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LABOR MIGRATION HARMONIZATION

Staff Reporter
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LABOR MIGRATION HARMONIZATION

As Ethiopia takes over the Chairmanship of the Ministerial Forum on Harmonizing Labor Migration Policies in East and Horn of Africa from Kenya, Capital reached out to the Ethiopian Labor and Skills Minister Muferihat Kamil for an inside view on ways of enhancing governance of labor migration in the region as well as what to expect in Ethiopia’s tenure as chair of the forum. Excerpts;

Capital: What does the Regional Ministerial Forum on Migration for East and Horn of Africa do?
Muferihat Kamil: Two years ago, 11 countries from the horn of Africa established the ‘Ministerial Forum on Migration for East and Horn of Africa’ in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2020 with the solid aim to protect people or migrants flowing from this region to the other parts of the world. Moreover the forum was formed to harmonize labor migration policies in east and horn of Africa as well as to Participating states agreed to collaborate to strengthen labor migration governance in the east and horn of Africa region by establishing a platform for experience sharing, consultation on issues, dialogue, and the review and implementation of recommendations. The forum has since then promoted regional common approaches and social dialogues in the formulation and implementation of evidence-based, human rights and gender-sensitive harmonized labor migration policies.
For the last two and half years, Kenya was leading the forum and now Ethiopia has been selected and will lead the forum for the next two years. We have already started discussions on what has been done for the past two years, and we have also looked ahead on what ought to be done in future. In doing so, we have been identifying sensitive issues that need necessary solutions. Moreover, we have looked into avenues where Ethiopia can play a role to improve the lives of migrants, protect their rights as well as aid in the strengthening of their working capacity based on the demand of the migrants from these member countries.

Capital: With Ethiopia being selected to chair the forum, how is the country set to benefit from the selection?
Muferihat Kamil: Ethiopia as a nation is working to improve and create skilled and semi-skilled labor. We are working to solve challenges in the sector by engaging with different stake holders regional and inter regional organization as well as assessing experiences of countries to change the sector. Thus being given this chair position presents us with an array of benefits. We will be able to effectively solve challenges and strengthen our capacity through the experience that we are able to draw from the various countries. Moreover, we will benefit greatly in laying solid foundations for partnerships and coordination between governments thus we will play a crucial role in bilateral and regional efforts to tackle issues of mutual interests.

Capital: How has Ethiopia’s participation been like for the last two years in the forum?
Muferihat Kamil: Ethiopia has been participating in the forum actively since its establishment. However, the past few years owing to the effect of the pandemic, our normal plans were derailed in terms of planned activities. Nonetheless, as a country within the forum we worked on major key issues despite the challenges posed by COVID-19.

Capital: What benefit does the forum present with regards to improving the issue related to labor migration in the region?
Muferihat Kamil: The forum promotes regional common approaches and social dialogue in the formulation and implementation of evidence-based, human rights and gender-sensitive harmonized labor migration policies. It thus supports member states and regional economic communities to develop, adopt and implement bilateral and multilateral labor migration agreements.
Within the region it also promotes for a common African policy response to implement existing legal and policy frameworks. It achieves this through formulating new policy responses where protection gaps have been identified and further involves multilateral stakeholders and development partners to protect the human, social, economic and labor rights of African migrant workers in countries of origin, transit and countries of destination.
Another upside of the forum is that it establishes or reinforces existing labor market information systems within Africa to identify labor market needs for migrant workers and in doing so strengthens the capacity of labor market institutions on labor migration.
Furthermore, the forum serves as a platform to push governments to support the overall strengthening of social security and welfare institutions in member states in order to extend social security to migrant workers, promoting in particular the mainstreaming of gender and disability issues, induced mental health and psychosocial issues through access and portability regimes compatible with international standards and good practice.

Capital: What effort is the government of Ethiopia doing with regards to oversees labor migration?
Muferihat Kamil: Ethiopians who are interested in overseas employment has shown a steady growth, and this increasing labor migration has been mostly to the Middle East and Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Due to unemployment and labor surplus in the country as well as the interest of the youth to work abroad, the Ethiopian government is making an effort to diversify sectors and countries for Ethiopian migrant workers, including skilled and semi-skilled workers as building a labor force with stronger skills will open up more opportunities for potential migrants wanting to work oversees.
Thus the government has continually identified key initiatives to determine the skill profiles, gaps and surpluses. Moreover it has keenly looked into skills development initiatives that can be framed and improved to better meet labor market demand and economic opportunity in Ethiopia and key destination countries.
Accordingly, the more skilled (semi and highly skilled) Ethiopian migrant workers, the more opportunity and competitive they will become, and get jobs in diversified sectors and occupation. Additionally, diversification of potential market on one hand, and improving the employability of Ethiopian workers through enhancing technical and vocational skills on the other will have a positive outcome not just for fostering regular migration, but also to enhance access to decent employment whilst sustaining the demand and supply of the Ethiopian labor market.
Overall, when we have a great labor migration we stand to benefit the most as this will automatically lead to increase in remittance which goes a long way in supporting the economy.

