The government of Italy announced that it has allocated new funds for four Italian archeological missions in Ethiopia.
“The Italian Government has recently decided to allocate new funds in favor of four Italian archaeological and ethnological missions in Ethiopia,” the Embassy in Addis Ababa said in a statement.
“This is in spite of the budget constraints caused by the global crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement reads.
It is an “evidence of the will of strengthening the long-lasting cultural and historical ties between Ethiopia and Italy also during this dramatic global crisis,” the embassy said.
The amount of money is not revealed. It, however, said the mission being conducted by the University of Naples in the area of Axum since 1993 is among the four that benefits from the newly allocated fund. The other three archaeological and ethnological missions will be conducted by the University of Rome – La Sapienza in Melka Kunture, Balchit, in the region of Tigray and in Southern Ethiopia. These missions have been contributing to further highlight and preserve the relevant Ethiopian historical heritage, the embassy said, adding they would create training and work opportunities for local communities, through the activities of study, research, restoration and tourism.
Italy funds archeological missions in Ethiopia
Why Ethiopia should go for GMOs
By Mekonnen Teshome Tollera
In recent years, the production of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) especially crops has become one of the top national development agendas in Ethiopia.
Genetically Modified (GM) crop experts in their resent study “Challenges and Opportunities of Genetically Modified Crops Production; Future Perspectives in Ethiopia, Review” state “37% reduction in pesticide usage and an increase in yield of over 21% was obtained by cultivating GM Crops, which shows an increase in production and environmental benefit at the same time.”
The study also indicates that Ethiopian economy is dependent on agriculture for food, industrial raw materials such as textile industry and export. “However, despite adopting many kinds of production improvement programs, productivity is still very low. This is a critical concept in fostering innovation to transform agriculture sector for more profit and industrialization in Ethiopia” it added.
In developing GM crops, Ethiopia has made strides in adopting favorable legal instruments and introducing some of globally endorsed GM crops – cotton, maize and Enset.
In 2018, the Ethiopian government authorized plantation of BT-cotton with a view to curb the challenge of bollworm (moth caterpillar that attacks the cotton boll). GM Enset (false banana), which is highly affected by bacterial wilt, is the other crop permitted for contained laboratory research.
I believe the current national effort of adoption and growing of selected high value GM crops in Ethiopian must not be discouraged. I can give some details why Ethiopia should go for GM crops:
GMOs Are Safe
Despite the consistent and wide-spread voicing of unproven “Precautionary Principles” and “probable negative effects” of GMOs like lose of biodiversity, food allergies, toxicity, ntibiotic resistance and the like by proponents of Genetic Engineering, no peer-reviewed and agreed studies across the world confirm that GMO foods are unsafe. Rather dependable research institutes are telling us the other way round – GM foods are safe. For example, recently, having examined hundreds of scientific papers written on the subject, the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine in its report stated: “found no substantiated evidence that foods from GE crops were less safe than foods from non-GE crops.”
Benefits of Genetic Engineering
Genetic Engineering (GE) is an essential scientific tool that addresses the present challenges of humanity such as food security, environmental sustainability, climate change, health care problems and the like. Countries around the world including Ethiopia invest quite a lot of resources to produces genetic engineers to benefit from the scientific process which is now viewed as remarkable outputs of modern education and research.
It is evident that GMOs are helping countries to fight drought and crops insects. The science is now benefiting several thousands of farmers around the world in developing crops that are insect and drought as well as disease resistant. It also enables farmers to produce herbicide tolerant crops and it increases nutritional content of the crops.
Genetic engineering has made several efforts to engineer a wide variety of aesthetic traits in the floriculture industry and speed time to flowering. Development of new varieties through traditional technique methods is very difficult or is not an option if varieties are completely sterile, as in orchids.
The science has also radically improved millions of lives all over the world by helping produce various modern medicines. For example, the production of effective and safe human insulin in bacterial cells is a very remarkable achievement in the history of the global pharmaceutical industry. Previously, diabetic patients were treated with pig insulin. It has also a huge potential in developing laboratory made human organs to effectively conduct transplanting activities on people who might otherwise die due to organ failure as the future holds possible challenges of accessing human organs like kidney and lung by donations from relatives and friends.
