HERE TO DELIVER
With the rise of on-demand platforms and the gig economy, technology has become a critical link for service providers to quickly and efficiently engage with customers. On-demand applications have gained popularity in recent years due to their ability to save users time, money, and effort. Min Litazez Addis, which was newly launched, is an on-demand mobile app that links you to close, inexpensive, well-trained, and vetted handymen for both home and commercial requirements. Users can locate craftsmen to undertake plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, AC, painting, flooring & tile installation, masonry, air conditioning installation and repairs, and other miscellaneous services. The site currently includes over 2,000, pre-vetted artisans who have been background verified since the app’s introduction, and the number of service providers on the platform is growing on a daily basis.
As Dawit Tadesse, co-founder of Min Litazez Addis, highlights, the firm has spent the last one year choosing, validating, and teaching artists in Addis Ababa with varied skill sets and service offers. Moreover, the firm that is buzzing to present its service further underlined that its App meets the expectations of customers who demand not only convenience, but also timely delivery of ordered services. Capital met with Dawit Tadesse before daybreak to learn more about their new application and its societal benefits. Excerpts;
Capital: What inspired you to create the platform Min Litazez Addis?
Dawit Tadesse: I believe that most fresh ideas come from a combination of events. They may arise as a result of client dissatisfaction with existing products or services, leading them to seek to find alternatives to those products or services. And ours falls inside these boundaries.
For example, we have just relocated to another location, and the house we purchased needed numerous repairs before we could move in. We had to locate a plumber to replace the wash basin, the paint was ripped out and needed to be repainted, and the breaker switch tripped when two appliances were plugged in at the same time, so we required an electrician to fix this. Then, at the time, we looked for a company that could provide everything we required all at once, but we couldn’t locate one, which is how Min Litazez Addis was born.
Capital: Is the company you’re running for brand new to us? Is there another business that competes with yours? What distinguishes yours from the others, assuming any exist?
Dawit: Yes, I suppose so; there are a few companies attempting to develop the platform. However, none of them are like us. We have no commonalities other than the fact that we all use software technology as a market tool. We have learned from the licensing office and other interested governmental agencies that no one else offers such a diverse choice of capacities, service locations, and formalities as we do. We had already planned ahead of time. We conducted research and observations to identify the difficulties, and we were able to provide fantastic answers for societies in particular, as well as move the country forward using this platform in general.
To name a few of the main distinguishing features that we brought and that may place us in a unique position, we have our quality of service, a pre-set service charge that we believe and thoroughly research to ensure that it is acceptable by both the client and the service provider, the equipment we use, the application we developed, and the software we use. We also have a large number of people who are willing to help you in any way they can. When it comes to our coworkers, they are qualified for their positions, highly skilled professionals, and articulate individuals. Furthermore, they are liable for the loss and destruction in accordance with the legal agreement they previously established with Min Litazez Addis. Except for the standard Ethio-telecom charge, our call center number “625” does not collect any additional service charges. I feel that with them and our loyalties, we will be the finest in the market.
Capital: Because your firm Min Litazez Addis connects employees with employers, as well as service providers and people in need of services, what led to the brand name and how may you be contacted?
Dawit: Min Litazez Addis, as the name implies in Amharic, is a humble way of serving a client and it acts as a hub, respectfully connecting both the service provider and those in need of the services, and we hope to attract a regular loyal customer base by providing easy to reach and reliable service delivery. The brand name is synonymous with the English term “How can I assist you.”
Any skilled persons or service providers can contact us or visit our office to register with us for work.
Any skilled individuals and service providers can phone us or come to our office to register with their documents to work with us, and any person looking for service can call 625 to acquire service from the lists we have established.
Capital: Explain from both sides what people should expect to do when they visit or call 625, and what they will get?
Dawit: When customers dial “625”, they will hear humble replies from the other end of the phone. Our receptionists are courteous, honest, and well-trained call center representatives. On our line a variety of services to meet your needs, including all quenching explanations to all of our callers’ inquiries, will be addressed. They will mention all of our service categories that satisfy the needs of nearly any household.
