Ethiopia has a new and first innovators association that aims to increase the development of technological learning and innovation and strengthened role of local inventions. On December 22, 2019, over 200 innovators have formed the new association called Ethiopian Innovators Association (EIA).
According to Mekbeb Tadesse process engineer, inventor of different kinds of products and software and president of the newly established association, the idea to form the association starts on the 2019 African Innovation Week which was held in Addis Ababa from October 28th – November 2nd.
“Even if lots of inventions were made in different levels of the society there is low access to change them in to innovation and use the fundamental outcomes of innovation” said Mekbeb adding “the main aim of the association is to gather those inventors and change their inventions to impact full innovation in different parts of the society.”
Mekbeb further said “we form the association in order to scale up the use of creative and innovative solutions to solve development issues in different sectors and creative and innovative solutions for the dynamic development of all.”
The new association has listed 12 major goals to achieve including developing the Made in Ethiopia concept by developing locally produced products and building innovation parks and centers in the coming three years.
The association starts to develop its own platform to start registering innovators and their inventions that are found all over the country in the coming six months.
African Innovation Week 2019 was organized by IBA Ethiopia Center for Innovation in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Innovation & Technology of Ethiopia, the African Union, Oslo International Hub, Ethiopian Norwegian Chamber of Commerce, UNDP Ethiopia and other stakeholders. Over 3,000 participants participated in the week-long forum. Beside the trainings and scions there was innovation challenging competition sponsored by UNDP and awarded top five innovators from Rwanda, Ethiopia and Togo where each one received USD $5,000. The 50 finalist innovators were awarded USD $1,000 each to encourage them to continue working on their ideas. Mekebeb was one of the top five awarded innovators with his different invention.
Through the home-grown economic reform and 10-year strategy, Ethiopia aims to become a middle-income economy in 2025. Innovation and technology set as the main drivers for attaining this goal; however the countries rapid economic growth is much slower in the growth of technological learning and innovation capacity as a major obstacle to sustaining this impressive performance and achieving more sustainable development.
“The association helps to improve local technological upgrading and innovation of industries identified as important for Ethiopia’s development as one of its aims” said Mekbeb.
The current Ethiopian Science and Technology Innovation policy gives priority to technology transfer, mainly referring to acquisition of technologies from abroad. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that acquired technologies will be automatically assimilated in the local economy through learning, linkages and demonstration effects.
Association aims to boost innovation
Embassy of India celebrates new location and 70th Republic Day
By Ruth Brook
The Embassy of India to Ethiopia had many reasons to celebrate this past Friday as it marked their homecoming to their previous location and kicked off the festivities for India’s 70th Republic Day.
“These celebrations are truly special for us,” said Ambassador of India Anurag Srivastava.
The homecoming is almost four years in the making, the Ambassador explained. The embassy relocated in November 2016 in order to have the previous diplomatic space renovated to reflect the longstanding relations between Ethiopia and India, 2020 marks their return.
The occasion was celebrated with a reception at the newly refurbished premises, with high level dignitaries, Ambassadors, members of diplomatic corps as well as representatives from UNECA and AU in attendance. 
This year also marks 70 years of strong diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and India. The Ambassador spoke on the mutually beneficial relationship between the countries, highlighting achievements in health, education and technology sectors.
In May 2019, the India-Ethiopia Innovation & Technology Commercialization Programme was launched with the purpose of sharing technological innovations and to “migrate least 50 successful innovations in areas like healthcare, agriculture, water & sanitation and environment & forestry.” This project aims to create 50 small to medium enterprises in the next five years, the Ambassador said.
He also spoke on the advances India has made as a country, in the last five years rural sanitation coverage in India has reached a whopping 99%. He further stated that the cheapest data service in the world is found in India, redefining governance and making for a “Digital India”.
The people of India recently participated in the 17th general election which was the largest democratic exercise in human history with more than 610 million voters taking part. It was also monumental in that the highest number of women representatives were elected in these elections, the Ambassador explained.
