coalition of countries spanning every region and gained sustained support from youth movements. Ultimately, 132 countries co-sponsored a motion for a United Nations (UN) resolution asking that the ICJ rule on the matter, which then passed by consensus. It was a historic moment, and one that did not happen by accident.
Now we are back at the UN General Assembly, presenting a resolution to give the ICJ’s advisory opinion practical effect and calling on the world to support it. It is normal practice for ICJ advisory opinions to be returned to the UN General Assembly, where resolutions give member states an opportunity to amplify the political and normative authority of such rulings. This new resolution not only calls on the UN to endorse the opinion but also urges all member states to uphold the obligations identified by the Court. It sets the stage for follow-up action within the UN system, such as a formal request to the Secretary-General to find ways to advance compliance.
We believe this new resolution is the best way to ensure that legal obligations to deal with climate change do not simply sit on a shelf. They must be reflected in the real world, even if certain states would rather pretend that the ruling did not happen.
We are under no illusions that the ICJ’s ruling will be difficult for some countries to implement. But we cannot ignore the costs of inaction. This is a critical moment, not only for the climate but also for the future of international cooperation. The entire postwar, post-colonial multilateral order is under considerable pressure. Large states are withdrawing from international agreements and withholding funding from multilateral organisations. Bilateral deals are replacing collective frameworks. Many fear that the global architecture of rules, norms, courts, and international accountability is crumbling before our eyes.
In this context, reaffirming the role of institutions like the ICJ would be a shot in the arm for multilateralism. What Vanuatu, a country of only around 340,000 people, has accomplished shows that the system can still function. We took a legal question to the appropriate institution, and that institution did its job. The process was slow, and we faced plenty of resistance along the way. But justice prevailed. All states had a chance to argue before the Court, whether they were for or against the motion, and the outcome was clear.
The ruling gave vulnerable people around the world hope and lent new momentum to multilateral climate action, especially the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the process that has organised the international response to climate change for more than 30 years. Everyone participating in the annual UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs) now knows where the world court stands. The obligation to cooperate on meaningful solutions is not merely political and moral, but legal.
Following weeks of negotiations, our new resolution has been shaped by input from almost every UN member state and facilitated by a core group of countries from every region of the world. That breadth of engagement is no accident. It shows that the appetite for a truly global response to climate change remains strong, even at this fraught geopolitical moment.
There is no defensible reason for states to vote against the resolution. If we fail here, we will be signalling to current and future generations that we have moved from a system built on cooperation to one governed by power alone. We will be conceding that pressure from vested interests can derail the progress we have made toward guaranteeing our collective survival.
It is no secret that powerful vested interests want to delay the transition away from fossil fuels. Despite the rapidly falling costs of renewables, they have no problem leveraging their money and influence to frustrate efforts to mitigate climate change. Small island states like Vanuatu are particularly vulnerable to these bad-faith actors.
Still, the world is now witnessing the consequences of relying on a fossil-fuel economy. While Vanuatu has long been vulnerable to increasing climate-related risks such as cyclones and drought, we are currently experiencing a different kind of storm. Those fueling up at gas stations in Port Vila are seeing the same high prices as hundreds of millions of others around the world. We are all learning the hard way what a failure to phase out fossil fuels looks like.
The conflict in the Middle East reminds us that fossil fuels do not only heat the planet. They also inflame conflicts. The sooner all of us move away from such volatility, the better.
We all have a duty to keep fighting for international cooperation, because the alternative, a world that stops trying to solve its hardest problems collectively, would be worse than the current one. Vanuatu and its many like-minded partners will continue to push forward, not only on behalf of our own communities but on behalf of others, too. Billions of people are already facing, or will soon face, rising seas, intensifying storms, deadly wildfires, and the relentless erosion of everything we have built.
The law has spoken. The question confronting every state is simple. We know the rule of law applies to climate change, but do you intend to act on it?
From Nairobi to Addis Abeba, a New Chapter in France-Africa Relations
As France and Kenya co-hosted a summit this week, one conviction emerged. It is necessary to redefine relations between France and Africa, which are essential for jointly addressing the challenges of the 21st Century.