Capital: Do you believe we (Ethiopians) have the right climate to implement such a system? Before deploying the technology, have you tested it for problems with the internet network, people’s understanding of the concept, and their ability to use it? What are your thoughts?
Dawit: We believe it will not be a bed of roses and that much work will be required to fully implement everything we aspire to implement in relation to our need, and because our idea is quite unusual, we may face some resistance from the internet network, people’s understanding of the concept, and technology handling.
Nonetheless, in recent years, contact centers and application-based services have become a “necessary” service in our country, particularly in our capital city of Addis Ababa. In this regard, the demand for all-in-one call center and application-based services has increased dramatically; on the other hand, many residents have increased their demand for call center-based services, so this business idea looks at ways to fill this inevitable gap while striving to provide maximum satisfaction to residents or any of our service seekers.
Capital: What will the company do if the painter or plumber fails to complete the job as agreed upon with the customer or takes property from the service taker?
Dawit: As I mentioned before, our company attempted to gather renowned handymen and service-providing organizations from all parts of the city and its outskirts. Furthermore, all handymen and service providers have a legitimate contract with Min Litazez Addis, their credentials are registered, and a copy is stored in our care. As a result, if a handyman leaves before completing the task and we hear discontent from our client, Min Litazez Addis will appoint another handyman to finish the job.
Furthermore, because our program assigns a rating to all handymen and service providers who welcome customer input, the defaulted handymen and service providers will be penalized in accordance with the legal treatment we provided previously and in future work offerings. Regarding the stolen issue, Min Litazez Addis will provide the legal bodies with the address, ID copy, and other connected documentation.
Capital: Customers want to know that the people who come to work on their property are trustworthy. Are the people who work for your organization true professionals?
Dawit: Definitely yes, the individuals registered in our company are professionals; majority of them are licensed and have certificates of competency from the relevant competent authority, but we have also attempted to include respectable handymen by proving their proficiency through their demonstrated abilities.
Capital: How would you rank our (Ethiopian) status in relation to the rest of the world? Citizens in various countries can use their cell phones to buy, sell, and do a range of other tasks. Are we on any lists?
Dawit: As I mentioned in the previous similar conversation, the usage of applications for services is in its infancy, but it is highly promising, and the growth cannot be underestimated. The demand for such services has risen dramatically, while the traditional method of service has declined. What we do know is that there is room for expansion and a large market for the proper combination of service, quality, and variety. Today’s world is one of technology, and many individuals are eager to find a more convenient way to obtain a service than the old one.
As a result, one might conclude that this type of business is now uncommon in our country Ethiopia. As a result, we believe Min Litazez Addis will be a great performer which contributes significantly to the development of this area.
Capital: As we all know, this is a new trend that has replaced the previous system; so, we are now in the conventional time. What are your thoughts on the changes and their impact on people?
Dawit: According to our methodical study and the feedback from our survey, people are very excited and happy with the service offerings that we provide, especially the unique ones like funeral services, veterinary services, sewerage & septic service, and so forth; that are currently not available through a call service and application. Furthermore, because our website is interactive, visitors may quickly access and place orders through it.
Capital: Tell us about the platform’s benefits as a nation and which categories of people gain the most from it.
Dawit: To start off with its advantages; we think that formal enterprises are the backbone of every country, and so Min Litazez Addis will assist to formalize the traditional style of service delivery to a more official one, and with that, we will retain taxes close to home, which will contribute to the country’s progress. Furthermore, it will reduce societal unemployment. Furthermore, it will encourage the younger generation to become self-sufficient by developing their own jobs.
Furthermore, as our future plans indicate, we will organize an empowerment training scheme for skilled but unemployed young men and women, as well as returnees from Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world, in collaboration with financing institutions, to assist them in acquiring knowledge, skills, and the necessary working equipment in order to enter the market by establishing their own businesses.
