Media and Security - How Ethiopia exploits AU role to suppress international criticism

By  Simon Allison on Daily Mavrick (South Africa)

28 Jan 2016 11:00 

Media and civil society at the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa face a stark choice: avoid criticizing Ethiopia, or risk being denied access to the continental body. SIMON ALLISON reports on how the Ethiopian government uses its role as gatekeeper to the AU to keep journalists, researchers and activists in check.

ADDIS ABABA – The African Union headquarters, 24-storeys of clean lines and soaring glass, is Addis Ababa’s tallest building. It looks all wrong in the context of its dusty, low-rise surroundings (although increasingly less so, as the city develops furiously around it). It’s almost like it was accidentally transplanted from Shanghai or Beijing, which, in a way, it was – China paid for and built it. But there’s no question that it belongs. The building is Africa’s diplomatic centre, and Addis is the continent’s diplomatic capital. There’s nowhere else it could be.

The city’s starring role in continental politics began in 1963, when Ethiopia brokered a truce between two rival African blocs with different ideas of what a continental body should look like. The breakthrough conference in 1963, where the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was declared, took place in Addis Ababa, and it was only natural that the new institution should establish its headquarters there too.

Not that there wasn’t a fight. Togo spent $120 million – that was half its annual budget at the time – on a lavish new hotel and conference centre in Lomé, complete with 52 presidential villas, in an effort to persuade the OAU to move its headquarters. The bid failed, and the complex turned into a ludicrously expensive white elephant, abandoned and left derelict for decades.

Togo’s attempt to steal Addis Ababa’s thunder was only crazy because it failed. Had it worked, the investment would have looked like a small price to pay. As Ethiopia well knows, the benefits – both financial and political – far outweigh any costs associated with hosting the AU.

Let’s start with the obvious. The AU rakes in hard currency for Ethiopia. There’s the $2,000-plus a month rentals for staff villas; the restaurants, hotels and conference venues built to cope with the regular influx of summit delegates; the thousands and thousands of flight bookings – often first or business class – which have helped Ethiopian Airlines become the largest airline in Africa. The AU is a cash cow, and Ethiopia has been milking it for more than 50 years.

It’s not just about the AU itself. Almost every African country has an embassy in Addis, because they’ve all got ambassadors to the AU (Why else would the likes of beleaguered Mali, for example, maintain a mission here?). This applies to non-African countries too: Addis Ababa’s status as a diplomatic hub means it attracts more foreign representation than other African capitals of a similar size, including another vast international organisation: the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. These missions all rent offices and houses, employ local staff, and shop in local stores, as do the research organisations and NGOs who trail in their wake. Read more... on Daily Maverick 

Economy - Ethiopia: Me,my country and corruption

Wondemagne Ejigu kebede

ECADF

"I believe all stakeholders should play their own little role to curb this damage. We have to expose corrupted big government officials! Their wrong doing should be exposed openly to the public."

Have you seen a movie titled ”me, myself and Irine” or ”me and Marely”? Both are my favorite movies. When I decided to write article about corruption what it does to me and my country. The title concept of these movies clicked to my mind. I borrowed the concept, convinced it will explain the theme of my article. In this article I will try to discuss the harm corruption can cause to an individual that is me and my country. I will also try to shade some light on the issue from the global perspective by putting the international community role on top of it. I will try to point out corruption effect in Ethiopia, its cause in my view, international community reaction towards it, my personal encounter in corruption and the possible remedy in my conclusion. One can imagine that it will be difficult to comperes all these ideas in one article. However I will try my best.

How big is Corruption in Ethiopia?

According to the Global Financial Integrity, (GFI) which tracks illicit financial flows out of developing countries worldwide. The amount of money that Ethiopia lost by smuggling cash out of the country , both by the government and the private sector between   2001 and 2010 totals 16.5 billion of USD. GIF’s statistics are based on official data provided by Ethiopian government, World Bank  & IMF.

Ethiopia also ranks 141 out of 176 countries in the corruption index of transparency International.
According to a report by UNDP on January 5, 2012, 8 Billion USD secretly taken out of Ethiopia, in the span of 10 years.

