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 (AFP) — Ethiopia on Tuesday condemned Human Rights Watch’s call on the country’s lawmakers to reject a draft law that would give government more control in the affairs of foreign aid groups.
The New York-based rights group on Monday said the Charities and Societies Proclamation to be debated by parliament this month would “criminalise human rights activity and seriously undermine civil society groups.”
Ethiopia’s information ministry said the group’s call “contravenes directly the sovereign power and rights of the Ethiopian people and government.
“Ethiopia’s internal affairs are within the sovereign power and rights of the Ethiopian people and government,” it said in a statement.
It added that HRW call was to “patronise the opinion of the international community” after it called on donor governments to warn Addis Ababa that the law would jeopardise funding.
The legislation would give the government greater control over foreign NGOs and ban them from work related to ethnicity, gender and children’s rights, HRW said.
It would also carry severe criminal penalties for violations, including three to five years of imprisonment for minor administrative violations, the group added.
A man robbed the Foggy Bottom Grocery at gunpoint Friday afternoon and left with more than $500, police and witnesses said.
FB Grocery owner Meseret Bekele
At about 1:35 p.m., a black male in his thirties attached a note to the door that said “Be Back in 10 Minutes” before placing a handgun on the counter and demanding money, said Metropolitan Police Department Sergeant John Mitchell and witnesses on the scene.
No arrests have been made in connection with the crime, MPD Public Information Officer Israel James said on Saturday. A University crime alert sent to members of the GW community Friday evening urged anyone who may have information on the crime to contact the University Police Department.
Jaime Molinelli, a veterinarian who lives in Baltimore, said she heard Foggy Bottom Grocery owner Meseret Bekel shouting from her shop’s door.
“I heard her screaming and I looked at him and said, ‘Hey, you!’ and he started running,” Molinelli said. “So I chased after him.”
Molinelli, the daughter of the late Foggy Bottom residents Jimmy and Lucille Molinelli, said she chased the robber from Foggy Bottom Grocery’s location at 2140 F St. to 22nd Street, but stopped when a bystander told her the man had a gun.
“I wasn’t going to catch him anyway,” she said.
Bekel sustained minor injuries, but she was otherwise unhurt, Mitchell said.
Kris Hart, a GW alumnus and owner of the nearby Relax tanning salon and spa, is in the process of buying the Foggy Bottom Grocery. He said Bekel, an Ethiopian immigrant in her 60s, was “shaken up.”
“It’s a terrible thing to happen to her,” said Hart, a former Student Association president. “She just doesn’t deserve it.”
Michael Akin, GW’s director of government and community relations, was also on scene and comforted Bekele.
“Meseret Bekele, the operator of the grocery, has been such an integral part of this neighborhood for so many years,” Akin said. “We are all so grateful that no one was injured.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The starvation in Ethiopia is caused by the corrupt, brutal dictatorship that spends hundreds of millions of dollars to buy weapons that are used to terrorize the people of Ethiopia and neighboring countries. It should be noted that the U.S.-backed Woyanne regime spends over a $1 million per day in its war with neighboring Somalia alone.
Ethiopia needs $266 million to help feed 6.4 million people suffering from food shortages due to drought, an increase of 1.8 million since June, the government said.
Millions of peasant farmers and pastoralists in the Horn of Africa country are struggling to cope with the affects of the failure of the short rains in February and March, known as the “belg,” Mitiku Kassa, the state minister for agriculture and rural development, said today in the capital, Addis Ababa.
“It is unprecedented, the failure of the belg,” Kassa said at a meeting with international donors. “We need additional resources.”
International relief agencies need 270,245 metric tons of food to meet aid needs from September to December of this year. Donors have pledged less than two-thirds of the aid requests made earlier this year, Kassa said.
About 80 percent of Ethiopians rely on rain-fed farming even though the economy has experienced double-digit growth over the past four years. Beyond the number of people needing emergency aid, another 7.4 million people depend on a donor- funded “safety-net” program that provides food to families for at least six months of the year.
Ethiopia, a nation of 78 million people, now has 50,000 tons of food in its emergency reserves, down from 400,000 normally.
Shortages of emergency food reserves hampered the response effort to the drought earlier this year, the agriculture ministry said in a report today.
Food Ration
In July, the monthly food ration to those in need was cut by a third due to shortages of aid, a situation worsened by spiking world food and fuel prices.
While farmers have begun to harvest crops from Ethiopia’s main rainy season from June to September, the government and aid agency officials say they are concerned about food shortages, particularly in eastern Ethiopia.
“We worry the situation remains very fragile in many regions,” said Marc Rubin, the emergency coordinator for the United Nations Children’s Fund in Ethiopia. “Acute watery diarrhea is still at an epidemic level.”
About 30 percent of pregnant and nursing mothers are malnourished in four major regions of the country, the agriculture ministry said in its report.
Ethiopia’s government and international aid agencies have quarreled in recent months about the severity of the drought, with the government accusing some relief organizations of exaggerating its severity in order to raise funds.
The Ethiopian government has increased its estimates of those in need twice since the failure of the rains.
The government in August reorganized the agency in charge of disaster assistance, replacing its director, Simon Mechale, and its spokesman, Sisay Tadesse, and putting the body under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at [email protected].
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.
