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Meet Desta, the dance team preserving East African culture at Yale

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Meet Desta, the dance team preserving East African culture at Yale

One thing that choreographer Meti Negewo ’28 likes to tell aspiring members of Desta, her dance group is, “You don’t know how to dance? Come learn.”  

Founded in 2022, Desta is the only Ethiopian and Eritrean dance group on campus. While the group focuses on dances from the two countries, they are also guided by other East African influences, incorporating Somali and Sudanese dances into their repertoire. 

“It’s a very inclusive group of dancers and artists who are really passionate about experiencing all that the Eastern African region has to offer,” Hermela Shimelis ’29, another one of Desta’s choreographers, said. 

In the last year, the team has performed at the Black Solidarity Conference, the Yale African Innovation Symposium and events for the Yale Ethiopian and Eritrean Students Association and the Yale African Students Association. On Sept. 19, Desta held its first performance of the year on Beinecke Plaza to celebrate Enkutatash, or the Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year. 

Members of the group, which recently introduced dance workshops and auditions for hopeful members, said they do not seek to foster an exclusive environment. 

“We’re not the type of organization that cuts people,” Negewo said. 

Instead, Desta dancers find other ways to strengthen relationships with their art and each other in order to build community. The team coordinates their own tap night, a special tradition that fosters a sense of camaraderie in their new members. 

“We tapped all the freshmen who were new to the team and everything, and we did the same thing again this year,” Negewo said. “It’s been really beautiful.” 

When Desta was formed, according to Sityana Abdu ’27, one of Desta’s three founders, there was no student organization focused on East African dance. 

“It really just started because I didn’t feel fully represented,” Abdu said. “Fall 2022 is when we had our first performance.” 

Desta is not only a space for dancing, but also a place for members to explore themselves and express their identity. 

“Ethnicity is a very contentious thing in Ethiopia and in the diaspora, and I think that dance is a very interesting way to explore ethnicity,” Abdu said. “I think it’s very important for spaces to exist like this.” 

Ethiopia is comprised of 12 regional states and the chartered cities of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa, most of which have been historically controlled by different ethnic groups. The country’s northern Tigray region was once the site of a violent civil war ended by a 2022 peace deal. Last week, fighting returned to Tigray and has spread to the regions of Amhara and Afar. 

While the most well-known Ethiopian dance globally is Eskista, a type of dance originating from the Amhara region, Desta also practices and performs dances from other parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

“I do think, for the diaspora, dance is one of the ways to express your ethnicity in a way that is not combative,” Abdu said. “I think it was something that I always thought about, but never talked about.” 

By honing their art and exploring their identity together, Desta has grown to become a vibrant community. 

Negewo said it is difficult to explain to her peers why she dedicates so much time to Desta and how much she loves the group, especially against the backdrop of Yale’s hyper-competitive club environment. 

“You could argue that it has no resume value,” Negewo said. “I care about Desta a lot. It’s something that I’ve put so much of my time and effort into these past three years.” 

Though Desta members concentrate on creating and giving great performances, they also create memories in the process. Negewo said one of her fondest Desta memories was at late-night dance practices. 

“It was like midnight, we were tired, and we recorded a final run-through of our entire performance, took a video of it, and then everyone was running to the phone to see the video,” Negewo said. “And I was so proud of them.” 

Shimelis said her best memories at Desta were made following their rehearsals, when the group would simply talk and share stories about themselves. 

“I think that those moments are always the best,” Shimelis said. “Practice for sure, but also what happens outside of practice is just as precious.” 

“If this place did not exist, I don’t know how my experience at Yale would be,” Negewo said.  

Moving forward, current leadership said they hope Desta will continue to serve its members as a space for creating art, expressing identity and cultivating community. 

“I think there’s such a beautiful cultural preservation aspect to what Desta is. I don’t think there’s any other space on Yale’s campus like it,” Negewo said. “I hope it continues to be something 10 years from now.” 

And there is always that next performance. 

“We are gonna have our first showcase this semester,” Negewo said. “Stay tuned.” 