On October 6, 2014 another report from Transparency International revealed that, Ethiopia suffers from high levels of bribery. In its public opinion published the same year.
In another report from UNDP in 2014 the illicit financial flow was estimated to be a little over  3 billion USD, in the other hand the country  total  gain of a hard currency manly from remittance plus export is  a little shy from 3 billion USD in the same physical year.  How worse can it get?
The list could go on and on.

But to show how rampant it already got, mentioning a recent incident will worth it. A highly positioned person from the ruling party of Ethiopia has been caught in London Heathrow airport with cash money of 5 million sterling pounds all the way from Addis Ababa.   This alone is a perfect case to show how ridiculously rampant and big corruption is in Ethiopia. I mean How rampant or big can it get?

Developmental states and corruption

Its known that the developmental state is , a state-led macroeconomic planning. Theoretically it’s a model of capitalism, where by the state has more independence or autonomous political power and more control over the economy. Its highly characterized by strong state intervention , extensive regulation and planning.

In my understanding the current regime of Ethiopia proclaim its self a “Revolutionary Democracy” , that gives the state a limitless control basically over anything and everything.  Than its prescribed in a developmental state at least theoretically. This excessive control of the state enable the authorities to manipulate the state structure to conduct a systematic corruption.

Academicians put forward various arguments theoretically both pro and against. However, I am a practical person. I have experienced firsthand what it means to conduct business in a proclaimed “revolutionary democrat” state. And to save everyone from off use fancy “intellectual” arguments with confusing jargon. I can share my experience. That, it’s extremely difficult to conduct a clean business. Such ideological model is highly exposed to corruption. It’s systematically corrupted beyond words. This is from my day to day experience in the real world.

This ideological loophole, in my view is also a ground for the undemocratic essence plus true identity of the Ethiopian “Revolutionary Democrat” regime.  Like the corruption,   the dictatorial ship of the regime conducted systematically.  The regime has the perfect camouflage that disguise its dictatorial nature.  Conducting  elections every five years is its main camouflage.

But what happened in all these elections?  We take a look at the last three elections by the current regime. In all elections death, imprisonment and persecution of opposition political leaders are common recipes. There are more than sufficient evidences that confirm rigging of votes. The ruling dictatorial regime use all the government structure and its famous 1 to 5 scheme to diminish any other alternative. As a result all the elections end up being dramas. The dictatorial regime being the worst ”drama queen”.

The most amusing part of the recent election is, the 100% win that the ruling party claims. Is that even possible in an election? Yeah! It was possible once.  Sadam Hussine the former president of Iraq  claimed once 100% win.  So the “Revolutionary Democrats” dictator of the Ethiopian current regime will be the second one to claim 100% win in the world’s modern history.  Then I ask my self, was Sadam democratic leader? I think the answer is clear. What was the reaction of the international community towards Sadm’s dictatorial regime? Its a recent phenomena in history. Sadam’s regime was basically destroyed. With the same token what is the reaction of the international community to the Ethiopian dictatorial regime? This leads me to my next point. The International Community.

But to rap it up, here we have a regime, which is systematically corrupted and dictator.  The corruption aspect is clearly stipulated from some of the reports of independent bodies mentioned in the beginning. The fact that the regime is a dictator is nothing but a fact. The always controversial elections and the regime worsening persecution of opposition political leaders as well as independent thinkers reflect the fact.   What exactly is the International community doing about this systematic dictatorial regime in Ethiopia? Read the rest...

Economy - Real Goals to Empower the Developing World

Alternatives to the U.N.’s Agenda for Sustainable Development

by Iain Murray 

The United Nations is soon due to replace its ambitious Millennium Development Goals with a new set of far more extensive and even more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals. However, the U.N.’s approach suffers from some major flaws. Instead of setting targets, the world should adopt strategies that have proven to deliver a healthier, greener, and more prosperous planet—strategies that also improve the resiliency of communities to whatever nature throws at them.

The U.N.’s approach is flawed because it focuses on simply announcing a slew of targets that are unlikely to prove achievable, especially as there are tradeoffs involved in meeting some targets over others.