This renewed partnership, which has been underway for several years, is based on the shared ambition to establish balanced and mutually beneficial cooperation. The Africa-France Summit, held in Montpellier in 2021, launched this discussion by giving a voice to young people and representatives of civil society and African diasporas. It was necessary to build on this momentum during the “Africa Forward Summit,” held in Nairobi from May 11 to 12, 2026, with the theme “Partnerships between Africa and France for Innovation & Growth.”
The decision to hold an Africa-France Summit in Kenya, a non-French-speaking country, illustrates this spirit of openness and the broadening of relations between France and the entire continent. It also reflected a commitment to moving from dialogue to action.
The Summit also served as an opportunity to call for investment in new areas of cooperation, particularly in heritage, culture, sports, health, and digital innovation, to forge more human and direct partnerships, especially between our youth and our diasporas. In this spirit, the announcement of a permanent site for the Maison des Mondes Africains in Paris, support for African cinema and training, as well as the adoption of the framework law on the restitution of cultural property, reflected the same ambition of engaging with history while building new forms of cooperation for the future.
Strengthening our ties should also rely on the private sector, which creates opportunities and drives growth. That is why President Emmanuel Macron and President William Ruto wanted to give this meeting a strong economic focus, beginning with a business forum. The launch of the Africa-France Impact Coalition, which brings together more than 40 leading African and French business leaders, reflects this ambition. These companies represent 100 billion euros in revenue, 600,000 jobs in Africa, and new investment announcements totalling 23 billion euros on the continent.
Those investments from African and French stakeholders will cover strategic sectors such as the energy transition, digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), the blue economy, agriculture, health, and industry. The Africa Forward Summit also offered an opportunity to advance concrete priorities, from energy transition and sustainable agriculture to AI, the blue economy and health. Initiatives announced in Nairobi included FASA and FARM+ for agricultural financing, the Digital Africa Seed Fund, the Africa Forward AI Clusters, Konnect Africa for rural connectivity, and AIM2030 for local medical production in Africa, including in Ethiopia.
At a time when international law and multilateralism are being called into question, France and Africa share a common agenda on global issues and a shared commitment to effective multilateralism. The Nairobi Declaration on Peace & Security in Africa reaffirmed the need for more representative international governance, notably through reform of the United Nations Security Council, as well as predictable and sustainable funding for peace operations in Africa through the operationalisation of resolution 2719 of the UN Security Council.
Those key issues were also discussed on May 13 in Addis Abeba during the trilateral meeting between the Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of the Commission of the African Union (AU) and President Macron, who announced an international conference in Paris during the last quarter of 2026 to mobilise additional financing for the African Union Peace Fund, which has already mobilised 400 million euros, towards a target of one billion euros.
The visit to Ethiopia also gave a concrete bilateral dimension to the priorities discussed in Nairobi.
The French Minister for Europe & Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, and the Minister of Finance, Ahmed Shide, signed an intergovernmental agreement for a 54.6 million euros concessional loan from the French Treasury to support the digitalisation and modernisation of Ethiopia’s electricity transmission network. Implemented by General Electric Vernova France and RTE International, in cooperation with Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP), the project forms part of the RISED program under the European Union’s Global Gateway strategy.
This is the meaning of the sequence from Nairobi to Addis Abeba. It connects economic partnership, cultural dialogue, African-led peace efforts, reform of global governance and concrete bilateral cooperation. Beyond the projects and declarations, this sequence reflects a shared ambition to build a relationship grounded in trust, reciprocity and shared responsibility.
Africa and France have considerable assets, such as dynamic youth, abundant creativity and a common interest in finding solutions to global challenges. By setting them in motion together, we can shape a renewed partnership, looking to the future, capable of meeting the expectations of our societies and contributing to a more balanced, more united and more sustainable world.
Love, Not Blood, Makes a Family
There are moments that quietly expose the prejudices buried inside society. They appear in ordinary places, a hospital corridor, a waiting room, a passing conversation between strangers. Sometimes, a single sentence is enough to reveal how deeply people misunderstand love, family, and what it truly means to be a parent.
