Tanzanian model Miriam Odemba was second in the Miss Earth 2008 pageant held in the Philippines on Sunday.
It was the first time that Tanzania finished in the top three positions in one of the most prestigious global beauty pageants.
Odemba also won the Miss Aficionado title in the tightly contested pageant featuring 85 contestants from all over the world.
Her victory breaks an eight-year barren spell for Africa, which last made a significant impact in the contest in 2002 when Kenyan Winfred Omwakwe won the crown in Manila.
Since 2002, most models from the continent performed poorly at the show. But in 2005, another Tanzanian, Rehema Sudi was placed as a top semifinalist.
“I am very happy to have finished as the first runner-up,” said Odemba in a telephone interview with The Citizen. “I thank God and Tanzanians who supported me during my preparations.”
She said her success was for the country, which she was representing.
Odemba said the competition was very tough, but she managed to fight with confidence to the grand finale. She had spent one month in camp in Angeles City.
Miss Philippines Karla Henry, 22, won the event with Miss Mexico Abigail Elizalde Miss Brazil Tatiane Alves finishing third and fourth, respectively.
Others who completed the line of eight finalists were Mariana Rodr�guez (Colombia), Adriana Rever�n (Spain), Nasanin Nuri (Switzerland) and Daniela Torrealba of Venezuela.
Hana Svobodov� (Czech Republic), Seo Seol-hee (Korea), Uko Ezinne (Nigeria), Karolina Filipkowska (Poland), Ruxandra Popa (Romania), Anna Mezentseva (Russia), Piyaporn Deejing (Thailand) and Jana Murrell (USA) were among the semifinalists.
According to Maria Sarungi, managing director Compass Communications and Miss Earth Tanzania organiser, the judges asked Odemba what advice she would give US President-elect Barack Obama if she were to meet him.
Sarungi said Odemba told them she would advice Obama to give some “serious thoughts” about addressing environmental issues and unemployment among the youths.
Odemba is expected to sign a management contract with the event organizers. She would stay in the Philippines for over two weeks to finalise the procedures.
After returning home, Compass Communications would supervise her activities while looking for other contract with the agencies.
Other African country representatives were Nametso Ngwako (Botswana), Olga Yumba (DRC), Katissia Kouta (Congo Republic), Kidan Tesfahun (Ethiopia) and Sara Adoley Addo of Ghana.
Also in the list were Marit Woods (Liberia), Cynthia Akazuba (Rwanda), Matapa Maila (South Africa), Nok Nora Duany (Sudan) and Ugandan Daisy Nabagereka.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The Federal Government sacked Abe Sano, president of the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) last Friday, November 7, 2008.
The government ordered the Public Financial Enterprises Supervisory Agency (PFEA) headed by Eyob Tesfaye (PhD), to replace Abe with his Vice President, Bekalu Zeleke, who had been working under Abe for the last two and half years.
Many were surprised when the then 34-year old Abe Sano was appointed as the youngest top executive in CBE’s 64-year history in January 2006; similarly, his dismissal was equally unexpected among employees of the bank.
“It is the government’s decision,” a senior government official told Fortune.
Abe was appointed to the post following the suicide of his predecessor, Gezahegn Yilma.
Despite a performance that led to improvement within the bank, Abe could not escape the decision by the Revolutionary Democrats to relieve him of his post for reasons yet unknown.
It is under his leadership that the bank’s annual gross profit soared to a record 716 million Br in March 2008 for the first time in CBE’s history. The volume of Non Performing Loans (NPLs) indicated a marked decline to an all time low of 13-15pc from over 50pc four years ago. Abe’s management team achieved these results within one and half years of his appointment.
Further excelling in their achievement, his management managed to lower the NPLs of the bank to the internationally required level of 10pc by the third quarter of the 2007/08 fiscal year. In the second quarter of 2007/08, the bank’s gross profit shot up by 28pc to 1.3 billion Br.
The staggering ratio of 50pc NPLs that the bank registered a few years ago when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) pressured its management to set a target to reduce it to 24pc within two years, significantly declined under Abe. These achievements, however, did not occur within a short period.
For example, despite aggressive campaigns in attempts to recover loans in the years following IMF’s squeeze, CBE did not go any lower than 29.2pc in 2004/05 fiscal year in terms of NPLs.