Desta’s workshop auditions were held at the Broadway Rehearsal Lofts on Elm Street.

AI and the New Architecture of Film and Music

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AI and the New Architecture of Film and Music

For over a century, the film and music industries relied heavily on the “mask of production.” The star power of an actor or the scale of a multi-million-dollar set often served as a proxy for artistic value. Yet generating video content entirely through AI has evolved into a robust production method. Depending on what you’re trying to build, the ecosystem generally breaks down into a few distinct paths.

One path starts from a text prompt — sometimes paired with a reference image to guide composition and lighting — without a cinema crew or aerial camera rig. It’s great for raw, high-impact visuals and can maintain character consistency across multiple scenes, though that consistency takes some iteration to get right.

Another path relies on detailed text descriptions of shot composition, lighting, and camera movement, written in the language of cinematography rather than executed by physically operating equipment or moving a crew from place to place.

This shift redefines the role of the creator. Instead of managing lighting grids, lens kits, and physical crew coordination, the primary medium becomes precision language and cinematic grammar. It genuinely democratizes high-end visual storytelling — stripping away the logistical and financial barriers of physical filmmaking, and letting anyone with a strong visual vocabulary and talent direct complex scenes entirely from a workstation.

Cinematic literacy is now more valuable than technical gear handling. You no longer need to know how to pull focus on a manual follow-focus rig or rig a heavy HMI light — but you do need to understand how composition, blocking, and colour temperature tell a story.

This evolution opens up massive potential: rapid prototyping, storyboarding feature films before a single dollar is spent on production, and letting solo creators achieve studio-grade aesthetics. What’s most exciting about this new era isn’t just the speed of iteration — it’s the creative freedom to build stories that would traditionally require a multi-million-dollar budget, a full crew, and specialized equipment.

But AI still doesn’t invent structure on its own. It still needs a strong outline to produce a film that matches your imagination — a visual language and narrative through-line fed to it before a single prompt is written. AI is an incredible renderer and synthesizer, but it lacks intrinsic intent, narrative intuition, and structural discipline. Those still live entirely in the mind of the creator.

The narrative arc, the pacing, the emotional beats, the character sketches — all of that groundwork still has to be done by a human before AI ever generates a frame. The quality of the film is determined entirely by the strength of that foundation: narrative architecture, emotional pacing, character depth, and structural integrity remain matters of human talent. AI doesn’t bypass storytelling — if anything, AI-generated film ruthlessly exposes whether a strong story was there to begin with.

It still makes the writer, director, and conceptual artist the absolute core of the AI-generated film production process. They remain the executive authority — the mastermind behind the scene. The camera and the crew become code and pixels, but the vision, discipline, and taste still belong entirely to the human author.

This marks a stage where AI has brought a dramatic shift in the economic and technical requirements of filmmaking. The trend may mean audiences stop seeing the same familiar actors’ faces repeated across screens in cinema halls worldwide.

In both cinema and music, AI does not destroy art it exposes whether a piece of work had genuine substance behind its polish. Besides, the creator, who once stood behind the screen or the curtain or the stage performance  now steps forward as the ultimate beneficiary of the work  or as true architect of the art, with AI simply accelerating the translation from imagination to finished masterpiece. The old saying that there is a time for everything, and for everyone, is becoming literal in the age of AI.

For too long, the art of production has been tied to studio machinery: the film and music crews, the arrangers. Layers of technical mediation stood between the true creator and the audience. The faces of actors and stage singers became the art, while the writer’s voice and the visionary’s blueprint stayed in the background, like credits that scroll past unread. AI now lifts that mask. It strips away the apparatus that once obscured authorship, leaving the raw architecture of imagination exposed for what it always was..

The mask is falling. It no longer serves only the industry machinery or the performance crew. What remains is the naked intent of the one who dreamed it, and it is this intent that now claims the largest share of the reward.

AI is creating a new doorway in the industry — one that doesn’t close behind the old system, but opens beside it, offering a path where imagination alone can walk through. No more hiding behind the stage or the screen. AI is emerging as a new light, exposing the true creator behind the masterpiece. This is the fundamental philosophical shift in generative art.

