View From Arada

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

Nov 1 , 2025 . By Bereket Tesfaye

Lead Recycling Pollutes Addis Abeba's Backyards

On a recent rainy morning, a visit to a small workshop in Lideta neighbourhood laid bare a public health risk often hidden in plain sight. The site, a cramped plot operating as both a garage and a hub for dismantling used lead-acid batteries, exposes unsafe practices that pose dangers not only to wo...

Oct 25 , 2025 . By Isaiah Andrews and Maryam Farboodi

What Does the Market Really Think About AI?

Speculations about Artificial Intelligence's (AI) implications for society has reached a fever pitch. While OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman speaks of a future of radical abundance, others, including another OpenAI co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, warn of existential risks. Meanwhile, economists continue to debate whether AI will usher in unprecedented prosperity or widespread unemployment. What are we to make of such a wildly divergent prediction? While we cannot know which future will materialise, we can examine what those with "skin in the game" believe will happen. Financial markets aggregate...

Oct 18 , 2025 . By Kaushik Basu

When National Pride Becomes a Moral Blindfold

These are harrowing times. Amid soaring inequality, political leaders in many countries are cutting programs and services that benefit the poor, while stoking fear and anger against migrants and refugees. Their noble-sounding intentions to safeguard individual freedom, promote prosperity, and protect citizens are often a fig leaf for a policy agenda designed to enrich themselves and their wealthy cronies. This deterioration in the practice of politics can be attributed to many causes. One of the most important may be found in the deterioration in how economics is practised. Economics is...

Oct 11 , 2025 . By Hippolyte Fofack

Restoring Africa's Culture, Philosophy Key to Development

By encouraging the discovery of truth, philosophy can provide the intellectual foundation for development and illuminate paths toward more cohesive and prosperous societies. As Victor Hugo put it, “Philosophy should be an energy; it should find its aim and its effect in the amelioration of mankind.” But policymakers across Africa have overwhelmingly failed to emphasise this disposition. Rather than developing a collective consciousness to facilitate economic convergence and regional integration, most governments on the continent find themselves managing crisis after crisis. The stickine...

View From Arada

Oct 4 , 2025

Must Our Globalized World Be a Suicide Pact

When the United Nations (UN) emerged from the rubble of two world wars 80 years ago, it represented humanity's most ambitious attempt ever to turn catastrophe into cooperation. But while the scarred w...

Sep 27 , 2025

Intersecting Crises Spur Global Reckoning on Values, Human Purpose

In 1999, one of us (Morin) introduced the term "polycrisis" to describe the web of interconnected catastrophes threatening our world. At the time, the concept was meant to serve as a warning, but it h...

Sep 20 , 2025

Why Is Everyone So Self-Righteous?

It feels increasingly difficult nowadays to avoid righteousness; or, worse, self-righteousness. We are constantly being told what to do by those who supposedly have seen the light. For example, I was...

Sep 13 , 2025

Who Will Model Democracy Now?

As a teenager growing up in Istanbul, I was lucky to be part of a generation that had democratic role models nearby. European countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden fueled our aspirati...

Sep 6 , 2025

The Agricultural Fixes Africa Needs

The number of people facing hunger globally declined from 688 million in 2023 to 673 million in 2024, according to "The State of Food Security & Nutrition in the World 2025," a report recently rel...

Aug 30 , 2025

Trolls, Extremes, and the Economics of Outrage

Sometimes, the fulfilment of a promise feels like punishment. When the radio was invented more than 100 years ago, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht observed that its full potential could be explor...

Aug 23 , 2025

New Players Chip Away at Big Tech’s AI Stronghold

Leaders in Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as OpenAI and DeepMind, view themselves as being in a race to build artificial general intelligence (AGI), a model capable of performing any intellectual...

Aug 16 , 2025

Can Democracy Survive AI?

Digital technology was supposed to disperse power. Early internet visionaries hoped that the revolution they were unleashing would empower individuals to free themselves from ignorance, poverty, and t...

Aug 9 , 2025

The Left's "Everything Struggle"Is Undermining the Climate Cause

Progressives are caught in a trap of their own making. In an era of overlapping and mutually reinforcing crises, they have come to view every issue, from climate change and public health to energy, in...

Aug 3 , 2025

Machines Are Not Our Friends, Companions

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI's Sam Altman have been aggressively promoting the idea that everyone, children included, should form relationships with AI "friends" or "companions." Meanwhile, mul...

Jul 26 , 2025

The Language of Political Control

Language shapes our thinking and perception of the world and, consequently, what happens in it. That is why I worry less about the troubling state of the world nowadays than about the words we use to...

Jul 19 , 2025

Information Pollution Undermines Climate Progres

The devastation caused by the 2024 flash floods in Valencia, Spain, was so surreal that some images sparked a global debate over their authenticity. In an era when AI technology can produce hyper-real...

Jul 12 , 2025

The Lost Art of Collaboration

At a time of rising international tensions and deep polarisation in many countries, trust-building and cooperation seem like forgotten arts. To reconnect with them and devise creative solutions to sha...

Jul 5 , 2025

Are We Responsible for Our Choices?

Since ancient times, thinkers have pondered whether we freely choose our actions or if they are determined by forces beyond our control. That debate has been given new impetus by scientific discoverie...

Jun 28 , 2025

Healing Rivers Spurs City to Bend Growth Around Its Restored Spine

Over the course of several months of regular site visits, I have watched Addis Abeba's rivers transform from refuse-choked channels to polished corridors of urban life. The transformation, driven by t...

Jun 21 , 2025

Matters of Manners

As we walked down the road from Mexico (then Maychew Square) to AU (then OAU), the four of us munched on what we called Nechu Qolo, properly called Shimbra Dube, bought from Mebrat Hayl recreation cen...

Columns

Commentaries | Nov 01,2025

Central Bank Misses the Mark on Forex Market Speculation

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) issued a statement two weeks ago that appeared to be a...

Editorial | Nov 1 , 2025

They Melt Batteries to Make a Living, Inhale Poison Without Knowing

On a sun-dappled stretch of Swaziland St., near St. Paul Hospital, north of Addis Abeba, w...

Featured | Nov 2 , 2025 . By REDIET YARED

Central Bank Lifts Lending Limits on Sharia-compliant Banks

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has reversed a policy that had weighed on the four ful...

Agenda | Nov 2 , 2025 . By NAHOM AYELE

SHARIA-COMPLIANT BANKS WIN REPRIEVE, AWAIT REFORM

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has scrapped the credit-growth ceiling that had stifle...

Fortune News | Nov 2 , 2025

Lead Recycling Pollutes Addis Abeba's Backyards

What Does the Market Really Think About AI?

When National Pride Becomes a Moral Blindfold

Restoring Africa's Culture, Philosophy Key to Development