Moreover, the U.N.’s emphasis on “sustainability,” as generally defined among development bureaucrats and NGOs, imposes significant burdens on developing countries’ freedom and ability to achieve the rapid increases in human welfare that were the target of the original Millennium goals.
The U.N. also ignores the lesson of the most successful developing economies. For instance, Hong Kong and Singapore followed a proven path to prosperity that is centered on principles that have significantly increased the resiliency of their societies.

We therefore recommend five realistic goals that developing world economies should pursue. They are:

1. Secure Property Rights. Markets, the source of wealth and prosperity, are impossible without security in property rights. Governments should make it their first priority to ensure that property rights are recognized and respected. The Arab Spring began because small businessmen were constantly having their merchandise and tools of their trade expropriated by officials. Land titling is one important means of securing these rights. Common property rights should also be officially recognized and reformed. New technologies such as the Blockchain can help to secure these rights.

2. Secure the Rule of Law. The rule of law reduces arbitrariness in government that can be a huge drain on an economy and human dignity. Research has found that improvements in the rule of law can empower the disadvantaged and help unleash entrepreneurial spirits even among the most previously oppressed peoples. A secure rule of law also reduces corruption. Technology can help deliver this goal, as has been seen in e-governance projects in India. Finally, charter cities can help deliver a “new start” to governance.

3. Ensure Access to Affordable Energy. Affordable energy is key to unleashing human potential, but the U.N.’s emphasis on sustainability perversely increases energy costs. Increased energy costs are an especially severe problem for the poor, who spend a larger share of their income on necessities like energy, shelter, and food. Higher energy costs are also associated with worse health outcomes. Thankfully, technological innovation in fossil fuel extraction has recently reduced energy costs, while reducing emissions in the developed world. Developing countries should allow and encourage use of these technologies to develop their own energy sectors. Distributed renewable energy has a small but limited role to play, but investments in advanced traditional energy can deliver much greater benefits to developing nations.

4. Ensure Access to Capital and Credit. Access to capital is important to unleashing “the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.” Credit allows those who have capital to share its benefits with those who do not, to mutual advantage. As noted, land titling process can provide access to capital, but there are other forms as well. Microsavings, microinsurance, and microloans are all important and are made possible and more accessible by modern communication technology, which lowers transaction costs to unprecedentedly low levels. By some estimates, there is an economy of at least $13 trillion locked up that just needs to be freed up to allow it to benefit its owners.

5. Allow Markets in Education. The U.N. wants developing countries to provide free universal education. This emphasis on price is unnecessary. Recent research has shown that low-cost private education is available in many parts of the developing world, and that its quality outstrips that of supposedly free government schools. Moreover, these schools are helping to achieve gender equity, and are just cost-effective and financially sustainable. They are accountable to parents, and parents generally prefer them even when cost is taken into account. Concerns about affordability are unfounded.

Taken together, these coherent principles will allow for a much stronger, prosperous, and more resilient planet than the bundle of often contradictory targets advanced by the United Nations and other “sustainability” advocates. An agenda that empowers people rather than bureaucrats, building a resilient and in that sense truly healthy society in the process, is the best way to achieve human health and flourishing. Full Document Available in PDF

Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute

Economy - The Great Emerging-Market Bubble

by Bill Emmott

LONDON – Something has gone badly wrong in the emerging economies that were supposed to be shaping, even dominating, the future of the world. The search for culprits is under way: commodity prices, fracking, US interest rates, El Nino, China, these and others lead the field. But the answer is simpler and more traditional. It is politics.

Look at Brazil. There an economy once tipped for ever-lasting boom has barely grown for more than two years, and is currently shrinking. Falling prices for its commodity exports haven’t helped, but Brazil’s economy was supposed to be about far more than just harvests and extractive industries.

Or look at Indonesia. That economy is still expanding, but at a rate – 4.7% annually in the latest quarter – that is disappointing in terms both of previous expectations and of population growth. The same can be said of Turkey, where growth has sagged to 2.3% in the latest quarter – which at least beats population growth but is meager compared with the country’s go-go years of 2010 and 2011, when it expanded by 9%. Or South Africa, where economic progress has constantly been too slow, whether in boom years for gold and other resources or busts, to make any real dent in poverty levels.

