The African Land Policy Centre (ALPC) has enhanced the capacity of senior staff of the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat to facilitate the integration of land governance issues in programmes, epecially those of the productive sector. The capacity building workshop on implementing the AU Declaration on Land was held on 16 -17 August 2022, in Kampala, Uganda, under the auspices of a joint ALPC-EAC project which was endorsed by the EAC Council of Ministers of Environment and Natural Resources Management.
Emphasising the cross-cutting nature of land, ALPC Coordinator, Ms Joan Kagwanja, applauded the EAC secretariat participation at senior level in the workshop, noting that capacities gained to integrate land governance issues in programmes will greatly advance EAC interventions in support of achieving objectives related to agriculture and food security; environment and natural resources; tourism and wildlife management; energy, infrastructural and industrial development; gender and women empowerment, among others. She further commended recent efforts and commitment to engage with Partner States and establish a steering committee that will oversee the implementation of a road map, the first activity of which is the operationalisation of a platform for exchange of knowledge and best practices among partner states. This is what is envisaged in the AU Declaration on Land.
EAC Secretariat’s Capacity Enhanced to address Land governance challenges
USAID Director announces $7.7 million investment in Amhara Region
The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Ethiopia Mission Director Sean Jones announced a new $7.7 million investment to train the next generation of 750 Ethiopian disaster risk management professionals at Bahir Dar University (BDU), where he also met with university vice-president, Dr. Tesfaye Shiferaw. This new investment, Feed the Future Ethiopia Resilience Platform, is the largest single external investment in the history of BDU. It follows nearly two decades of U.S. government support to BDU, including funding the university’s Institute of Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Studies.
During his trip, Mission Director Jones met with the Mayor of Bahir Dar, Dr. Diress Sahilu. They discussed USAID’s historical support, urgent needs facing communities in the Amhara Region and continued U.S. support for peace and stability in the region. Mr. Jones thanked Dr. Diress Sahilu for the city’s decades of close partnership with USAID. As he met with local officials, humanitarian organizations, and internally displaced persons (IDPs), Mr. Jones reaffirmed the American people’s longstanding partnership with the people of Ethiopia.
IMPROVING ON HDI-SECOND DRAFT
After the demise of the bipolar world, certain individuals (following the lead of critical scholarship) working for intergovernmental institutions started to question some of the establishment’s discourses. Amongst these dialogues, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) index was one. Critiques surmised, this highly influential index was an outdated contraption that had to be changed or at the least, completely overhauled. The idea of GDP was developed after WWI when manufacturing was considered the preeminent indicator of development. In those bygone days, industrialization signified wealth and social progress (of a country). Consequently, the GDP index’s was highly biased towards tradable material production!
GDP excluded, all household works and chores, including the critical task of upbringing future generations! Many other non-tradable activities of enlightened humanity also didn’t make it to the world of GDP! At the same time, useless and destructive rituals were easily incorporated in it. For example, if we dig a hole (say for months) and then reverse the whole process by filling the same excavated soil back into the dug hole, our revered GDP measures and counts this lunatic activity as productive ‘work’! It is such obvious inadequacies that led critics to undermine the usefulness of the index, particularly when dealing with wholesome human development. Experts insisted on implementing a new index to address the shortcomings of the GDP. Obviously, measuring only cranked out stuff and connoting it with general human development was a bit of a stretch to many a thinker.
Dominant interests of the modern world system still favor the GDP, as this index bluntly favors capital, which continues to undermines efforts that try to implement genuinely sustainable economic projects the world over. For instance, the production of arsenals used for the purpose of killing human beings, like WMD, etc., are very much incorporated in the GDP, while life nourishing activities don’t make it to the calculus. What a perverted index! Finally HDI (Human Development Index) came to the fore, without displacing the establishment’s favored index of the GDP. The HDI was recognized as an alternative measurement of ‘development’ in 1990. Today HDI itself is encountering serious conceptual difficulties. As the planet’s ecosystem is stretched to the limits, the widely shared assumption that there will be enough resource to go around, thereby raising the HDI for all and sundry is becoming increasingly unsound, to say the least.
If truth be told, there isn’t much resources left on our planet to indulge in wasteful practices. For example, to have a lifestyle of an average American (for all humanity) will require six to seven planet earths! The rational behind the HDI was the ‘wretched of the earth’ could improve their lot by consuming more: mostly by way of increasing their reach to health services, education, employment, etc. etc.! Here the perceptive can recognize the fallacious assumption still operating behind the development index, i.e., HDI saliently imported the irrational notion of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’! This stupid dogma has now come to haunt HDI. Moreover, just because people have a high HDI ratio doesn’t mean they are actually content, let alone happy.
Other indices are being developed to address these and other problematic issues that are confronting collective humanity. The World Happiness Report is one. This index ranks countries on the basis of pooled results, hardly a scientific approach. Even here, the implied emphasis on increased and hence unsustainable consumption is still recognizable. If truth be told, what the world urgently needs is a solid sustainability index. All countries need to agree on a realistic methodology that will dynamically measure sustainability. Trying to appease entrenched interests and their destructive model of development is not going to be a tenable proposition. Unless humanity collectively and sincerely addresses issues that are detrimental to life and life support systems, its sojourn on the blue planet will be very brief.