The transition from a full orchestra to a single person as musical arranger was a marvel in its day, allowing singers and musicians to produce a master-quality recording without an entire ensemble behind them. The old system, built on human craft, won’t disappear overnight. Instead, it evolves alongside this new AI technological path

Generative models open a parallel entrance where a solo director or independent songwriter can render feature-film visuals or multi-vocal orchestral arrangements directly from a workstation. The door to high production value is no longer guarded by budget, or by the search for capable acting personnel and equipment in the sector.

What was once treated as a set of technical tools—camera rigs, lighting grids, studio infrastructure, and celebrity talent—is being stripped back to reveal what has always been the true engine of art: human intent and narrative architecture.

This is time now for a new venture which was not dreamed of some years back. The barrier to high-reliability in execution with crew or conventional orchestra gang or dependency on known music arranger or film crew and associate equipment or gajetery collapses to nearly zero. The requirement of having a list of celebrity star power, and flawless orchestral arrange can remain the baseline in the old practice. What remains exposed is whether the architect had a story worth telling or a melody worth hearing.

Like it or not, this is a major step forward for the industry. It removes the doors and keys that gatekeepers once held. AI does not invent structure, pacing, or emotional truth on its own; it remains an extraordinary renderer and synthesizer, entirely dependent on human narrative architecture and discipline. The old system will not vanish overnight; instead, it will evolve alongside a new path where imagination, not gatekeeping, holds the key.

The emerging new norm in the industry  strip the old mask away, turning high-end visual and sonic storytelling into a new discipline of art language, structure, and intent rather than logistics and equipment of old frame work. In the new framework, the primary tools are no longer camera rigs, lighting grids, or full orchestras, but precise cinematic grammar, narrative architecture, and a clearly articulated creative vision.

Generative models can now render complex scenes and multi-instrument arrangements from text and reference material, but they still depend on the human author to define story beats, emotional pacing, and visual coherence. What was once hidden behind budgets and star power is now exposed. The quality of the work rests on the strength of the underlying story, melody, and directorial intent.

Medina Tafesse

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Medina Tafesse
  1. 2. Education: (የት/ት ደረጃ)

    Designer (TVET)

    3.Company name: (የመስሪያ ቤቱ ስም)

    Medi Chiffon

    4.Title: (የስራ ድርሻህ)

    Owner

    5. Founded in: (መቼ ተመሰረተ)

    2026

    6. What it does: (ምንድነው የሚሰራው)
    Manufacturing vibrant and beautifully designed chiffon dresses

    7.Headquarters: (ዋና መስሪያ ቤት)

    Addis Ababa

    8. Start-up capital: (በምን ያህል ገንዘብ ስራዉን ጀመርሽ/ክ) 300,000 birr

    9. Current capital: (የአሁን ካፒታል)

    Growing

    10. Number of employees:(የሰራተኞች ቁጥር)
    2

    11. Reason for starting the business: (ለስራው መጀመር ምክንያት)

    A strong passion for fashion design

    12. Biggest perk of ownership: (የባለቤትነት ጥቅም)

    Expressing my creativity and seeing customers happy in my designs

    13. Biggest strength: (ጥንካሬህ/ሽ)

    Creativity

    14. Biggest challenge: (ተግዳሮት)

    Access to quality raw materials

    15. Plan: (እቅድ)

    To expand the brand nationwide

    16. First career path: (የመጀመሪያ ስራ)

    Junior Accountant

    17. Most interested in meeting: (ማግኘት የምትፈልጊ/ገው ሰው)

    A renowned local fashion designer

    18. Most admired person:(የምታደንቂ/ቀው ሰው)

    women entrepreneurs

    19. Stress reducer: (ጭንቀትን የሚያቀልልሽ/ለህ)

    Sketching new designs

    20. Favorite book: (የመፅሐፍ ምርጫ)

    None

    21. Favorite pastime: (ማድረግ የሚያስደስትህ)

    Drawing

    22. Favorite destination to travel to: (ከኢትዮጵያ ውጪ መሄድ የምትፈልጊ/ገዉ ስፍራ)

    Paris

    23Favorite automobile: (የመኪና ምርጫ)

    Range Rover

Making Social-Sector PPPs Work

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Making Social-Sector PPPs Work

The Second Forum for Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Units in Africa opened in Addis Ababa under the theme, “Making Social Sector PPPs Work: From Policy Ambition to Effective Service Delivery.”