Second it’s benefit from the lights of handymen and service providers. This platform will allow handymen and service providers to focus on their profession rather than searching for and marketing to them. It will also enable them to earn more money than previously.
Furthermore, as I mentioned above, we have a great aspiration in our future plan by cooperating with financing institutions to equip handymen and service providers with the necessary equipment and small machineries to grow their skill and be competitive in the market by satisfying the unlimited needs of clients.
Third from the client’s views; a client may use as many services as they choose with a single call using the standard telephone tariff charged by Ethio telecom, with no additional service charge by our organization. The client also benefits from a known initial set pricing, which is thoroughly researched and applied to all of the services offered on our platform; this protects clients from superfluous and unjust price gouging.
And last but not least owners get to generate revenue .
The Paranoia of Population Decline
For two centuries, overpopulation has haunted the imagination of the modern world. According to Thomas Malthus, writing in 1798, human population growth would always surpass agricultural production, meaning “gigantic inevitable famine” would “with one mighty blow level the population with the food of the world.”
Later, eugenicists like Margaret Sanger in the 1920s fretted over the wrong people reproducing too much, creating what she called “human weeds,” a “dead weight of human waste” to inherit the earth. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich predicted that in the 1970s, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” because of the “population bomb.” These days, environmentalists worry that too many people will overload the natural world’s resources and destroy the planet with excessive consumption and pollution, leading to catastrophic global warming.
A strain of anti-humanism has always run through population paranoia, a notion that human beings are a problem rather than a resource. This is exactly what the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi argued. Regarding this, if my memory is serving correctly, once he said that the newly born are coming in to the world not only with the mouth to eat, but also with two hands to work.
But as Jonathan Last, a senior writer for the Weekly Standard documents in his new book entitled “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting”, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As he writes, throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by very bad things. Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource.
Jonathan Last in his book provides a reader-friendly but thorough analysis of the demographic crisis afflicting the West and the very bad things that will follow population decline. The facts of population decline are dramatic. Women must average a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.1 children apiece for populations to remain stable. But across the developed world, and increasingly everywhere else, except few countries including Ethiopia, fertility is quickly declining below this number. All developed countries are already below the 2.1 line and the rates of decline among developing countries are, in most cases, even steeper than in the developed ones.
Japan and Italy, for example, have a 1.4 TFR, a mathematical tipping point at which the population will decline by 50 percent in 45 years. As for the rest of Europe, by 2050 only three countries in the EU, which today has an average rate of 1.5 TFR, will not be experiencing population declines. Those countries are France, Luxembourg, and Ireland.
Immigration from developing countries will not provide a long-term solution, as fertility rates are declining there as well. The average fertility rate for Latin America was six children per woman in the 1960s; by 2005, it had dropped to 2.5. At that rate of decline, within a few decades, Latin American countries will likely have a fertility rate lower than that of the United States.
According to Jonathan Last, the most general cause of population decline is modernity itself. Birth-rates started declining in the nineteenth century when industrialization and technological advances began to accelerate. Better nutrition, sanitation, and health care, for example, have reduced infant mortality in America from about 300 babies dying out of 1,000 live births in 1850, to about six today. More babies surviving lessened the need for multiple pregnancies, which in turn reduced family size.
During the Industrial Revolution, migration to cities made children less useful than they were on farms and more expensive. Easier divorce, reliable birth control, cohabitation replacing marriage, and women entering the workforce in greater numbers since 1990, about 70 percent of women have been working at any given time, have all contributed to the decline in marriage and the diminishing centrality of children in people’s lives. These forces have created disincentives to reproduction, not the least being the $1.1 million price tag for rearing and educating a child today.