The other area transformed by Genetic Engineering is the global industrialization across the world. Cheese-making can be mentioned as a case in point in this regard. Enzymes such as Rennin, a key ingredient in cheese making, were originally isolated from calf stomach. However, it is now exclusively produced by engineered micro-organisms.
Feeding Growing Populations
Many countries in the world are witnessing high population growth at a breakneck pace and exacerbating existed challenges which are even worsened in recent years: chronic hunger. GMO crops could help to relieve this problem by providing increased yields and being more resistant to environmental stressors.
Particularly, the increasing prevalence of drought has prompted the development of crops that are more tolerant of high temperatures. These efforts, however, have afforded mixed results due to the genetic complexity of drought resistance and similar traits. Regardless, continuing to research this type of genetic engineering remains a promising strategy for feeding the world’s growing population.
GE for Environmental Protection
Genetic Engineering plays its own positive role in reducing agriculturally related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reducing soil erosion and significantly decreasing the use of many toxic agricultural chemicals.
David Zilberman and his colleagues in their study “Agricultural GMOs-What We Know and Where Scientists Disagree” published in May 2018 write: “GE technology can positively affect other components of agricultural emissions, particularly by reducing energy and fossil fuel use and by enabling reduced tillage and no-tillage agricultural practices.”
GMOs Are Not New To Human Being
Ever since human beings began farming activities, they have done genetic modifications while cultivating their foods by selecting peculiar varieties and propagating them. Global scientific studies confirm that genetic modifications take place naturally among wild plants. Assorting seeds from the best looking plants to replant the following year has been a method of manual genetic selection for many years. A variety of DNA analyses of evolutionary genetics show that genes have been transferred among plant species.
According to genetic engineering experts, genes can be transmitted by a parasite or pathogen, such as a virus or a sap-sucking insect. Spontaneous or natural mutations are usually induced in three general ways -radiation, chemical and transpose insertion.
These days, it is also very difficult to avoid GMO foods because any food item with ingredients of corn or soybeans are almost produced with GMO components. In the U.S., more than 90 percent of corn or soybeans are bioengineered and many processed foods are made of these crops. Much of the sugar in the US market is also derived from sugar beets which are mostly genetically engineered.
It is really hard to trace the DNA of highly processed products such as fructose corn syrup of GM ingredients and therefore, the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t force manufacturers to put labels to specify bioengineered foods stuffs. Therefore, people might have reflected stereotypical expression towards GM foods while at the same time consuming them.
Globalization
Today, globalization highly connected the world in many aspects and people travel a great deal as modern transportation systems are expanding more than ever before. This situation would facilitate both the illegal and legal movement of GM crops and produces.
To this end, for example, farmers from Kenya or Sudan could simply exchange or transport the products to farmers in Ethiopia through the existing border trade or social connections. Therefore, globalization can be one aspect of transportation and the spread of non-regulated Bt-crops.
So far, various evidences and reports from media show that illegal GMO products especially edible oils have penetrated the Ethiopian market. Moreover, we don’t have the capacity as well as appropriate institutions and mechanisms in place to oversee the transportation of GMO products especially via boarder connections.
Building Local capacity
Ethiopia could focus on building local capacity and generating own technologies to avoid the trap of multinational corporations and not to remain in a vicious circle of their marketing interests. To this end, encouraging activities have been underway by public institutions like the Holeta Biotechnology Institute. In addition, the country could also exploit the potential of highly experienced biotechnologists and genetic engineers in the Ethiopian Diaspora who flee their country earlier due to lack of good governance and democracy to build its own capacity in the field and tackle the challenges coming from international multi-national corporations depending on its own GM technologies.
GM Crops Are Expanding
According to the “Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2017” report, 67 countries used biotech crops, out of which 24 (including the two African nations) grew multiple varieties. Global hectarage of biotech crops stood at 189.8 million in 2017, up from 185.1 million in the prior year.
Aside from South Africa and Sudan, 11 African countries – Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Swaziland, Tanzania and Uganda -sustained biotech crop research, with 14 traits on 12 crops under various stages of development.
Debt relief for poor countries
In certain circumstances, common morality says that creditors should not force their borrowers to pay interest and principal fully and on time. The COVID 19 pandemic and the global economic collapse it has caused are just such circumstances, for both persons and governments. For the poorest countries harmed by the crisis (e.g., Guinea, Haiti, Nepal), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has developed a mechanism to free governments from debt servicing payments to the IMF. The principle is right, but the country coverage is far too limited and the period of relief too short.