Capital: Are there any identified areas that need improvement in the future?
Muferihat kamil: We are continuously trying to improve labor migration governance so as to protect migrant workers and combat irregular migration.
Moreover, identifying skills gaps and surpluses locally, with a view to making policy recommendations to avoid migration-induced skills shortages are part of the improvement plans since it is mandatory for the oversee labor demand market.
We also want to better examine evolving labor-market dynamics in order to best provide projections of the demand for low-, medium-skilled and skilled migrant workers in selected major labor-receiving countries by sector and qualification level, taking into consideration changes in priority sectors, in the destination countries.
In Ethiopia annually 1.5 million people participate in short trainings and around 500,000 people are trained in TVETs. And to this end, we can improve in areas that fall under modernizing institutions, and developing capacity of teachers.

Capital: Since the ministerial office is relatively new, how has your activities been like for the last six months?
Muferihat Kamil: For the last six month we have been conducting our day to day activities as well as organizing our office. We have also looked into various assessments and areas that we need to put more emphasis on. For example there are certain issues which need to be reformed such as oversees labor migration which need to be technology based in order to gain accuracy and efficiency.

Capital: How are you organizing information to know the number of Ethiopian working force overseas?
Muferihat Kamil: Currently, we are preparing information regarding labor for both Ethiopians working oversees and foreigners working in Ethiopia through a system called ‘Labor Market Information System’ /LMIS/. This system will help us to know how many people are working oversees, in addition to further information such as their destination and their respective jobs which will help greatly in organizing our data.

The countdown to ILTM Africa begins

Staff Reporter
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The countdown to ILTM Africa begins

ILTM Africa is counting the days until its return to Cape Town, with just six weeks to go until the international luxury travel industry meets in Cape Town for the first time since 2019.
ILTM Africa takes place in person from 11 to 13 April, alongside the popular WTM Africa trade show, during Africa Travel Week 2022. For those who may be unable to travel to Cape Town, Africa Travel Week has created a digital event that will run from 4 to 5 April. The virtual event is exclusive to exhibitors who are also attending the live event. Different buyers will attend the live event and the virtual event meaning that exhibitors will receive marked value with a diverse and enhanced pool of buyers.
During the live event, luxury travel brands, experiences, destinations, and suppliers from all four corners of the world will meet with international travel planners, curators, and agencies once again, taking full benefit of the pre-scheduled, one-no-one appointments.
“We are expecting international visitors and buyers from across the globe with 83% new buyers this year. We’ve seen a strong interest from the USA and from Europe as these markets are in the process of rebuilding a strong tourism industry. Visitors will be able to connect with luxury African tourism brands,” says Megan Oberholzer, RX Africa Portfolio Director Travel, Tourism and Creative Industries.
This year’s ILTM Africa will focus on reigniting each of the five senses to Africa.
“Luxury travel in a multisensory world is all about igniting the senses from the sights of Africa’s incredible fauna and flora to the smell of the African bush, the tastes of our unique cuisine, the feel of a rejuvenating African massage and the sound of our music,” says Oberholzer.
ILTM will kick off with an Opening Forum at The Vineyard’s Summer House on 11 April. This event will set the scene for the days ahead and will take delegates on a thought-provoking journey to explore the future of luxury tourism.
The Opening Forum will be followed by The Garden Party in The Vineyard Gardens. Against the backdrop of Table Mountain, delegates will get a chance to reconnect with old friends and reunite with everyone in the industry.
Three days of extensive networking sessions follow, with hand-picked luxury travel advisors, bespoke appointment programmes as well as a taste of African luxury. On 12 April, guests will be able to enjoy a Diamond Experience and lunch courtesy of Shimansky, an ILTM Africa partner. In the evening, the Rockefeller Hotel will host the #IconsMadeHere party, powered by Shimansky.
On 13 April, guests will go on an African culinary journey at the prestigious GOLD restaurant. This is where Africa’s heartbeat can be felt in all your senses. The event will end with a glamorous send-off at the Southern Sun The Cullinan.
Throughout the ILTM Africa experience, guests will experience African art and fashion with pop-up shops including Crystal Birch, Kat van Duinen, Kelly John Gough, Nature Works by Duncan Butchart . Decor and home textile will also be on display through African Jacquard, Barrydale Hand Weavers, Cape Alpaca Products, Chic Fusion, Macassar Pottery and Modern Gesture.
ILTM Africa is an event not to missed if you’re working in the luxury travel and tourism space, says Oberholzer:
“ILTM Africa is the show that everyone in the African luxury travel industry wants to be at. The industry’s most influential names become the talk of the town as they create exciting new itineraries, do business, and build lifelong bonds. Three days of high-quality pre-scheduled appointments, educational sessions, networking, parties, and invaluable exposure sum up the incredible ILTM Africa experience. This is a calendar appointment not to be missed. Create memories. Live fast. Live big.”