Two larger cultural trends have reinforced the effects of technological developments and industrialization. As Last points out, fertility rates among the educated classes began falling in the middle of the eighteenth century, which was about the same time as the rise of capitalism. The pursuit of individual initiative and self-interest contributed to the erosion of community and family. Economic advancement requires mobility and fewer obligations. Constraints hamper self-improvement and risk-taking, after all. Having children, perhaps the greatest constraint of all, became less and less a factor in people’s calculations of their self-interests. Something else would be required to get people to procreate.
That imperative to reproduce used to be grounded in religion, but during the eighteenth century, secularization began to loosen the hold that religious practice, actually going to church rather than just self-identifying by sect, used to have on people’s behaviour. The effect of religious practice on fertility is obvious from statistics. Indeed, the effects of religion on fertility can be so powerful that even if people are not the churchgoing type themselves, they will be affected if their parents are.
The dire economic and social effect of plummeting birth-rates reminds that marriage and childbirth are not just private lifestyle choices. A country with fewer children becomes, on average, increasingly older. Cities and towns begin to empty, while the cost of caring for retirees and elderly sick people skyrockets. Old people spend less and invest less, shrinking capital pools for the new businesses that create new jobs. Entrepreneurs do not come from among the aged. Countries with a higher median age have a lower percentage of entrepreneurs.
Most important, a shrinking labour force means fewer workers contributing the payroll taxes that finance old-age care. According to the latest ILO data, the Social Security program is already beginning to be impacted by the decline in the worker-to-retiree ratio.
Finally, foreign policy will increasingly be impacted by the global decline in fertility. Those who fear China as a future superpower threat to their interests should remember that by 2050, China’s population will be declining by 20 million every five years, and one out of four people will be over the age of 65. China’s public pension system covers only 365 million people and is unfunded by 150 percent of GDP. Jonathan Last in his book argues that what we need to prepare for is not a shooting war with an expansionist China, but a declining superpower with a rapidly contracting economic base and an unstable political structure. It’s not clear which scenario is more worrisome.
Solving such a complex problem as declining fertility is not going to be easy. As with many social problems, government intervention isn’t very successful. Bonus payments to expectant mothers, paid paternity leave, public holidays, “Motherhood Medals,” and tax incentives and subsidies have barely moved the needle in Russia, Japan, and Singapore. People cannot be bribed into making babies.
The best governments can do is help people have the children they do want. A college degree doesn’t prepare people for specific jobs, but rather gives employers an idea of their intelligence and work habits, something that can be done more cheaply and efficiently. Making child-friendly housing more affordable, letting workers telecommute to lessen the career-costs of having children, welcoming more fecund immigrants, and ending the hostility to religion and the faithful, “if for no other reason than they’re the ones who create most of the future taxpayers,” are some of Jonathan Last’s solutions. Unfortunately, they are as unlikely as they are sensible.
It’s about more than Ukraine, Russia is staging a rebellion against the West and its liberal world order
Moscow has been unwilling to accept the secondary role assigned to it by the West and now the consequences are being felt
By Ivan Timofeev
The military conflict in Ukraine today is the central flashpoint in relations between Russia and the West, and largely sets the tone for security policy in the Euro-Atlantic region. It also has many global implications. In the ideological sphere, it is increasingly presented as a struggle between the liberal world order and the “mutiny of the malcontents.” It is Russia that today has assumed the role of the vanguard of such a rebellion, openly challenging its Western rivals.
The use of the concept of a revolt here is not accidental. The West is promoting a liberal world order based on clear ideological assertions. These include the market economy; the globalization of standards, trade and technologies; liberal democracy as the only acceptable political form for the organization of states; an open society and a diversity of cultures and ways of life; and its interpretation of human rights.
In practice, the implementation of these principles varies from country to country and changes over time. However, the diversity of practice has little effect on the integrity of the ideology. Unlike the West, Russia does not offer an alternative ideological menu. So, Moscow, today, differs from the Soviet Union, which at one time adopted another modernist creed –socialism– and actively promoted it as a global alternative.