The two-day hybrid forum is co-organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF). It brings together PPP units, government officials, development-finance institutions and technical experts from across the continent to examine how private investment can help expand access to housing, health care, education, sanitation, water and energy.

While PPPs have been widely used in commercially viable infrastructure such as toll roads, ports and airports, applying the model to social services presents a more complex challenge. Projects in education, health and affordable housing often cannot rely solely on user fees, requiring governments to develop financing mechanisms that balance investor returns with affordability, fiscal sustainability and accountability.

In separate interviews with Capital’s Groum Abate, Robert Lisinge, Chief of the Energy, Infrastructure and Services Section in ECA’s Private Sector Development and Finance Division, and Olivier Pognon, Director of the African Legal Support Facility, discussed the conditions needed to make social-sector PPPs work across Africa. Excerpts;

Capital: This year’s PPP Units Forum focuses on making social-sector PPPs work in practice. Why is it important for ECA to be part of this forum, and what role can the Commission play in advancing social-sector PPPs across Africa?

Robert Lisinge: ECA’s mandate is to support economic and social development in Africa. One of the major constraints to development on the continent is the lack of infrastructure.

There is economic infrastructure—roads, airports, ports and railways—that facilitates economic activity. But there is also a serious gap in social infrastructure, including access to electricity, water, education and other essential services.

For economic infrastructure, it is relatively easier to attract private-sector investment because there is often a clear route for investors to recover their money. With a toll road, for example, users may be willing and able to pay for the service.

Social infrastructure is different. It can be difficult for communities to pay the full cost of services such as water, electricity, health care or education. Yet, if these projects are delivered through a public-private partnership, the private sector must still recover its investment.

The key question is how to balance private-sector profitability with the affordability of services for communities. This is a critical challenge, and it is why ECA is involved in these discussions.

The forum gives countries, experts and stakeholders an opportunity to identify challenges, exchange ideas and learn from what is working—or not working—in other African countries. For ECA, it is part of our policy-dialogue work: bringing member states and partners together to discuss difficult issues and share practical experience.

Capital: As governments seek to mobilise more private capital for infrastructure and public services, what conditions are needed to make PPP projects attractive to investors while remaining affordable and sustainable for the public sector?

Robert Lisinge: One of the most important conditions is a sound financial architecture. The private sector needs access to capital markets and long-term infrastructure finance.

Governments promote PPPs partly because public budgets are insufficient to finance all the services that growing populations require. However, private investors also need reliable ways to raise capital. This may include stock markets, bond markets and other financing instruments that allow project developers to mobilise long-term resources.

The second condition is government commitment and ownership. A government may have a strong vision for PPPs, but that vision must also be translated into ownership at the technical level.

For example, ministries of education, health, water or energy must take responsibility for the technical preparation and delivery of projects in their sectors. They need to understand the project, define the public-service objective and take ownership of the process.

Technical ownership is only the first step. Institutions also need the capacity to prepare projects properly—from pre-feasibility studies and feasibility studies to procurement, negotiation and contract management.

In summary, two critical enablers are needed. First, there must be a financial environment that provides access to long-term infrastructure finance. Second, governments must have political commitment, technical ownership and the capacity to prepare projects and negotiate effectively with the private sector.

Capital: Looking at East Africa and the continent more broadly, what opportunities do you see for expanding PPPs? How can cooperation between ECA, the AfDB and the ALSF help move projects toward implementation?

Robert Lisinge: In East Africa, one important opportunity is that economies are growing. Countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya have expanding economies, which indicates that the private sector is becoming more dynamic and may be more willing to invest in infrastructure.

