The World Urban Forum (WUF) concluded today with a high-level engagement of African Ministers of Housing, Urban Development and Local Government in collaboration with the African Union, ECA and UN-Habitat.
As Africa responds to the effects of multiple crises, Ministers stressed that the way in which cities and planned and managed will determine economic recovery and risk mitigation.
The role of local governments and effective decentralisation was considered central to addressing the vulnerability of households and communities in the current context of overlapping crises.
The urgent need to enhance financing and investment in African cities was underlined as essential to optimise their role in domestic resource mobilization and economic diversification.
In particular, the need to strengthen urban and spatial planning in policies for Africa’s regional trade integration was underscored.
Given the high risks for cities arising from climate-related disasters, the need for a clear urban track at COP27 was emphasized.
A roadmap was defined to elevate the urban agenda at the highest levels of decision-making and to advance concrete instruments to strengthen urban finance, housing delivery and climate action.
ECA facilitated the deliberations at the forum by organizing a number of events on cities and regional integration, the economic power of cities, and urban finance.
Well-planned cities essential for a resilient future in Africa concludes the World Urban Forum
Luminos Fund’s catch-up education programs in Ethiopia recognized
The Luminos Fund has been named a top 10 finalist for the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes 2022, a set of three awards each worth CHF 200,000 ($208,000) that honor outstanding achievement and practice in advancing quality education.
Headquartered in the United States, Luminos Fund runs education programs for out-of-school children in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
The three recipients of this year’s Best Practice Prizes will be announced at a ceremony in Zurich on 30 September 2022. For the first time, the 10 finalists will convene for a co-creation event, taking place on 1 October 2022. They will exchange knowledge and ideas on advancing learning, and will have the opportunity to partner with other shortlisted applicants to develop proposals for new projects. Two concepts will receive follow-on funding of up to CHF 150,000 ($156,000) each.
Awarded every other year, the Klaus J. Jacobs Best Practice Prizes recognize non-profits, businesses, and social ventures that are bringing forth innovative solutions to some of education’s biggest challenges.
THE ROT
The 03 in modern societies is utterly disgusting. The heightened decay originates, not only from the heavy handedness of centralized states, but also from economically powerful private sector organizations. In recent years new and potent institutions leveraging automation and digitalization have emerged to muzzle opinions/views/proposals that are deemed subversive to the rotting system. Such collaborative efforts/actions between the two entities (state & market) are quite pronounced in nations whose states are captured by market operators. As a result, common sense principles, desiring sustainable livelihood for all, have become the hated ideology du jour! On the other hand, technology as a double-edged sword can also help shape humanity’s future away from current destructiveness!
The rotting global order in the core countries is already obvious. Nonetheless, these countries (at least for a while) had managed to temper the extreme brutalities of raw capitalism. Even though the so-called third world countries of the world system have internalized the current rot, they have not been able to deliver the very basics to their sheeple. Usually or it seems, ‘rot’ sets in after a given regime has reached its peak. In a way, ‘rot’ signals systemic degeneration. During this twilight phase, change, however progressive or necessary, is resisted by the status quo. When the likelihood of dethroning the old system, along with the old guards becomes palpable, entrenched interests tend to resort to violence (covert/overt) to salvage the dying order. What allows the prolongation of ‘rot’ is the fact that the old system tends to retains some lingering legitimacy, while its potential replacement is full of unknowns. ‘Dead man walking’ is a syndrome that best characterizes the state of play during the last phase of generalized decline. In this phase, systemic dysfunction, outwardly expressed as incompetence, mediocrity, corruption, lies, etc. tend to dominate public life, especially amongst the politicos and their paymasters!
The states in the peripheries, which are also (mostly) in the ‘rot’, with the added disadvantage of not having delivered the very basics to their suffering sheeple, are bound to have explosive chaotic futures. To start with, the leadership has not earned the legitimacy needed to help galvanize solidarity and cooperation amongst the sheeple, in times of crisis. In these countries the politicos’ motives are always in question. The deportment of the general political leadership tends to lack sincerity. Impostering and masquerading are used to camouflage ineptitude and insincerity. Moreover, their habitual deceits don’t inspire confidence amongst the governed. Their shallow policies are not homegrown/organic (unsustainable) and lack clear directions. Their level of corruption is truly astounding. Connections to the power that be are all that matter in the majority of the countries located in the periphery. Rules and regulations do not apply to the ruling entities and their cronies. Justice is pure farce, a caricature of the real thing, etc, etc! These countries (led by the copycats) expect to build their civilizations on imported ideas. Relying on what we do not have, just because our masters (who incidentally are aggressively moving to take charge of the African continent) are saying so, is the epitome of stupidity if not lunacy. Of course our highly indoctrinated learned idiots cannot see the whole dilemma, as they are blinded by externally generated phony knowledge. Here is one lunacy perpetuated by the dominant interests and faithfully followed by their useful idiots. How is it possible to have infinite growth on a finite planet?