CBE registered the current healthy level NPLs ratio, even as its lending increased to 15 billion Br within the third quarter of 2007/08, up by 56pc in the same period the preceding year.
This figure represents an amount almost equal to that of loans advanced by all the commercial banks in the country in 2006/07.
Abe told Fortune that he had not yet received any letter officially notifying him of his removal from office, his tone clearly indicating the disappointment that he did not verbally utter.
“He performed remarkably,” a senior government official said. “However, he failed to transform all the branches into the IT age.”
CBE, a 64-year old East African banking giant, has still not installed an electronic banking system, when the younger private Dashen Bank, which has a total capital equivalent to only 10pc of CBE’s, has taken a lead in the industry by harnessing this advanced banking system.
Nevertheless, CBE has been in the process of evaluating and negotiating with international IT firms to install the system that gives depositors 24-hour access to the money in their local or overseas accounts through Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).
The new president, Bekalu, has ousted Abe as the youngest executive appointed to the top most post in CBE as he is only 31 years old.
Bekalu can also be equally credited for the bank’s current performance as he was vice president of the Finance and Accounting Department of the Bank, before becoming Abe’s second in command.
Like Abe, by late Friday the new CBE boss had not yet been officially informed about his promotion to the bank’s highest position.
The oldest commercial bank in Ethiopia, CBE swung into business in 1942 with a 65 million Br capital. That capital has steadily risen to 4.2 billion Br, giving the bank the capacity to lend as much as one billion Birr to a single borrower.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The Addis Abeba City Administration has started claiming back land and government properties illegally obtained by officials of the former provisional Administration of the city, some of whom have been retained by the current Kuma-led administration.
Those officials still within the city administration will face removal from their current positions as part of the measures to be taken against them.
After running the city for three years, the administration under the helm of the former Mayor Arkebe Oqubay, now State minister of Works and Urban Development(MoWUD) administration, was supposed to hand over power to the then Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), which had won 137 of the 138 seats in the City Council.
But CUD failed to take over administration of the city as it could not come to terms with EPRDF. As a result, the Federal Government assigned the reins to the Caretaker Administration of Berhane Deresa, which administered the city for two years.
A report by the Federal Ethics andAnti-Corruption Commission disclosed that land grabbing was rampant in the few months before Arkebe handed over the administration to the Caretaker Administration.
The administration that came to power in May 2008 seems determined not to let the illegal possession of government properties go unchallenged. The Kuma-led administration has been developing special mechanisms of getting the land back.
Revelations of the illegal possessions began last Ethiopian summer when EPRDF sent about 2,000 of its members, who are officials at different levels of the city, to Alagie Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) College near Zeway town, 163Km from Addis Abeba for training.
Top officials from both the Federal and City Government and senior party leaders like Bereket Simon, Arkebe Oqubay, Kuma Demeksa, Mekuria Haile took part in the training of the officials.
Several of the trainees were district and kebele executives during Arkebe’s time who have also been candidates for Kuma’s administration.
The officials, who took the training on the party’s strategic policies in two groups of 1,000 for a month each, had also undergone EPRDF’s infamous self evaluation in groups of their respective districts.
According to a source who attended the training, the trainees just began to voluntarily confess each of all the illegal acts they had committed, including the unlawful acquisition of public houses, land and condominium houses.
Those who were in charge of facilitating the confessions cautiously listened to the details and later submitted them to the party’s Addis Abeba office, the source told Fortune. The office discussed the case and decided to take measures against those who had confessed to the illegal acts.
Mekuria Haile, city general manager, confirmed to Fortune that action has been taken against the culprits.
“Further measures will follow for those who were involved in land grabbing,” he said.
The administration has already started taking measure in districts such as Lideta, Bole and Nefas-Silk-Lafto.
Biniam Haregu, speaker of the Lideta District Council and Tsegaw Yimer, head of Bole District Youth and Sports Office, have subsequently been removed from their posts.
According to the source, the administration has already confirmed that there are many others who got condominium houses while living in government houses and some who illegally took plots of land to construct houses on them.
Egypt’s outsourcing sector is getting a boost of international recognition. The country was recently awarded the prize for best outsourcing destination by the British National Outsourcing Association
(NOA).
This comes as much needed encouragement, with the government trying to attract more investment to the sector at a time of international economic gloom.