Some countries are also putting mechanisms in place to finance project preparation. This morning, for example, we heard that Kenya has established a fund for preparing projects. That is a step in the right direction because many potential PPPs do not advance simply because governments lack the resources to prepare them properly.

ECA, the African Development Bank and the African Legal Support Facility can continue to organise platforms such as this PPP Forum. These platforms bring experts and officials from different countries together to exchange views, share experience and discuss what works.

They also create opportunities for member states to engage directly with development-finance institutions. That is an important role that ECA, the AfDB and the ALSF can play, and one we will continue to pursue.

Capital: The African Legal Support Facility supports African governments in complex commercial transactions. How would you describe the Facility’s role and the value it brings to African states?

Olivier Pognon: The Facility was created to provide African governments with greater certainty and confidence when negotiating complex commercial transactions.

By certainty, I mean the level of confidence government officials need when they sit across the negotiation table from sophisticated private-sector parties that are supported by highly experienced legal and financial advisers.

On the government side, officials may not always have had extensive exposure to complex commercial transactions. The ALSF helps to complement government skills, expertise and knowledge.

We do this in two main ways.

First, we provide transaction advisory support. Whether a government is negotiating a mining licence, an independent power-producer agreement, a debt restructuring arrangement or another complex transaction, the ALSF can put together a team made up of internal specialists and external law firms.

That team works alongside the government throughout the transaction, from feasibility assessment and project structuring to financial close and, in some cases, the implementation stage.

Second, we provide capacity-building support. Events such as the PPP Units Forum bring together ALSF experts and sector specialists to exchange views and develop continental or regional approaches to particular issues.

We also produce model contracts, toolkits, handbooks, thematic guides and training materials. Through the ALSF Academy, we offer an online platform for capacity development.

This is the role we have played for 16 years. We have built experience and results that we can be proud of, but we are also an institution that continues to learn, mature and grow with support from our stakeholders.

Capital: Why did the ALSF choose to focus this year’s PPP Forum on social-sector PPPs? What key outcomes would you like to see emerge from the discussions?

Olivier Pognon: This is the second PPP Units Forum. The first was held in 2024 and focused on climate-related risks and how they should be incorporated into PPP design.

At the time, discussions around energy transition and climate risk were particularly important, and they remain important today. We examined how climate risks could be better reflected in PPP projects across Africa.

This year, we are building on that discussion by focusing on social-sector PPPs, especially in housing, education and health care.

These are sectors where private capital does not naturally flow at the scale required. There may be limited direct revenue opportunities, while affordability remains a central issue for citizens.

We are trying to address the social-sector PPP equation by bringing PPP units together to discuss the challenges and identify workable solutions.

The main outcome we want is a clearer understanding of the drivers of successful social-sector PPPs. When discussing education or health care, affordability is a major concern. But if private capital is required, the investor’s return on investment also has to be considered.

The challenge is to reconcile those two seemingly contradictory requirements. We hope the forum will help countries find ways to structure social-sector PPPs that are sustainable, financially viable and able to deliver affordable services.

Capital: At a time when African governments face major infrastructure needs and limited public resources, what role can PPPs play in mobilising private investment while ensuring essential services remain accessible and sustainable?

Olivier Pognon: That is the core purpose of a PPP. It is designed to help alleviate the financial constraints governments face and allow private capital to finance areas that public budgets can no longer fund adequately.

In many countries, national treasuries are under pressure from rising debt-service costs and competing public expenditures. At the same time, governments must still invest heavily in roads, ports, airports and other major infrastructure.

PPPs have long been described as a tool for helping Africa raise its infrastructure capacity to another level. They can help governments mobilise additional capital and technical expertise while improving the delivery of public infrastructure and services.

However, PPPs must be designed carefully. The aim is not simply to bring in private capital. The aim is to ensure that projects provide services that are affordable, sustainable and accountable to the public.

For social-sector PPPs, governments must strike the right balance between the needs of citizens, the financial sustainability of public institutions and the reasonable expectations of private investors.

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