Then there is China itself, whose slowdown is everybody else’s favorite explanation for their own sluggishness. There, private economists are back enjoying their favorite pastime during periods of economic stress, namely trying to construct their own indices for GDP growth as at such times they do not believe the official statistics. Officially, Chinese growth is rock-steady at 7% per year, which happens to be the government’s declared target, but private economists’ estimates mostly range between 4% and 6%.

One mantra of recent years has been that, whatever the twists and turns of global economic growth, of commodities or of financial markets, “the emerging-economy story remains intact.” By this, corporate boards and investment strategists mean that they still believe that emerging economies are destined to grow a lot faster than the developed world, importing technology and management techniques while exporting goods and services, thereby exploiting a winning combination of low wages and rising productivity.

There is, however, a problem with this mantra, beyond the simple fact that it must by definition be too general to cover such a wide range of economies in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. It is that if convergence and out performance were merely a matter of logic and destiny, as the idea of an “emerging-economy story” implies, then that logic ought also to have applied during the decades before developing-country growth started to catch the eye. But it didn’t.

The reason why it didn’t is the same reason why so many emerging economies are having trouble now. It is that the main determinants of an emerging-economy’s ability actually to emerge, sustainably, are politics, policy and all that is meant by the institutions of governance. More precisely, although countries can ride waves of growth and exploit commodity cycles despite having dysfunctional political institutions, the real test comes when times turn less favorable and a country needs to change course.

That is what Brazil has been finding so difficult for the past four disappointing years. Unable to keep inflation under control without causing a recession, the country has, since 2010, got stuck not because of bad luck, or any loss of entrepreneurial spirit in its private sector, but because of political failings. Brazil’s government has been unwilling or unable to cut back its bloated public sector, has been mired in vast corruption scandals, and yet its president Dilma Rousseff continues to evince a fondness for just the sort of state-led capitalism that leads to exactly these problems.

The democracies of Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa are all currently failing to perform what is a basic task for any political system: to mediate smoothly between competing interest groups and power blocs in order to permit a broader public interest to prevail. By that is meant essentially a public interest in allowing the economy to evolve flexibly, so that resources move from uses that have become unprofitable to ones that have a higher potential. A clogged up economy, one that does not permit such creative destruction and adaptation to new circumstances, is one that will not grow sustainably.

Is this something that democracies, especially immature ones with fragile institutions of the rule of law and freedom of speech, are simply bad at, when compared with authoritarian regimes? Certainly, what these stumbling economies are guilty of is a failure to learn from Singapore, a system whose managed democracy is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and which has successfully avoided the sort of interest-group sclerosis and corruption that is holding back Brazil, for example.

One comfort, perhaps, for the democrats is that right now China is failing to learn the Singaporean lesson, too. Its current slowdown appears to arise from a failure by the Communist Party to challenge the monopoly powers of state-owned enterprises and to free up new sectors for private enterprise.

No matter. It is not a question of whether democracy or authoritarianism is best. The bottom line is that unless emerging economies can ensure that they remain flexible and adaptable, they will not continue to “emerge.” And the determinant of that flexibility and ability to adapt lies in political institutions and their willingness to challenge interest groups, mediate social conflicts, and maintain the rule of law. It’s the politics, stupid.

Source: Project Syndicate

Politics - The Hypocrisy of the US Promoting the "Rule of Law" in Africa

By Adjoa Agyeiwaa, Truthout | Op-Ed

Invited guests listen to President Barack Obama speak at the
Young African Leaders Initiative summit at the
Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, Aug. 3, 2015.
 (Zach Gibson/The New York Times)

"There's a lot that I'd like to do to keep America moving. But the law is the law, and no person is above the law, not even the president," said President Obama in a speech to the African Union in July, in which he also quipped that he could "probably" win a third term if the US Constitution allowed it. However, the irony behind Obama's bleeding-heart speech about democracy in Africa is that in many African countries, Western backing is the only thing keeping kleptocrats in the presidential palace.