MultiChoice Studios: Taking premium African content to the world in 2022

Staff Reporter
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MultiChoice Studios: Taking premium African content to the world in 2022

New and exciting titles cover the breadth and depth of the African experience
MultiChoice Studios, the content sales and distribution arm of the MultiChoice Group, will be taking a new selection of premium African content to the world in 2022. The MultiChoice Group is home to one of Africa’s largest digital satellite television services, which includes the DStv and GOtv bouquets of channels as well as Showmax. A wide selection of content produced and commissioned by MultiChoice stars the very best talent from across the continent and delivers consistently superior production value, making it highly sought-after in both the Group’s core African markets and in diverse international markets.
Established in 2013, MultiChoice Studios offers over 65,000 hours of content in a range of different formats and genres, showcasing African stories to the world. And further top-drawer content will be added throughout 2022.
“MultiChoice Group is the largest producer of original television content on the continent,” says Mauro Black, director of content sales and distribution for MultiChoice Studios, “and our extensive catalogue features titles that appeal to a wide range of audiences.
“All of our co-produced and commissioned titles are in high demand and, in 2021, we saw incredible growth in that demand. We licensed seven times more series and movies than we did during the previous year, placing us firmly on the world stage as a leading television content provider.”
With its continuing focus on and investment in African storytelling and talent, the Group has recently launched The Wife, a true African original, which is based on characters from the critically acclaimed series of novels by leading author, Dudu Busani-Dube. This title has proven to be immensely popular in both South Africa and the SADC region. Filmed in isiZulu, the telenovela is due to be dubbed into French for distribution to intercontinental and international markets through Canal+, a premium French-language television channel.
The licensing of The Wife also highlights a developing trend among many buyers, who are requesting bundled packages that contain both evergreen dramas and new releases. This is testament to the quality of the productions on offer and also to the fact that they meet all technical requirements for dubbing into other languages.
Additional titles in the MultiChoice’s world-class catalogue of series include the romantic comedy-drama, Entangled; the gripping human drama, Lioness; the haunting crime series Reyka; and the exciting political drama, The Republic, which showcases the very best scriptwriting, acting and production talent the continent has to offer.
The line-up of movies is just as broad, with Glasshouse being an outstanding recent example. The paranormal drama, produced in 2020, received glowing reviews at several festivals around the world, including at Fantasia in Canada and at the New Zealand Film Festival. Kelsey Egan’s dystopian take on family, secrets and survival was released in the UK on Sky, iTunes, Amazon, Google X Box and Virgin Media, followed by releases in Australia and New Zealand. The interest in and demand for this film is well earned, and it has led to even more buyers taking an interest in MultiChoice’s catalogue of movies, many of which have global appeal.
“Just one of the many defining features of the authenticity of our content is that we produce many shows in African languages,” says Black. “The hugely entertaining Afrikaans comedy, Troukoors, which tells the story of a wedding planner and her friends as they navigate life and love, is just one example.”
In the docuseries genre, the gripping series, Devilsdorp has proven to be equally popular, weaving the chilling tale of a religious cult’s murderous spree.
“As a leading and credible source of the African narrative, MultiChoice is not only showcasing and advancing filmmaking in Africa,” says Black, “it is also showcasing African talent on the global stage.
“MultiChoice Studios offers access to this vast treasure trove of storytelling and is the destination of choice for content buyers from around the world. It is the best place for the international film and television industry to find quality, award-winning African content.”

The mystery of what happens when we die: solved

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The mystery of what happens when we die: solved

New research suggests the point we’ve traditionally called “death” might have been a few seconds too early