Barry Herman, Senior Fellow in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School in New York City stated that the IMF is trying to mobilize funds from donor governments to extend its debt relief program although they themselves have huge crisis-related domestic spending needs. However, donor governments do not have to fund poor country debt relief from their fiscal budgets. There is another resource available. hey can tap long-unused reserve assets available at the Fund called “Special Drawing Rights” (SDRs). Not only can Special Drawing Rights fund relief from debt owed to the IMF, they can also fund relief from debt due to the World Bank and the major regional development banks. Here is how it could be done:
According to Barry Herman, in 2015, in the wake of the Ebola crisis, the IMF created the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT). The Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust is designed to pay the interest and principal due on debt owed to the IMF by low-income and vulnerable countries hit by catastrophes, freeing up government resources for more urgent uses. To receive the benefit, a government requests assistance from the IMF Executive Board. If the Board approves, the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust pays the Fund on behalf of the indebted government. Interest and principal payments continue to be made, just not by the debtor country. Moreover, unpaid debt servicing is not postponed and added to debt-servicing payments due in the future. It is cancelled.
Using Special Drawing Rights to fund IMF special programs for low-income countries was suggested by United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in April 2020. The important point is that Special Drawing Rights have real value, mostly unused by the richest countries who have most of them. When governments use Special Drawing Rights, it is usually to cover shortfalls in external payments due. However, they must first exchange the Special Drawing Rights for dollars or euros or another freely usable currency. Countries with large reserves simply draw on their foreign exchange holdings.
Barry Herman noted that the countries that the IMF classifies as “advanced” held 126 billion Special Drawing Rights in their reserves at the end of 2019, valued at about $177 billion. Special Drawing Rights could be tapped for the pending enlargement of the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust to $1.4 billion to provide two years of relief instead of six months, as currently. The Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust could well be further expanded to fund comparable relief for middle-income countries hit by the pandemic, such as Ecuador and Pakistan, or hurt by other disasters, natural or otherwise.
Holger Schmieding, Chief Economist at Berenberg Bank in London stated that the World Bank and regional development banks have no facility comparable to the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, but nothing prevents their governing bodies from creating them. Moreover, they are all “prescribed holders” of Special Drawing Rights, meaning that governments can transfer Special Drawing Rights to them. Unlike the IMF, development banks need to exchange the Special Drawing Rights deposited in their trust funds into the currencies of their loans. This would be straightforward as the trust would sell Special Drawing Rights to the country whose currency it needed, e.g., to the United States Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund.
Then, each development bank would pursue its policies on which countries to help and to what extent. On May 28, World Bank President David Malpass, reacting to debt-relief proposals from the Group of 20, expressed his fear that any change to normal debt servicing would negatively impact the Bank’s standing in financial markets, where it issues bonds that finance its loans to middle-income countries. But if the World Bank emulated the IMF’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, it would ensure uninterrupted debt servicing while providing relief to countries in crisis. Investors in the Bank’s bonds would appreciate that distinction.
According to Holger Schmieding, it is not clear why these proposals have not already been taken up. Perhaps the problem is that Special Drawing Rights are thought about, if they are thought about at all, by monetary authorities rather than by development cooperation ministries. Or perhaps it is inertia. Many governments and the IMF Managing Director support a global increase in Special Drawing Rights which is fully warranted, but will take time.
As Barry Herman noted, a substantial increase in multilateral relief can be organized now, with existing Special Drawing Rights. It is not a lot of money, but the relief it would provide and the distress it would offset is incalculable. For the G20 finance ministers, it is time for them to act.
“What A Difference a Day Makes…”
August born singer, pianist and self-crowned “Queen of Blues” Dinah Washington, popularized the song with timeless lyrics, “What a diff’rence a day made, Twenty-four little hours…”. August 15th, is one of those days with great historic and personal meaning to me. It is the day India, my father’s homeland, gained independence after 200 years of British rule. Despite the sometimes-dubious relationship with Indians in Africa, seen by some as beneficiaries of colonial legacies in countries like Kenya and Uganda, the narrative of Ethio-India relations dates back over 2,000 years based on trade which flourished during the 1st century of the ancient Axumite Empire. In the 20th century a large number of Indian teachers were also invited to educate children in remote areas of Ethiopia by Emperor Haile Selassie I. To date bi-lateral relations have grown exponentially, however, it’s the compelling writings of historians J.A. Rogers and Runoko Rashidi that reveal the deep roots between Ethiopia and India which formed the ties that bind.