A new way of thinking is urgently needed! Unless Africa allows its better sons/daughters to come to the fore and confidently deliberate, plan and execute viable trajectories, our fate will be back to the future! Basic questions such as; Why are we not allowed to carve a more sustainable livelihood on our own, rather than copy a destructive and wasteful global order in visible decline, etc., etc.? We admit; challenging the existing senile system will cost us dearly, but the alternatives are even worse! The ‘rot’ in our countries will not go away, unless we committedly try to pursue radical alternatives. The root causes of the current chaos (in many of the African countries) have their origins in the misguided policies of the world system, blindly executed by the useful, nay, useless idiots!
Becoming proactive
Some years ago, the organization I worked for, hosted a workshop in Ethiopia, for teams from several countries, including Ethiopia. The Ethiopia team, of which I was a member, was assigned to host and organize the workshop. We decided to include a less formal agenda in between all the presentations, group work and plenary sessions. As all participating countries happened to produce coffee, we decided to organize a coffee tasting competition. Each team was to bring coffee from their country, display it, brew it and prepare it for tasting by an independent jury.
The competition was planned for the evening of the first day of the workshop and promised to be an exciting ice breaker. Participants were already boasting about the quality of their nation’s coffee, not in the least the Ethiopians, who reminded all that coffee originated from Ethiopia after all.
As the afternoon progressed, packaged export quality coffee from the other countries was already brought to the meeting room and it is then that the Ethiopia team began thinking about preparing for the competition. They had not brought any coffee yet as they were confident that the coffee they needed could be bought from any shop nearby the venue of the workshop. Two members of the team were sent to purchase one kilo of coffee. There were no supermarkets nearby, only small shops, who sold green beans amongst everything else that is normally sold in small suks. There was no choice and neither did the purchasers know much about what good quality green coffee beans should look like. So, they bought a kilo of whatever coffee beans were available and brought it back to the hotel, together with some charcoal and incense. When the time of the competition was approaching, the Ethiopian coffee ceremony was well underway, and the team was confident they would win! What could possibly go wrong?
The other teams now began brewing their coffee as well, and the meeting hall was soon filled with a mixture of coffee aroma’s, drawing the attention from hotel workers, management and other guests.
Members of the jury were now invited to taste the coffee, much like experts taste wine: smelling, taking a sip, tasting, spitting it out, and on to the next cup. Results were written on individual scorecards and added to arrive at the final result. The Ethiopian coffee ended last! What went wrong? Well, in the first place, the competition was about the quality of the coffee, not the ceremony! In other words, the team did not focus on the actual assignment, on what was exactly expected. And as a result, too much attention was paid to secondary elements and too little attention was paid to the preparations and requirements for a good result. Also, the team underestimated the capacity of the other teams, the competition, who had done their homework well and were prepared to give it their best. The Ethiopia team instead was ill prepared, relied on their routine and were not effective in their execution.
Let us take this conclusion a bit further to corporate effectiveness.
For any team, organization or company to be effective it is important that mission, goals and values are shared and internalised by all staff and time and energy needs to be invested in this by management. But this is not all that needs to be done. Subscribing to the corporate values helps but is not enough to become effective. To be effective requires being proactive and that is what most people are not, also not in Ethiopia. Most of us are reactive. We react to what is coming our way. We don’t plan-ahead and blame others for things gone wrong. We say: “I don’t have time.” We are busy repairing the damage that has been done and we are constantly in the crisis management mode.
Proactive people on the other hand plan-ahead and take responsibility. They say: “How can I help?” They prevent problems from happening and set the right priorities. Reactive people allow circumstances to dictate their agenda while proactive people set the agenda. And they do that using their personal values as a point of departure. To take it a step further still, for employees to be effective in their work it is important that there is a match between their personal and the corporate values. Where there is no such match, workers will not make significant contributions to corporate effectiveness.
Yes, somebody with an accounting diploma or degree can work in any company or organization. But whether or not (s)he will make significant effective contributions depends on how excited that accountant is about the products that the company makes and in how far (s)he subscribes to the corporate values. If, “high quality” is one of the corporate values then delivering high quality and timely financial reports to management will be expected. If a company claims that it esteems its customers, then the sales-reps are expected to be polite and give competent advice to the clients.
In conclusion I’d like to suggest that next time you need to hire somebody, you take values and potential to be proactive into consideration. And for those who want to become more proactive in their work, complete the following exercise:
Define your personal values.
Do they match the corporate values?
What can you do to increase the match between your personal and the corporate values?
In which areas of your work can you become more proactive and thus more effective?
Write this down and share with management.
Agree on a time frame to evaluate progress.
Ton Haverkort