Obama's empty rhetoric offers an interesting contrast to a reality in which many African countries are racing to remove the pesky two term-limit in their constitutions, as the continent braces itself for its own 2016 election fever. Indeed, no fewer than 13 African countries will have their presidential elections next year - and some leaders have taken steps to make sure their hold on power will not be weakened by something as trivial as the rule of law. While the West airs bland platitudes about respecting the rule of law, African leaders are snuffing democracy with impunity.

With blatant disregard for the popular mood, many African presidents have rid themselves of term limits. From Mozambique's former leader and respected elder, Joaquim Chissano, who quipped that two terms are "not enough" for African leaders, to Rwanda's Paul Kagame, who argues that his country is not stable enough to go on without him at the helm, 11 African leaders have altered their constitutions in the past 15 years alone. Some, like Uganda's Yoweri Museveni or Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, have been their countries' leaders since the days of the Cold War. Others, like Djibouti's Ismail Omar Guelleh, Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza and Rwanda's Kagame, are aspiring autocrats who have only recently solidified their hold on power by removing constitutional obstacles. "African leaders don't hold elections to lose them," said David Zenmenou of the Institute for Security Studies.

Leapfrogging to Democracy

A recent survey by Afrobarometer, a nonpartisan, pan-African research organization, of 51,600 citizens in 34 countries shows that three-quarters of Africans polled support term limits. Educated Africans, the young and those who are more exposed to the media overwhelmingly reject these autocrats and their systems of patronage.

Boniface Dulani, the author of the report, said that in countries like Zimbabwe, "where President Robert Mugabe has been in office for more than 30 years, 74 percent say that their president should be limited. Burundi, which has been in the news, in 2013, 51 percent of Burundian citizens, said their president should be limited. But, this number has actually increased to 62 percent."

But such aspirations will forever be thwarted if the West (and the United States in particular) curries favor with those leaders Africans want ejected. President Obama's pleas for democracy simply don't stand up to scrutiny, and are revealed as nothing more than crunchy sound bites for the Western media to digest. If Obama were truly interested in keeping Africa on an even keel, he would have stopped funneling money to dictators, young and old alike.

Indeed, on top of an undisclosed amount of military aid, "Western aid pays for half of Burundi's budget, roughly 40 percent of Rwanda's, 50 percent of Ethiopia's and 30 percent of Uganda's." Apart from being faithful Western allies, these countries also share a penchant for human rights abuses, ranging from genocide (in Rwanda and Burundi) to ethnic discrimination and widespread political persecution. For decades, the West has ignored the plight of Africans at the hands of despots either for the sake of undermining the Soviet Union, exploiting mineral wealth or more recently, fighting the infamous "war on terror." Read more on Truthout

Politics - Fighting Corruption Won’t End Poverty

Ricardo Hausmann

CAMBRIDGE – Countries are poor because governments are corrupt. And, unless they ensure that public resources are not stolen, and that public power is not used for private gain, they will remain poor, right?
It certainly is tempting to believe so. Here, after all, is a narrative that neatly aligns the promise of prosperity with the struggle against injustice. As Pope Francis said on his recent trip to Latin America: “corruption is the moth, the gangrene of a people.” The corrupt deserve to be “tied to a rock and cast into the sea.”

Perhaps they do. But that won’t necessarily make their countries more prosperous.

Consider the data. Probably the best measure of corruption is the World Bank’s Control of Corruption Indicator, which has been published since 1996 for over 180 countries. The CCI shows that while rich countries tend to be less corrupt than poor ones, countries that are relatively less corrupt, for their level of development, such as Ghana, Costa Rica, or Denmark, do not grow any faster than others.

Nor do countries that improve in their CCI score, such as Zambia, Macedonia, Uruguay, or New Zealand, grow faster. By contrast, the World Bank’s Government Effectiveness Indicator suggests that countries that, given their income level, have relatively effective governments or improve their performance, do tend to grow faster.For some reason – probably related to the nature of what NYU’s Jonathan Haidt calls our “righteous minds” – our moral sentiments are strongly related to feelings of empathy in the face of harm and unfairness. It is easier to mobilize against injustice than for justice. We are more enthusiastic to fight the bad – say, hunger and poverty – than to fight for, say, the kind of growth and development that makes food and sustainable livelihoods plentiful.