August 15th also marks the independence of the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) after 80 years of French control. The fight to end colonial rule in Congo peaked in July 1960 with 3,500 ONUC troops arriving in the Congo. Over 10% of the assembled army were Ethiopian forces known as the “Tekil Brigade”. ETHIOPIA AND CONGO A Tale of Two Medieval Kingdoms by Fikru Gebrekidan provides deeper insight into the similar 16th century parallel kingdoms of Solomon and Bantu, which had diverging paths due to colonialism. Congo Seffer, located in Addis Abeba, diplomatic capital of Africa, is a remnant of that time; best known to have housed families of former fighters who aided in Congo’s independence.
August 15th 1974, is also the birth date of Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed. Most Ethiopians know his attempts, accomplishments and accolades, including the Nobel Peace Prize which turned the “world’s most powerful leader” green with envy, but that’s another story. Dr. Abiy, a bright-eyed boy from Beshasha, one of 13 siblings, was known as Abiyot, (revolution). He hailed from a dynamic and diverse spiritual legacy with a Muslim Dad and Orthodox Mom surrounded by indigenous practices in the rural region of Oromia. He found his faith as a Protestant and is said to have preached a bit on his journey to the highest office in the land, notwithstanding his military and political positions. It’s no surprise that he would marry Zinash Tayechew, gospel singer and mother of his 4 children based on his well -known love for the both the arts and his faith. Dr. Abiy’s focus on the future has caused a great gap between those who love and support and those who abhor and undermine. What else is new? This is the load that leaders bare, especially in Ethiopia; not for the faint of heart as history recalls. That doesn’t stop us armchair analysts from prescribing a range of calculated to café style advice, if followed to the tee, would provide a “walk in the park” for the Prime. Not!
One of my wise Rastafari Elders, Ras Sam Brown, who bucked the system in Jamaica garnering 100 votes for PM under the Suffering People’s Party in 1961, often reminded us that the exact thing one loves you for is the exact thing another will hate you for. But Leos, (cue rolling of eyes at the astrological reference), center stage, shining under the sun sign with fire and the lion as symbols; believe all things are possible. For woke Leo leaders – July 23rd to August 22 – love, peace, power, control, generosity, kindness, regimentation, freedom and happiness is ALL the order of the day. They will spend every hour of the 24-hour day planning and working to make it so. Dr. Abiy has these traits and will never accept anything less than peace and prosperity for all, building towards what skeptics say is a utopic legacy.
Full disclosure: I too am born on August 15th in 1961 and reserve the right, much like Dinah Washingston’s self-proclamation, to develop my rare insight and connection to the PM, unbeknownst to him. (LOL) My presumptuously amusing testament is based on our joint birthday and other inflated factors. For instance, I gave birth to 10 children with triple that number in my clan. We were one family with common bonds yet individual identities, personalities and aspirations. Much like my family, aka DestaNation, the PM’s betaseb, Ethiopia, require 24 hour a day attention to address the well-being of over 80 ethnic groups. Imagine, I spent 156 months pregnant and nursing 10 babies, followed by decades of care, and I am still unable to get them to agree on one dish for dinner, even the identical twins. Yet we demand that in our PM’s short 28 months of service he should have gone further in advancing and reconciling the best interest of 110 million+ people. Seriously? At least Dr. Abiy can probably get 100 million Ethiopians to agree on mealtime injera while I still hold out hope for my 10. This is all a stretch and in good humor but with a purpose. Suffice it to say my birthday wish for Dr. Abiy is continued patience and fortitude, sensitivity and strength; seeded in faith and humanity, recalling the old adage for every day, ‘…when man on earth has done his best God will do the rest.’ Make every count.
Dr. Desta Meghoo is a Jamaican born
Creative Consultant, Curator and cultural promoter based in Ethiopia since 2005. She also serves as Liaison to the AU for the Ghana based, Diaspora African Forum.