A friend of mine recently rushed her baby to a hospital around Megenagna after the child became unwell. Like every frightened parent, she carried far more than medical papers and a diaper bag. She carried fear, exhaustion, hope, helplessness, and the silent desperation that comes with seeing a child in pain. Parents speak a language of worry that requires no translation. It reveals itself in restless eyes, trembling hands, hurried footsteps, and prayers whispered quietly as they wait for answers.
As the doctor examined the baby, he asked questions about the child’s birth history. My friend calmly explained that she did not know every detail because her child had been adopted. What followed stunned her.
The doctor looked surprised and asked why she was so worried “for an adopted child.”
Perhaps he spoke carelessly, without fully understanding how heavy words can become in vulnerable moments. Yet his comment landed with a cruelty he may not have intended. My friend later told me that those words lingered with her long after she left the hospital. Not because she doubted herself as a mother, but because the remark seemed to question the depth of her love for her child.
Later, she told me something that stayed with me deeply. She said that if her child had been old enough to understand the conversation, she would have defended that child with everything she had and would even have considered legal action against the doctor. She explained to him why such comments are harmful, why medical professionals must choose their words carefully, and why family cannot be measured through biology alone.
To his credit, the doctor appeared genuinely shaken once he realised the pain his words had caused. He sincerely apologised and acknowledged that his remarks had been deeply inappropriate. Still, apologies do not always completely erase hurt. Some experiences leave behind questions about how society continues to view adoption, love, and belonging.
The doctor was not alone in that misunderstanding. Society itself still places biological relationships on a higher pedestal, as though blood alone defines family. Yet life repeatedly proves otherwise.
A parent is not merely someone who gives birth. A parent is the person who stays awake through sleepless nights, comforts a frightened child, sacrifices personal dreams, and chooses patience even on exhausting days. Parenthood lives in daily acts of care, protection, and devotion. And my friends embody that fully.
A few months ago, my friend and her husband encountered a child who had been abandoned and left without the safety every child deserves. Instead of turning away, they chose responsibility. Through legal adoption, they gave that child not only a home but also identity, security, stability, and unconditional love.
Today, that child is no longer defined by abandonment. That child is defined by care, consistency, and belonging.
There is something profoundly beautiful about such a transformation. A child who once entered the world surrounded by uncertainty is now cherished, protected, celebrated, and loved every single day. That did not happen by coincidence. It happened because two people opened their hearts wide enough to build a family through choice and commitment.
Adoption is often spoken about too narrowly. Some reduce it to charity or kindness. But adoption is far more profound than that. It is the creation of a family through love, responsibility, and conscious devotion. It means fully welcoming a child into one’s life and building a bond sustained by everyday care, emotional presence, and lifelong commitment.
In many ways, adoption reflects one of the purest forms of intentional love. It is the deliberate decision to say: “You belong with us. We choose you completely.”
That is why comments like the doctor’s feel so painful. Such words overlook the extraordinary depth of chosen love and reduce parenthood to biology alone.
What stayed with me most was the tenderness in my friend’s voice afterwards. Even while hurt, she spoke about her child with overwhelming affection and pride. There was no hesitation when she called that child her own, no pause, no distinction, no uncertainty. Only a quiet and steady love rooted in presence, care, and belonging.
Society needs to recognise that adopted children are fully wanted, fully valued, and fully loved. Every child deserves to grow up with that certainty. The language people use about family matters more than they realise because words can either affirm a child’s place in the world or quietly cast doubt on it.
Medical professionals, educators, relatives, neighbours, and entire communities all share responsibility in shaping that understanding. Hospitals, especially, should remain spaces where every parent feels respected, and every child is treated with equal dignity. Doctors carry enormous responsibility, not only in treating illness, but also in offering reassurance, empathy, and humanity during vulnerable moments. A thoughtful word can comfort a frightened parent. A careless one can remain in someone’s heart for years.
Not everyone who gives birth raises a child with love and care. And not everyone who raises a child with love and care shares a biological connection with them. Yet children often understand love more instinctively than adults do. They know who comforts them when they cry, whose presence makes them feel safe, whose voice calms them, and whose arms they run into when fear overwhelms them.