By Chris Sweeney

One of the questions everyone wants the answer to may have been solved by accident. A groundbreaking study offers hard new evidence that, at the moment we shuffle off this mortal coil, our life really does flash before our eyes, challenging the very understanding of the time at which death actually occurs.
Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, in the US, stumbled across something so deep, it throws doubt over when a person truly dies. He was treating an 87-year-old patient, who had a bleed between the brain and skull. Although Zemmar removed the clot, the patient began having seizures, so an electroencephalogram (EEG) was attached to record his brain activity. This was all routine.
“The thing that changed the standard was this: while the EEG was recording, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest and died. So, now, all of a sudden, we have the first-ever recording from life to death in the human brain,” Zemmar told RT.
To the layperson it might not sound that profound, but there are a few reasons such activity has never been recorded before. First, it’s impossible to know when someone will die in order to be ready to measure it. And, second, the accepted way to measure life is by recording a heartbeat – that is, the activity of the heart, rather than the brain.
“What we do as standard is record EKG [electrocardiogram] activity. When we have a patient in the ICU, we don’t, as standard, record EEG,” explained Zemmar. “So, one thing our study might open up for discussion is this: is it worthwhile considering recording EEG? When do we die – is it when the heart stops beating or when the brain stops reacting?”
Zemmar and his colleague Professor Raul Vicente Zafra of the University of Tartu, in Estonia, and their team recently published a paper titled ‘Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain’. By analysing the readings, they saw a spike in brain activity after ‘death’.
“There’s a frequency called the gamma band, which is electrical activity in your brain going up and down 40 or 50 times per second … And we saw that, after cardiac arrest, the power of this rhythm increased,” said Vicente. “We also saw the power increase in this same frequency range when someone was engaged in activities like memorising a list of words, for example.”
Based on the data the researchers collated, the idea of our life flashing before our eyes at great speed when we die is a serious possibility. Such oscillations occur for a full 30 seconds before death, if we have the misfortune to suffer a cardiac arrest.
In Zemmar’s view, a previous paper offers further confirmation of this theory: “In a study in rats that was done nine years ago by colleagues in the United States, they saw very similar findings around the time of death in those that had no injury and had a clean, healthy brain. In these rats, they were observing very similar findings to what we’re seeing in the human brain.”
Zemmar’s and Vicente’s team kept their research on ice as they analysed their findings, but now they’ve published it and are posing some very big questions.
“One of the things we would like to open up for discussion is this: if, when we say the patient ‘died’, we refer to the time when their heart stopped, is that correct? Because, if their brain keeps going, are they really dead? ” Zemmar speculated. “We would rather say, in this case, that, after the heart stopped pumping blood, we recorded 30 seconds of activity in the brain. To us, the patient was not yet dead, by definition.”
As testament to how big these findings could be, the study has garnered global interest. But It’s been hard work for Zemmar and Vicente to ensure their study is as robust as possible.
“We’ve been working on this data set for quite some time that’s something people don’t realise so it’s very nice now to get the rewards and the attention, and see them being interested. All this analysis takes time and it’s been the work of months, if not years,” explained Vicente.
The neuroscientists do appreciate, however, that they have data from only one patient and that the extreme nature of collecting similar data means it’s unlikely their research will be repeated on a mass scale.
“We have one case, and one is better than none. We’ve waited for quite some time to go out with this, hoping there would be more people coming along to give us more cases, but there simply aren’t any,” Zemmar said.
Some might still be wondering why they can’t just repeat their research. “The difficulty is we would have to speak with families and say, ‘In the last moments, would you be OK with us doing an experiment?’ Even if families would agree to this, you can’t predict death,” explained Zemmar. “So, when the patient dies and you keep them artificially alive with machines and put on electrodes, I don’t know how much true brain activity you would capture and how much would be the brain saying goodbye and the heart artificially working.”
He and Vicente hope that, by releasing their data, they will prompt other scientists with relevant research to share it with them so further conclusions can be drawn in what is surely one of the most defining scientific studies in history, calling into question the very idea of death.
“There is no scientific evidence that the patient would really have died when the heart stopped beating, if you just look at the pure data we have. It might be a few seconds later, maybe in some other patients it’s a few seconds less or more. I don’t know. But it’s fair to say, maybe what we declared as death was a few seconds too early,” said Zemmar.
It could be different for each individual. Is it 20 seconds? 45 seconds? 90 seconds?
Speaking to RT via Zoom, both men were beaming and clearly proud their work is receiving so much positive attention. It could also cap an incredible rise for Zemmar, who, as a refugee, fled Afghanistan aged six with his parents, arriving in Berlin just three days before the wall came down in 1989. He was raised there before pursuing a career in neuroscience internationally.
“The moment we saw similar findings to what they had seen in the rat study… those are the moments you live for as a scientist. It’s like when a soccer player wins the World Cup. It was one of the most unforgettable moments we’ve ever had,” he said.
Of course, what happens when we die is not only a scientific question, but a spiritual one. Ironically, this study might actually be of more use to the living than the dead. “I’ve received messages from friends and patients who recently lost a family member,” said Zemmar. “They said the idea that their loved one might have been having a flashback of the nicest moments of the life that they’d experienced together gave them calm at the moment they had to say goodbye.”

Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and the Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines.

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