“In this process, a new India is emerging – an India which is not avoiding challenges but taking them head on; an India which insists on complete solutions to problems, not just on some incremental changes.”
The festivities will continue with a flag hoisting ceremony on Sunday, 26th January 2020 and into next week with a food festival “Taste of India” at Hyatt Regency from the 25th of January until the 5th of February.
Screening for coronavirus begins at Bole International Airport
By Ruth Brook
The Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) announced that screening for the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) will commence at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. This is following the recent outbreak of the virus that hit China, which has taken 26 lives and infected more than 900 individuals.
All passengers arriving in Bole International Airport will go through body temperature screening; it was announced at an EPHI press conference on January 24th 2020. Entry points throughout Ethiopia will observe a similar screening process.
Airports around the world have taking similar precautions to curtail this outbreak as they are seeing an influx of Chinese passengers due to the fast approaching Lunar New Year.
The coronavirus can cause mild to severe respiratory illness. Symptoms include fever, cough, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing; it is transferred from animals to humans. The virus appears to have originated in Wuhan, China at a seafood market and continues to spread throughout China. While the majority of reported cases come from China, the United States, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore have also reported infections.
Ethiopian Airlines currently operates daily flights to China in Guangzhou and Beijing and flights three times a week to Chengdu. The flag carrier also operates daily passenger and cargo flights to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Shanghai. Ethiopian Airlines recently announced interest in opening up routes to three more Chinese cities namely Chongqing, Shenzhen and Zhengzhou.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak an emergency in China but has stated that it is too early to deem it a global health emergency.
What’s the best thing you can do to protect yourself from Coronavirus
The new coronavirus has not yet reached the deadly rates of its predecessors, SARS and MERS, however, the sooner the outbreak is contained the better for countries around the world, say Dr Michael Curry, clinical associate professor, and Marion Koopmans, Dutch expert on animal-related infections.
The deadly coronavirus has claimed the lives of 26 people and infected more than 880 others in China after being detected in Wuhan in late December. The news about the new virus outbreak immediately caught the headlines evoking the memory of the fuss surrounding the African continent’s Ebola epidemic that was later called disproportionate.
Dr Michael Curry, a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Emergency Medicine, explains that the Wuhan coronavirus is not something fundamentally new and while one needs to stay alert there’s no need to go into full-blown panic mode.
“Coronaviruses are a family of respiratory viruses, and most of us have had a coronavirus infection at some point in our life as somewhere around 10 percent of ‘common colds’ are caused by members of the coronavirus family”, the academic says, admitting that, unfortunately, some varieties of coronaviruses can be deadly.
Dr Curry recollects that the coronaviruses SARS and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) killed 10 and 36 percent of the people they infected, respectively.
“This is a new virus”, he notes referring to the Wuhan coronavirus. “We didn’t know it existed a month ago, so there’s much that we don’t know about it-and some of the things we think we know about it are probably wrong. That being said, we’re looking at a mortality rate around 3 percent”.
The professor elaborates that the virus in question will most likely be “more dangerous to older people, people with other illnesses, and people with a compromised immune system”.
Having said that coronaviruses are spread by droplets, Dr Curry recommends that the best thing one can do is wash one’s hands and avoid touching one’s face to prevent the virus from getting into one’s respiratory passages. While there’s a suggestion that coronaviruses may be airborne, it is still unclear whether the Wuhan virus can be spread that way, he notes.
“The most worrying thing is how fast this virus seems to be spreading”, the academic stresses. “As of today, China is reporting 800 cases but with the virus having already spread to five countries I suspect way more than 800 people have been infected”.
The good news, according to the professor, is that “outbreaks like this usually seem worse at the beginning than what they turn out to be”.
“When the H1N1 pandemic swine flu virus first appeared in Mexico in 2009 initial reports were horrifying. Figures of 50 percent mortality were being tossed around… [However], the overall mortality rate of that virus ended up being well under 1 percent”, Dr Curry underscores.