Sometimes switching from the “bad” to the corresponding “good” is simply a matter of semantics: to fight against racism is to fight for nondiscrimination. But, in the case of corruption, which is a bad that is caused by the absence of a good, attacking the bad is very different from creating the good.The good is a capable state: a bureaucracy that can protect the country and its people, keep the peace, enforce rules and contracts, provide infrastructure and social services, regulate economic activity, credibly enter into inter-temporal obligations, and tax society to pay for it all. It is the absence of a capable state that causes corruption (the inability to prevent public officials, often in collusion with other members of society, from subverting decision-making for private gain), as well as poverty and backwardness.

Some might argue that reducing corruption entails the creation of a capable state; the good is created out of the fight against the bad. But is it? Teachers and nurses often do not show up for work, but that does not mean that performance would improve much if they did. Policemen may stop asking for bribes, but that will not make them any better at catching criminals and preventing crime. Curtailing side-payments does not imply the ability to manage concession contracts or collect taxes.

Aside from prosecuting some bad apples, measures to fight corruption typically involve reforming procurement rules, public financial-management systems, and anti-corruption legislation. The underlying assumption is that the new rules, unlike the previous rules, will be enforced.That has not been Uganda’s experience. In 2009, under pressure from the aid community, the government enacted what was billed at the time as the best anti-corruption legislation in the world; and yet all corruption indicators have continued to worsen.

Uganda is not an exception. My colleague at Harvard, Matt Andrews, has documented the failure of public financial management reforms designed to prevent graft. And the reasons for these failures are not specific to financial management.All organizations need to be perceived as legitimate. They can create this perception by actually performing the function for which they were created, which is difficult. Alternatively, they can borrow from the natural world a strategy called isomorphic mimicry: just as non-poisonous snakes evolve to resemble a poisonous species, organizations can make themselves look like institutions in other places that are perceived as legitimate.

And this is what the anti-corruption agenda often ends up stimulating: the creation of organizations that are more obsessed with abiding by the new and burdensome processes than they are with achieving their stated goals. As Harvard’s Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Andrews argue, when inept organizations adopt “best practices” such as financial management systems and procurement rules, they become too distracted by decision-distorting protocols to do what they were established to do.

As Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, the development of a capable state that is accountable and ruled by law is one of the crowning achievements of human civilization. It involves the creation of a shared sense of “us,” an imagined community on whose behalf the state acts.

This is not an easy task when societies are deeply divided by ethnicity, religion, or social status. After all, who is the state for? All Iraqis or just the Shia among them? All Kenyans or just the Kikuyu? What is to prevent the ethnic group currently in power from diverting resources to itself on the argument that “it’s our turn to eat?” Why shouldn’t those currently in control of the state transform it into their patrimony, as in Venezuela, where, more than two years after former President Hugo Chávez’s death, his daughters still occupy the presidential residence?

The fight against corruption mobilizes all of us because we want to do away with evil and injustice. But we should remember that casting the bad into the sea does not imply the sudden appearance on our shores of the good that we need.

Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela and former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, is Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at Harvard University, where he is also Director of the Center for International Development.Source: Project Syndicate

Politics - Leadership: Institution building

"Institution building indeed is nation-building" 

Dr NS Rajan

“Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation” observed Benjamin Disraeli. Institutions are understood and ‘identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior’. What makes an institution endure? What factors govern the prospects of perpetuity? What drives the need to connect and collaborate? These are vital questions to reflect upon to unravel the components of institution building. In the words of Robert Browning, a leader must “recognize that our aspirations are our possibilities.” 

