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Free employment service

Staff Reporter
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Free employment service

Ruchika Bahl is the Chief Technical Advisor for the EUTF Project under the International Labor Organization (ILO), Addressing the Root Causes of Migration, a part of the Stemming Irregular Migration in Northern and Central Ethiopia’ (SINCE) Programme. The project is strengthening National employment programs and youth employment services aiming to create decent work and employment opportunities for large number of potential youth and women migrants in Ethiopia, hence making migration an informed choice for them.

Ruchika has 20 years of work experience on development cooperation and policy advocacy with leading INGOs, bilateral and UN agencies across Asia, South America and Africa. Over the last two decades she has worked with diverse stakeholders on labor migration, advocated for migrant workers’ rights and designed financial inclusion and economic development programs for vulnerable groups at national and regional level. Ruchika is a lawyer with additional qualifications in Gender & Social Policy, Social Work and Psychology.

Capital: Can you tell us about the project you are heading?

RuchikaBahl:I currently address the root cause of migration. The project is funded by European Union Trust Fund and it is the first project of its kind not only in Ethiopia but also in Africa. Here in Ethiopia it is managed by the Italian Embassy. The project mainly focuses on the enhancement and increment of possibilities for young people in the labor market. But this is primarily based on their migration choice, that is, if they would want to stay in their country to participate in their economy or migrate elsewhere to do so. The project kick started in 2016 and we chose Bahirdarin AmharaRegion. The project’s major focus was to increase information about employment opportunities thus enhancing opportunities for young people. This was achieved by allowing job seekers to have access to vacancies. This further led to a match making process where the job seekers were matched to employers and or the private sector. We chose to start our pilot project in AmharaRegion because youth unemployment in that region was the highest. The decision was made in partnership with thegovernment of Ethiopia, specifically with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

Capital: What are the successes of the project in the three years of implementation?

Ruchika: As of now we have set up two successful centers. The first one is a youth employability service center- which is set up at a Sub-city administration level in Bahirdar, in three Kebeles. We have found the existing platform in Amhara as a valuable one stop service center.We have used the existing system to embark on our new process. We have trained staff ranging from the Bureau of Labour and Social Affairs and TVET to help the youth to better identify their choices. They can opt to pursue for self-employment or wage employment, because not every person is interested in setting up an enterprise. To that effect we have set up a platform where the youth can come and register themselves as job seekers. We have also reached out to the private sector through the Amhara Employers Federation, which is our key partner in our technical group. Through them the private sector has played a huge role in orienting and highlighting to the youth on benefits of sending applications forthe vacancy posts as well as provide them with jobs through the vacancies. We have also introduced additional services such as employability services- which in turn means the youth can build up their soft skills currently required to navigate the work environment. This service educates the youth on how to look for a job and also how to well prepare for the interview. This is a priority for us because the Private Sector often say that the youth lack some soft skills, thus this service combats that. Secondly, we have set up unemployment centers at the city administration level. We have trained staff from BOLSA and TVET to run this particular center in partnership with the regional government. The two centers have been operational for two years.

Capital: How do you evaluate the demand and the challenges?

Ruchika:We can say that there is a huge demand. For instance we have approximately registered about 3,500 youth as job seekers. And so far we have received 330 vacancies, which translates to only 10 percent in comparison to the job seekers out there. So our current focus is on how to encourage the private sector on fair employment services. This is in link with government’s obligation to provide free employment services, since the government of Ethiopia has ratified the ILO convention on public employment services. Aspart of this convention it is obligated to provide free employment service to anybody who requires it. This is also in line with the critical elements of the National Employment Policy of 2016 and more recently the National Plan of Action for Jobs. So we are using the existing government institutional framework to build the capacity of staffs in the institution to deliver these services. That summarizes it all. The other thing is that when we started the project we were posed with a lot of challenges. Youth employment is something that cuts across several ministries mandates, thus this can create chaos when it comes to ministries demanding from us. However, for this not to be a barrier, we set up Multi-Ministerial technical working groups. This comprised of the Bureau of Labor and Social Affairs- which is responsible for labor and employment Bureau of TVET- responsible for vocational training and delivering right skills and the Bureau of Women, Children and Youth whose mandate is youth mobilization and mainstreaming. We also engaged employers and trade unions with this technical groups to create collective responsibility and ownership amongst ministerial offices.

The second challenge we faced was on the side of digitization. Lack of Information Technology being used by government presented us with a drawback. Moreover, there was lack of skill in the operationalization of digital technology. So the center initially started as a manual labor exchange center, but we then transition to a digital way of things. We developed a company website and mobile application, so that one can easily visit the website and register as a potential job seeker. Various jobs are available on the site which are sent and shared to the job seeker.

Capital: There are a lot of donor funded projects operating on empowerment, what makes your project unique?