Hazem Abdel-Azim, CEO of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), who
received the prize in the name of the Egyptian government, stated that it was “a source of pride for the Egyptian communications and information technology sector”, local media reported.
Similarly, other rankings and reports have singled out Egypt among emerging IT services countries. A recent study by the Yankee Group, a US-based consultancy firm, compared several Middle Eastern countries’ base for outsourcing services, concluding that Egypt “has the strongest position in the outsourcing market.”
The report praised Egypt’s IT services against those of countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and put Egypt on equal footing with India and China, stating that Egypt had a huge advantage in terms of the versatility of its language skills.
“The country’s multilingual capabilities make Egypt attractive to Europe-based countries“, the report said.
“By contrast, China does not have the same level of comfort with Western culture and traditions as
Egypt. India’s bailiwick is its strong English-speaking workforce, which works well for US-based and UK-based companies… but the lack of other languages is a disadvantage in India when it comes to EU-based countries.”
IT Services Exports
These assessments reflect the government’s efforts in recent years to attract investment and develop human resources to work in the outsourcing and offshoring sector. Egypt’s IT exports sector has attracted local and foreign investments worth more than $8bn over the past three years according to ITIDA.
In a recent interview with OBG, Egyptian Minister of Communications and IT Tarek Kamel stated that the country’s IT services exports were currently worth $700m, and that he expected this figure to reach $1.1bn by 2010.
“Egypt is appearing more and more in the international arena of IT services,” he told OBG. “We help train the talent pool and provide low cost infrastructure and access to well equipped space. We will continue to do this.”
In a bid to expand the attractiveness of its IT sector and create more room for foreign companies, the country is planning to open bids to build a new outsourcing business park in the Southern Cairo suburb of Maadi.
The project will involve the construction of 30 to 40 technological facilities that will cater to Egyptian, Arab and international firms focusing on IT services, local media reported. Furthermore, the Yankee
Group report also noted a deal that UK-based company SpinVox has signed to establish a business center in Alexandria.
Changing Business Risk Perception
Egypt will nonetheless face some challenges if it is to increase revenue from this sector. The Yankee Group report reckons that Egypt needs to upgrade some infrastructure as well as reverse a negative opinion about its level of business risk. “Egypt faces some hurdles, including outdated communications and transportation infrastructure, and the perception-especially in the United States-that it is a risky place to do work”, the report stated.
The future of the sector also depends on how fast the government and the private sector can train its workers to join the country’s growing IT force. “It’s a question of the speed at which the country can educate the pool of talent,” Adel Danish, chairman of Xceed, Egypt’s biggest call centre, told OBG.
“Human resources are the main challenge in Egypt. But the good thing is the government is aware of it and taking the right actions.”
Egypt Credit Crunch Beneficiary
The country is also hoping that the global slowdown triggered by the credit crunch, which is affecting US and European economies, will not deter the growth of its outsourcing sector. As European and US-based companies represent the majority of Egypt’s customers, a slowing in consumption might curtail the demand for support services from Egypt.
“It will be interesting to see what happens”, Danish told OBG. “Some people believe the recession will make companies cut costs, and so outsource even more services to lower-cost countries like Egypt.”
To Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, last week’s election loss to the Democratic ticket boiled down to a trio of problems: money, the Hispanic vote and “that ‘R’ by our name.”
In an interview with NBC Today Show host Matt Lauer that aired today, Palin gave a her postgame analysis of why she and Republican presidential candidate John McCain did not do better against President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
“I thought it would be closer,” Palin told Lauer, continuing a series of national television interviews that aired beginning yesterday on Fox, NBC and CNN. “But then take a step back … it makes sense. We did not get the Hispanic vote, and that was very significant. And when you consider that we were outspent so tremendously, it make sense there also,” said Palin, who prepared a salmon-and-halibut casserole for the visiting television personality.
“And just that anti-incumbency sentiment that was spread across the land, and our ticket representing the incumbency. … It was really not so much a surprise after all that the margin was as great as it was.”
And what about Obama?
“He did a great job in articulating his ability to usher in change — the change that American voters have been seeking. And perhaps our ticket represented too much of the status quo.
It was the first time that Tanzania finished in the top three positions in one of the most prestigious global beauty pageants.