Institution building indeed is nation building. The abiding purpose of any Institution is to unravel remarkable possibilities of contributing through a collective process which is the bedrock of its existence. An institution must endeavor to build the dreams of its collective future on the history of its rich past; a vision to excel, without losing out on that which is essential and definitive. As Shelley wrote in his wonderful poem ‘Adonais’, we perhaps must acknowledge that: “The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not Like stars to their appointed height they climb.” The quest of an institution must be to do exceptional things, to realize its vision but even more importantly stay committed to doing ordinary things exceptionally well.

Leadership of an institution is not just a duty, but an obligation. The way forward would be governed by a shared vision, strong focus on execution, measurable outcomes, accountability and transparency – paving the way in creating sustained institution building and enhanced equity of the enterprise. In a highly acclaimed article ‘What Business Can Learn from NonProfits’ in Harvard Business Review of Jul-Aug 89, Peter Drucker observed succinctly that “Non profits need management even more than business does because they lack the discipline of the bottom line.” True indeed ! A strong constitutional framework, a relevant set of bye laws, a well articulated vision document, a transparent value proposition, a robust secretariat to enable efficient execution, and a platform for collaborations and alliances, clear performance measures to achieve the goals are all integral components of what a leader has to institutionalize. 

Institutions must be willing to refresh themselves and welcome change, to endure and retain relevance into the future. “Asking ‘what is right for the enterprise?’ does not guarantee that the right decision will be made. Even the most brilliant executive is human and thus prone to mistakes and prejudices. But failure to ask the question virtually guarantees the wrong decision” reflected Drucker.  In the course of its journey, an opportune time to initiate constitutional reforms and to revisit and renew workflow processes, outcome orientation and the ways of working together are paramount. The formation of Secretariat, in the case of an institution, is one of the most far reaching and strategic decisions a not-for-profit organization takes in the course of its journey. To stay relevant and prepare the institution for the future that beckons is the leader’s role.

In an enlightening research on corporate longevity, titled ‘The Living Company’, Arie De Geus made a startling observation after studying firms across the world. The average life expectancy of a company seems to be just a modest twelve and half years, and even much larger entities manage an average life span of around forty to fifty years. An organization must therefore constantly evolve to sustain itself. It is the role of a leader to enable the collective responsibility and empower the institution to imagine what it would be for the future generations and lead the change that refreshes the institution and uphold its relevance for the decades ahead. Good governance needs to be the central pillar of the vision a leader articulates for the institution, as it serves as the bedrock that instills a high degree of professionalization, fortifies credibility, and helps strengthen the institutionalization process.

The leader of an Institution is the trustee, for the current and future generations. The quest of the leader could encompass the need to enable a virtuous circle, of strategy to execution, where one good thing leads to another. Make institution building and strengthening process a present-continuous state. “A pearl is an oyster’s biography,” observed Federico Fellini. This is true perhaps even for leaders of corporate enterprises, of for-profit organizations, and the commitment to function as a trustee with openness and transparency while driving desired outcomes, to grow and consolidate, will enable the enterprise to be an institution that endures beyond one’s own tenure. A beginning is to start with a response to Peter Drucker’s seminal query: ‘What is right for the enterprise?’

Source:  Ns Rajan Blog

Politics - The State of Democracy in Africa

Nic Cheeseman

In his regular column for the Daily Nation, our co-editor Nic Cheeseman asks how we should define, measure, and systematically understand democracy across the diverse continent of Africa, and beyond. 


The state of democracy in Africa is one of the most controversial and difficult questions facing the continent today. Is Africa getting more or less democratic? Why have so many countries become stuck in a murky middle ground between democracy and authoritarianism? How can we design democracy so that it better fits African realities? Academic, researchers and media commentators all give different answers to these questions. Some would give up on democracy in Africa, seeing it as a dangerous experiment that too often goes wrong. Others believe that the early signs are promising and that if we keep up the struggle for another generation, democracy will become entrenched within African societies. My take on the subject can be found in my new book, Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform, which was published last month by Cambridge University Press.

What makes democracy work?

