NEW YORK – Solomon Haile, an immigrant from Ethiopia, won the Manhattan Invitational yesterday in New York and set a course record.
The Sherwood High School senior finished the 2.5-mile course at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx in 12 minutes 6. 61 seconds, breaking the record by three seconds. Sherwood finished third in the Varsity E division with 210 points. La Salle (R.I.) Academy (141 points) won the meet.
“I pushed myself, and I broke the record,” Haile said. “I’m happy for that.”
ADDIS ABABA (Xinhua) – Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi on Monday held talks with Alain Le Roy, United Nations under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, focusing on a joint peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region.
During their talks, Meles reassured Ethiopia’s commitment to support peacekeeping operations undertaken by the UN across the world.
Ethiopia will continue to support continental and international efforts to ensure peace and stability in countries of the region, Meles added.
After the talks, Roy told journalists that the talks were on various continental and international issues of importance.
He said a thorough discussion was held especially on the security affairs of the region and problems in Sudan and Somalia in a bid to find long-term solutions.
The discussion further focused on the UN-African Union hybrid peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) in Darfur, Sudan, which, according to him, is becoming successful.
Roy said Ethiopia’s contribution to UNAMID is praiseworthy.
The two sides also discussed the United Nations Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), which ended its mission recently. Helauded Ethiopia’s cooperation with the mission.
The UN official said he has been visiting the Horn of Africa in a bid to familiarize himself with the region.
Roy was appointed in late June to oversee almost 110,000 personnel serving in 20 peace operations around the world.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Scholars, policy makers and civil society leaders from within and outside Africa are currently meeting in Addis Ababa in a three-day United Nations-sponsored conference aimed at giving momentum to the fight against corruption on the continent.
It is vital for Africans to “regain the discourse and agenda on anti-corruption in Africa” and “explore ways by which [they] can effectively tackle the problem,” UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Deputy Executive Secretary of ECA Lalla Ben Barka told the conference on “Institutions, Culture and Corruption in Africa” which opened yesterday.
She stressed the need for Africans to “think outside the box” in tackling the problem and urged delegates to “come up with practical suggestions and policy options on how we can move the anti-corruption drive ahead in Africa.”
The conference, jointly organized by UNECA and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa is (CODESRIA), an independent pan-African research organization, is one of the key events marking the Commission’s 50th anniversary.
“The problem of corruption remains intractable in many African countries, and it is widely acknowledged that there is a need for more innovative, creative and strategic approaches to deal with it,” UNECA said in a news release.
The Commission is currently at the forefront of the regional anti-corruption agenda and has adopted a holistic approach that includes engaging major stakeholders, such as the judiciary, national anti-corruption institutions, parliament and the pan-African body of national anti-corruption institutions in Africa.
In 2006 and 2007 UNECA conducted a study on “Deepening Judiciary Effectiveness in Combating Corruption” and convened two ad hoc expert meetings on its findings. The report on the study and its related expert meetings will soon be published and widely disseminated.
The Commission is currently undertaking a study assessing the efficiency and impact of national anti-corruption institutions in Africa.” In February it will convene an ad hoc expert group meeting of heads of national anti-corruption institutions to present the findings of that study.
In addition, UNECA will shortly undertake training workshops for civil society organizations on monitoring and reporting corruption, the first of which will convene on 11-12 November in Kampala, Uganda.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The management of the Ethiopian Airlines (Ethiopian) is in the process of acquiring a state-of-the-art information technology (IT) system, at a budgeted cost of 30 million dollars, reliable sources disclosed to Fortune.
The new system, dubbed master systems integration services, is required to automate the airlines’ operations in its finance, human resources, supply chain management, data warehousing, and corporate portal areas.
“The airlines’ operation has reached a stage where it can no longer run without such a system,” Kemeredin Bederu, vice president for IT Division, told Fortune.
Although the national carrier has an existing IT system, it is not deemed sufficient for its growing operations, said industry sources. Ethiopian has achieved what it sought in its “Vision 2010,” a strategic plan that sets targets on revenues and passenger numbers:It has already generated the one billion dollars revenues one and half years ahead of the scheduled time, and the number of passengers have exceeded the two billion mark espoused in the strategic plan. Its profit from operations in the past Ethiopian fiscal year was over 50 million dollars, reliable sources disclosed.
And the number of fleets it has under operation has grown from 11 to 27; additional Dreamliner aircrafts, Boeing’s highly sophisticated planes, are expected to be delivered next year. These are the type of aircrafts that are fully linked to an IT system on the ground, where technicians can identify any malfunction while they are in flight, and resume maintenance immediately after they land.
“This will substantially reduce the time the aircraft would stay on the ground,” Kemeredin said.
These are the backdrops that prompted the airline to spend close to 300 million Br in acquiring a new IT system, according to industry experts. In fact, no other domestic company is prepared to spend such an amount in automating its operations. Not even the nation’s biggest financial institution, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), comes close to this; the bank’s plans to invest four times lower (70 million Br) to acquire an IT system from foreign firms in its desire to launch an electronic card payment system.
“[The] Ethiopian Airlines’ philosophy will be to adopt a new airline best practice business process as enabled by the supplied system,” the national carrier said, inviting international firms to bid for the contract.
The successful bidder will have to develop an IT solution that will also integrate the company’s current system, according to the tender announcement issued in the state-owned English daily, The Ethiopian Herald, in September 2008.
“It’ll have to transform our operations,” Girma Wake, CEO, told Fortune.
Ethiopian will become the first airline in sub-Saharan Africa to acquire such a vast technological system, according to Zemedeneh Negatu, manager partner of Ernst & Young, the American consultancy firm hired to advise the company on this project in April 2008.
It will not be alone; SATYAM, an Indian company specialized in IT, has also been subcontracted for consultancy by the national carrier in its effort to buy the new technology.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s regime said on Monday it had signed a 210 million euro deal with France’s Vergnet Group to build a 120 megawatt wind turbine project.
Ethiopia suffers from frequent power shortages due to interruptions to its hydropower generation. Work on the wind farm at Ashegoda, near Mekele town in northern Tigray Region, is expected to be complete within three years.
The Ethiopian Electric Power Authority said in a statement that the project, the first of its kind in the country, will add 120 MW to the national grid, boosting total capacity to 934 MW.
The Sherwood High School senior finished the 2.5-mile course at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx in 12 minutes 6. 61 seconds, breaking the record by three seconds. Sherwood finished third in the Varsity E division with 210 points. La Salle (R.I.) Academy (141 points) won the meet.
