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Dec 6 , 2025

AI Boom Promises Progress While Risks Buried in Code, Credit

In 1978, Charles Kindleberger published "Manias, Panics,& Crashes", an instant classic history of investment booms and subsequent busts. Such booms can be divided between those that end up buil...

Nov 29 , 2025

A Vibrant Art Scene Struggles Without a Home-grown Market

Addis Fine Arts, the country's leading gallery, convened a candid conversation in October this year, bringing on board three well-known figures in the contemporary arts scene, who sat before a modest...

Nov 22 , 2025

Why Emerging Economies Embrace AI

During a recent trip to Kazakhstan, I was struck by people's enthusiasm for AI. Virtually everyone I encountered, including academics, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, seemed convinced that the techno...

Nov 15 , 2025

What Kind of AI Do We Actually Want?

For decades, the Turing test was AI researchers' North Star. Today, it has been quietly surpassed. With reasoning models and agentic capabilities emerging, and with the pace of AI infrastructure build...

Nov 8 , 2025

The Quiet Labour That Keeps Peace Alive

Like the air we breathe, peace does not typically command our attention until we lose it. That is why the study of peace is inextricably linked to that of war. It seeks to understand the root causes o...

Nov 1 , 2025

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...

Oct 25 , 2025

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 anot...

Oct 18 , 2025

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 refug...

Oct 11 , 2025

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, �...

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...

Columns

Commentaries | Jul 18,2026

Millions Looking for Work. Companies Cannot Find Many to Hire. A Paradox?

Pressed in Parliament on jobs and household incomes, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) offer...

Editorial | Jul 18 , 2026

EL NINO MEETS A REGION EMPTIED BY WAR

Weldu Yiheysh, a farmer in Shibta District of Enderta Wereda in the Southeast Zone, was st...

Featured | Jul 19 , 2026 . By GEBRU KAHSAY and WORKINEH DIRIBSA

A Sack of Cement, with the Chain No One Can See

In the Jemo area of Addis Abeba, Fikremariam Wondimu no longer trades cement so much as ga...

Agenda | Jul 19 , 2026 . By FITSUM TADESSE

Adverse Opinions Pile Up as Addis Abeba’s Budget Hits a Record

Bureaus, agencies and institutions under the Addis Abeba City Administration are sitting o...

Fortune News | Jul 19 , 2026 . By BEZAWIT HULUAGER