The book starts by placing democracy in Africa in historical perspective, demonstrating how the experiences of the 1960s, 70s and 80s shaped the kinds of political systems that we see today. In doing so, it reveals an often overlooked fact: African democracies are distinctive not because they face so many challenges, but because they have managed to make so much progress despite the absence of many of the supposed ‘pre-conditions’ of democratic consolidation. Political scientists have identified a long ‘wish list’ of factors that make it easier to establish and consolidate a democracy. Towards the top of the list are a coherent national identity, strong and autonomous political institutions, a developed and autonomous civil society, the rule of law, and a strong and well performing economy.

Adam Przeworski, for example, has famously shown that countries that enjoy a GDP per capita of over $6,000 when they introduced democracy almost always succeed, while those with a GDP per capita of less than $1,000 almost always fail. Both in the 1960s and in the 1990s, few African countries fulfilled this – or any other – ‘wishlist’ criteria.  Yet many of them have nonetheless made significant progress towards establishing stable and accountable multiparty systems. This set of countries is bigger than you might think: roughly a quarter of African states are now ‘free’, including Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, Senegal, and South Africa. In other words, a significant proportion of the continent is democratizing against the odds. Given this, Africa should not be thought of solely as a place in which to analyse the fragility of democracy. Rather, it is a continent that has much to teach us about the different pathways through which even the poorest and most unstable countries can break free from authoritarian rule. Read more... 

Politics - Barack Obama! Tell the Truth About Ethiopia!

By Almariam

On August 2, 2015

Warning!  
Stop!
Do not read further if you can’t handle the truth about Barack Obama. “Truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth.”

“I speak my mind because it hurts to bite my tongue.”

Bite your tongue, Barack Obama!
When President Barack Obama visited Ethiopia last week, he shocked a lot of people by making the following  statement:

I don’t bite my tongue too much when it comes to these issues. We are opposed to any group that is promoting the violent overthrow of a government, including the government of Ethiopia, that has been democratically elected. We are very mindful of Ethiopia’s history – the hardships that this country has gone through. It has been relatively recently in which the constitution that was formed and the elections put forward a democratically elected government.”

The government of Ethiopia has been democratically elected!?!
Say what?!!!

On May 24, 2015, the “government of Ethiopia” held elektions and declared it had won it by 100 percent. Yes, by one hundred percent.

Even Kim Jong-un’ of North Korea did not have the gall to claim a 100 percent electoral victory in the March 2014 parliamentary election.

At least on paper, Kim Jong-un’s “Worker’s Party of Korea” won only by 88.3 percent (607 of the 687 seats).

The “Korean Socialist Democratic Party” won 50 seats. The “Chondoist Chongu Party” won 22 seats. The “General Association of Korean Residents in Japan” won 5 seats. The “Religious Associations” won 3 seats.

In Ethiopia, there are 79 registered political parties who “actively participated in the election”.
In May 2015, the “People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front” (EPDRF) party (the front organization for the Tigrean Peoples’ Liberation  Front [TPLF]) won 547 of the 547 seats in “parliament”.

No candidate from the other 78 political parties even came close to winning a single seat!
On July 26, 2015, Barack Obama stood up in Addis Ababa and declared, “The government of Ethiopia is democratically elected.”

Obama in the Land of Living Lies or Land of 13-Months of Sunshine?
Barack Obama’s visit to the Land of 13-Months of Sunshine Ethiopia reminded me of the magical visit of a little cartoon animation girl called Sandy to the Land of Living Lies.

In the Land of Living Lies, Puff the Magic Dragon, introduces Sandy to such famous fibbers as Pinocchio and the boy who cried wolf. Read more on Al Mariam's Commentaries  

Economy - Poor Numbers: How We are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It

June 7, 2015

by Owen

Morten Jerven explains why we know less than we should about what is happening in African economies, and why this is leading economists to the wrong recommendations. His first book, Poor Numbers: How We are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It explained the problems with Africa’s economic data; an his new book, Africa: Why Economists Get it Wrong sets out how this lack of nuanced understanding of the data has led to flawed analysis and recommendations.  “The bottom line”, he says, “is that there is no bottom billion”.

Morten Jerven is an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University. He is an economic historian with a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Get the full  transcript on Development Drums 46 (Pdf) To listen to the audio go to Development Drums