At the same time, both liberalism and socialism are Western doctrines. The pair are based on the ideas of progress, rationality and emancipation. There are more similarities between them than you might think. Socialists offer a different view of private property, pointing to the excesses of the uncontrolled market. Already in the twentieth century, however, there was a convergence of liberal and socialist ideas in the form of a combination of state regulation and the market. With regards to their political ideation, democracy and the power of the people are no less important for socialism than for liberalism. Traces of the idea of globalisation could be found in the concept of international worker solidarity. Liberation from prejudices and the rationalisation of all spheres of life are expressed as clearly in socialism as in liberalism.
The problem with the Soviet Union was that the implementation of socialist ideas eventually turned into an imitation. The principles of democracy remained on paper, but in reality they were crushed by an authoritarian (and at certain stages totalitarian) state. In the initial rationalisation of the economy and industrialisation, the USSR achieved amazing success, but later it ran into stagnation, unable to adapt its system to rapidly changing world realities. The weakness of the economy, with its raw-material bias, was identified back in the Brezhnev era. Emancipation, at first, proved unprecedented, but was also ultimately hobbled by the increasingly rigid social structure of the Soviet state. At the end of the Cold War, the picture was completed by double standards and a cynical attitude towards the ideology of Soviet society itself and its elite.
Despite the collapse of the Soviet project, the policy of the USSR could hardly be called a rebellion. Throughout its history, the state still offered a systemic alternative. Relations with the bourgeois environment could be called an attempt at revolution, and then rivalry and competition, but not a revolt. Soviet policy had a positive agenda, offering a holistic picture of the world.
The current “Russian rebellion” is based on dissatisfaction with the established status quo of the liberal world order, or rather, its individual consequences for Russia.
There are reasons for such a posture. Scepticism about democracy has been fuelled by the practical possibilities for foreign states to ‘hack’ democratic institutions. Colour revolutions in the post-Soviet space have only strengthened this attitude.
The flip-side of democracy is the possibility of interference in democratic institutions from the outside in order to ‘correct’ the political course. The US, not without reason, was considered a key ‘hacker’ of national sovereignty through the manipulation of democratic institutions abroad. All the more ironic was the indignation of Washington itself, after Russia itself allegedly also tried to interfere in American democracy.
Russia’s greatest annoyance was its secondary role in the unipolar world order, the disregard for its interests, and that system’s increasingly clear refusal to perceive it as an equal partner. Interestingly, economic factors were secondary for the ‘Russian rebellion.’
In theory, Russia can be considered dissatisfied with its peripheral status in the global economy and its role as a raw materials appendage. In practice, Russia has become very deeply integrated into the international division of labour. However, compared to the stories about democracy, sovereignty and foreign policy, Russia’s concern with its place in the world economy was articulated in a very weak way. Liberal emancipation can hardly be considered the main political problem for Moscow. In some aspects, the Russian narrative has distanced itself from the Western mainstream. This concerns such topics as multiculturalism and sexual minorities; although in the West itself, perceptions of these remains extremely heterogeneous. At the same time, in terms of lifestyle, Russia is a European and Western country, so culture, like the economy, can hardly be considered a key source of the problem.
Given the concentration of Russian discontent in the political sphere, it is hardly surprising that it was the Ukrainian issue that became the trigger for the“Russian rebellion.” The Maidans and the change of power were seen by Moscow as a cynical hack into the country’s political system, and a harbinger of a potential hack eventually targeting Russia itself.
In addition, at the doctrinal level, Ukraine was increasingly positioned as a fundamentally different project, drifting further and further towards Western values. From the point of view of foreign policy, it was with regards to the Ukrainian issue that Russian interests in the field of security were discriminated against in the most acute form. Economic issues here also acquired political overtones: Moscow could put pressure on Kyiv with gas prices and threats to diversify its transit, but it was clearly losing to the European Union and other Western players in the very model of economic integration. It is not surprising that all those contradictions that had accumulated after the Cold War made themselves known in Ukraine.