That is what defines parenthood: presence, sacrifice, consistency, and unwavering devotion.
The child my friends adopted may have entered their lives through painful circumstances, but today that child is growing up surrounded by everything every child deserves, love, security, guidance, protection, and belonging. This is not a lesser form of family. It is family in one of its purest forms.
Perhaps society should stop asking how families begin and pay closer attention to how they love. Because in the end, the true measure of parenthood is not whose eyes a child inherits, but whose hands hold that child through sickness, fear, uncertainty, and growth. In that regard, my friends are remarkable parents.
The Hidden Limits Behind Unlimited Data Plans
A few weeks ago, I found myself reaching for a mobile data package after our home Wi-Fi went down. The electricity had cut off, and once the modem battery drained, we were left completely disconnected. In our household, internet access is not a luxury. Both my husband and I work remotely, and our daily output depends on a stable connection, especially now that AI tools have become deeply embedded in our workflows.
I purchased a two-hour “unlimited” data package from Ethio telecom, expecting it to bridge the gap until power returned. I cleared my immediate work tasks within about thirty minutes. With time still left on the package, I decided to continue with something light, watching a series I had already started. The episode was under an hour, and I still had more than an hour remaining on my so-called unlimited window.
The stream never loaded properly. Under normal conditions, our Wi-Fi or even the modem connection handles streaming without issue when usage is light. This time, the mobile connection felt effectively unusable for video. The frustration was immediate and familiar: if a service is sold as unlimited, why does it suddenly collapse under basic use? If there are capacity restrictions, they should be communicated in gigabytes so users understand exactly what they are buying. Unlimited, by definition, suggests freedom from caps, not conditional access that breaks under pressure.
What became clear is that “unlimited” rarely functions as absolute access. The experience is shaped by bandwidth, the capacity of a connection shared across users. When multiple users draw heavily at once, performance degrades quickly. More decisive, however, is throttling, a mechanism where providers deliberately reduce speeds after a certain level of usage. The connection is not cut, but it is compressed to the point where high-demand activities such as streaming become nearly impossible.
At the centre of this system sits the Fair Usage Policy (FUP), a set of conditions embedded in service terms that allows providers to manage network load by limiting user speeds after defined thresholds. In practice, this creates a hidden ceiling. For several of Ethio telecom’s hourly and daily “unlimited” packages in 2026, this threshold is often reported around 2.5GB to 5GB, after which speeds can drop to roughly 1Mbps. At that level, basic messaging may still function, but video streaming and most real-time applications effectively stall.
This is not confined to one market; it reflects a wider pattern across the region. In Kenya, Safaricom faced public criticism in May 2026 after adjusting its home fibre Fair Usage Policy, with limits reportedly reduced from 15TB to as low as 1.5TB on select plans. While still substantial in absolute terms, the shift reinforced a familiar concern: services marketed as unlimited eventually impose stricter ceilings that significantly reduce speeds once reached. In South Africa, Telkom’s “Infinite” plans follow a similar structure, offering a defined portion of high-speed data, such as 15GB or 30GB, before reducing speeds to around 1.5Mbps for the remainder of the period. In Nigeria, MTN applies a “daily drop” system, where users who exhaust their main allocation are placed on smaller daily allowances at reduced speeds.
Across these models, the pattern remains consistent. “Unlimited” operates less as a technical guarantee and more as a marketing frame. Ethio telecom, like many operators, continues to report strong data-driven growth, reflecting rising demand for connectivity. That growth is positive in itself, but it also sharpens the responsibility around transparency. A two-hour package that silently limits performance within its window blurs the line between service and expectation.
If genuinely unlimited high-speed access is not viable at current pricing structures, then clarity becomes the minimum requirement. Higher pricing with honest thresholds is more defensible than attractive labels that conceal constraints. For professionals who depend on connectivity to work, predictability matters as much as speed. Planning cannot function around invisible limits.
In the end, the issue is not only technical. It is about trust. When users pay for access, they are paying for certainty. Removing that certainty through hidden restrictions turns a utility into a guessing game. High-speed internet is now a core infrastructure for work and communication. It deserves pricing and language that reflect reality, not marketing convenience.
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