Marion Koopmans, DVM, Ph.D., an expert on animal-related infections (zoonoses) at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, praises China’s capability of detecting an endemic in its early stages, and containing outbreaks of diseases while they are still small.
“China through its surveillance of pneumonia was able to detect this outbreak and find the cause in a very short period of time, which shows how well their surveillance works”, she recalls. “It also shared the first information on the virus which helped other countries prepare. That is why cases were detected in travellers to other cities in China and in other countries”.
Commenting on the origins of the new virus she notes that it most likely came from bats but possibly from other animals, at a market in Wuhan.
According to Koopmans, it still needs to be determined how exactly the infection spreads and “how easily it does that”.
“It is clear that in some situations the virus can be transmitted between people and there is concern that the virus can spread further when the holiday season starts”, she notes. “Some cases have been detected in travellers from Wuhan. From what we know so far, we know that people infected can have mild disease or more severe illness, with pneumonia that in some cases can be fatal”.
While ten cities in China’s Hubei Province officially announced the suspension of transport connections over the virus outbreak, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported Thursday that it was too early to declare a global emergency over China’s coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
Oxfam’s inequality report calls for abolishment of biased economic system
By Ruth Brook
”The combined wealth of the world’s 22 richest men is more than the wealth of all the women in Africa.” This was one of many unsettling realities revealed in Oxfam’s annual global inequality report, released Monday.
The 2020 report titled “Time to Care – Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis” communicated the current global economic imbalances and the reasons behind them. Oxfam released “Time to Care” on January 20th, 2020 ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
As the title suggests, the report addressed the burgeoning gap between the worlds rich and poor, stating that in the shadows of economic inequality exists gender inequality – one of the main causes for the great divide. The charity coined the dire situation “a tale of two extremes.”
Also contributing to the aforementioned gap is an economic system which overlooks an essential work sector – domestic and care work done by girls and women around the world, who make up some of the world’s most exploited workers.
Care work is not limited to daily domestic work; it encompasses looking after children, elderly people and those with physical and mental illnesses and disabilities. The predominately female sector is severely under looked; women in rural communities and low- income countries spend up to 14 hours a day on unpaid care work, five times more than males in the same communities.
Furthermore, approximately 50 percent of domestic workers lack minimum wage protection and more than 50 percent have no legal limits on their working hours.
Existing efforts which tackle inequality and the mistreatment of care workers were also mentioned in the report. Lebanon-based, Ethiopian organization Egna Legna was one such example. Egna Legna is an Ethiopian union of domestic workers and activists calling for an end to the unjust Kafala system that exists in the Middle East, a system which enables employers’ abuse of domestic workers.
An analysis of the global economic pyramid shows titanic wealth held in the hands of an iota of the world’s population. In 2019, the world’s billionaires, only 2,153 people, had more wealth than 4.6 billion people; the majority of the privileged cohort is made up of men.
“The world’s richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people.”
Meanwhile, half of the world’s population lives on less than $5.50 a day. The contrast between the extreme poverty at the bottom of the pyramid and the trillions of dollars at the top has called for an abolishment of billionaires, as the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade.
“Getting the richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health,” said Oxfam India CEO, Amitabh Behar, in a press release regarding the release of the report.
The 63 page report concluded on a hopeful note, stating that a fairer world is possible, provided government commitment and cooperation. The primary solutions to the current grave situation are to eradicate the sexist economic system in place and to do away with the increasing number of billionaires. These solutions were supplemented by Oxfam’s suggested six courses of action.
The first is to invest in “national care systems” which will work to resolve the uneven responsibility for care work done by women and girls. The second course of action suggests that in order to eradicate extreme poverty, extreme wealth must be tackled first; it is up to the government to close the divide by fairly taxing wealth and high incomes.
Next is having the government involve unpaid care-workers in policy making. The penultimate suggestion is to challenge norms that see care work as the responsibility of women and girls. Lastly, the report stated that businesses should see the value of care work and prioritize the well-being of workers.
“Governments created the inequality crisis —they must act now to end it,” said Behar.