Realising that the game was being played according to fundamentally unfavourable and discriminatory rules from the Russian point of view, Moscow not only slammed the table with its fist and brushed the pieces off the board, it also decided, figuratively speaking, to hit its opponents hard on the head with this board. Rivalry ‘according to the rules’ turned into a fight, the field of which is Ukraine. At the same time, on the part of the West itself, there is a degree of irritation, discontent and rejection of Russia, proportional to its own discontent or even surpassing it.
The West is frustrated by the very fact of a decisive rebellion, its senselessness in terms of the balance of benefits and losses, and the ruthlessness of Russian pressure. Hence the obvious non-selectivity and emotionality of retaliatory strikes, a bizarre mixture of sanctions bombings, plans to confiscate Russian property, defeat the ‘oligarchs’ (the most pro-Western wing of Russian high society) and equally senseless bullying of the Russian cultural, sports and intellectual elite, and of the citizenry as a whole. Only the threat of a direct military confrontation with Moscow keeps them from using military force.
The West has every reason to fear the “Russian rebellion.” Worries about the liberal world order arose long before 2022 and even before 2014. Compared to Russia, China poses a far greater danger. If the ‘Russian rebellion’ is successful, it will become clear that China’s ambitions will be even more difficult to contain. Moreover, unlike Russia, China can offer an alternative economic model, and its own view of democracy, as well as a different ethic of international relations.
The success of the ‘Russian rebellion’ may become a prologue to much more systemic challenges. Therefore, the pacification of Russia for the West has become a task that clearly goes beyond the boundaries of the post-Soviet and even the Euro-Atlantic space.
Meanwhile, in the actions of Moscow, there have been signs of progress that are unpleasant for the West. Yes, the Western blockade will increase the lag and backwardness of the economy. Yes, military operations are costly. Yes, they can cause unpredictable social reactions and even present a challenge to political stability. None of these challenges, however, are capable of knocking Russia off its political course from now on. Moscow is slowly developing an offensive and seems to be determined to integrate the occupied Ukrainian territories into its political, informational and economic space.
Ukraine faces not only colossal economic and human losses, but also the threat of losing territory. Large-scale Western aid is having an effect, making it difficult for Russia to act. Apparently, however, it is not able to stop Moscow: infusions of military equipment are simply ground up by military operations. The longer the conflict drags on, the more territory Ukraine could lose. This presents the West with the unpleasant realisation that it is necessary to reach at least a temporary agreement with Russia. It will be preceded by an attempt to reverse the military situation. However, if it fails, Ukraine will simply not be able to stop the further loss of its statehood.
Will the success of the rebellion mean its victory? This will depend on two factors. The first is the international political implications. A military success in Ukraine could set off a chain of global consequences leading to the decline of the West. However, such a scenario is far from predetermined. The West’s margin of safety is high, despite its apparent vulnerability. The readiness of other non-Western players to give up the benefits of globalisation for the sake of abstract and vague political guidelines like a multipolar world is not completely obvious.
It is likely that the West will have to endure the new status quo in Ukraine, but this does not mean the defeat of its model. Russia does not systematically challenge this system and does not have a complete picture of how to change it. In Moscow, perhaps, they believe that the structure has become obsolete and expect it to collapse by itself, but this conclusion is far from certain.
The second factor is the consequences for Russia itself. By avoiding promoting a global alternative to the liberal order, Russia will at least have to decide on a programme for its own development. So far, its contours are also built mainly around the denial of the West and its models in certain areas. Nevertheless, the vast majority of other non-Western countries, while defending their sovereignty, are actively developing and cultivating Western practices that benefit them. These include the organisation of industry, developments in the field of science and education, and participation in the international division of labour.
The rejection of such practices, just because they are conditionally Western, as well as the ‘cosplay’ of Soviet attitudes created amid different historical conditions and left in the distant past, can only increase the difficulties that Russia is currently facing. The preservation and development of a market economy as well as an open and mobile society remain among the most important tasks.
By Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club Programme Director & one of Russia’s leading foreign policy experts.