Ruchika:I think youth employment is a national urgent priority for Ethiopia’s government and several donors are investing on the same. But there is always room for others to invest in this sector since it is huge. What makes ILO unique is the fact that it is a technical agency that works in partnership with Ethiopia’s government. We believe in the principle of ‘TRIPARTITE’- which means that employers, trade unions and governments are the three key partners in essentially running the world’s workforce. We believe that government is not able to do everything, thus it needs the participation of private sector and trade unions. What’s also unique of our project is that it is the first pilot project. We are therefore not duplicating existing  government’s framework but rather strengthening government’s capacity to deliver the expected services.

We can say we are killing two birds with one stone because, we are providing youth employability through government platforms as well as investing to build governments capacity by training staff to deliver on it. We do not source external staff so this is a working progress. This progress has led to other regions wanting us to replicate the same in their areas. Since it has been a successful demonstrative project, the government can now say if it works in Bahirdar, it can work in other places as well.

Lastly what makes us unique is the participation of private sector and trade unions. This partnership leads to the private sector having a transparent recruiting procedure, which was a challenge before.

Capital: Do you have plans to expand the project to other places?

Ruchika: This is a pilot project, and we have also closely worked with the government through the Job Creation Commission (JCC) on the development of the national plan for job creation. Furthermore, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in conjunction with JCC are developing a new vision and a new roadmap on public employment services in the country. So we are working on a new way to redefine how public employment services should be. We are making structural changes that will be effective and efficient on ground. In terms of capacity, upon implementation it will create a much easier role to replicate what is planned for the country at regional level.

Capital: Ethiopia’s youth is very high, beside there is a high scarcity of jobs, can we say that the government is working with its full potential on employment?

Ruchika: Ethiopia is a very young country. 77 percent of the population is below the age of 35 and about 73 percent of the youth are between the ages of 0-25 years. The working population is between 15- 64 and this comprises of 65 percent of the population. This demographic bulge of youth presents some challenges. The challenge is on how to channel this youthful population as some want to migrate and others want to participate in the labor market through self- employment. There is a huge skill mismatch since even the graduates in the country are just going for available jobs. To combat this, some private sector companies have trainee programs but not all companies are investing in jobs and skill creation. Furthermore, the youth are challenged with finance as the salary is too low, thus demotivating them not to keep the jobs.

 

Afua Hirsch on exploring African culture beyond the western gaze

Staff Reporter
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Afua Hirsch on exploring African culture beyond the western gaze

By Afua Hirsch
In making my new television series African Renaissance, one question has always nagged me: what would the African continent look like if it had never been colonised? Filming the work of the Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh in Addis Ababa, the question lost its hypothetical quality. As a new arrival in the Ethiopian capital, I was struggling to adjust to the alphabet of Ethiopia’s Amharic, as well as to systems of date and time that shun global convention. As you read this, it is 2012 in Ethiopia, and the time runs on a 12-hour clock beginning at daybreak and again at dusk. I saw how Muluneh styled her model with floor-skimming braids, and dressed her set in trademark primary colours, fusing Afro-futurist art, fashion and photography into her surrealist prints. To me, they served as a portal into the unfamiliar world of her country, one that has never fully succumbed to Eurocentric cultural or administrative traditions. Ethiopia is beginning to overcome the hijacking of its reputation as synonymous with famine and misery, an image omnipresent for as long as I can remember. Drawing attention to the country’s past hardships may have been well-intentioned. But the failure to balance charity appeals with other images of this ancient land has created a misleading single narrative that persists. These days, Ethiopia is becoming a bucket-list destination, one that attracts travellers with its incredible ancient ruins, such as the 2,000-year-old obelisk at Axum, one of the four great kingdoms of the ancient world. Its fourth-century rock churches, carved into mountains at impossible altitudes when Christians faced persecution, casually bear murals of a black baby Jesus, black prophets, saints and angels, at a time when the church in Europe was first navigating its role in spreading white supremacist images of biblical figures.
But my quest in this, and in all the episodes of my series, was to step away from the western gaze that has done so much harm to the African continent, and to see it for what it is, to explore its art, music and culture on its own terms. It is a continent of unimaginable diversity, and the three countries in which we filmed, Ethiopia, Kenya and Senegal, are nothing alike in culture, history or art. There is no “African story” – except perhaps innovation – and it’s the creative beating heart of these countries I wanted to find. My aim was neither to confirm nor reject images projected on to them from the outside, but to discover their own artistic expression. The power of that expression has gained new traction in recent months. It was only a matter of time before the struggle against racism – brought into painfully sharp focus by the killing of George Floyd in the US – segued into global questions about the cultures of people of African heritage, how blackness is misrepresented and commoditised, and why ideas about black creativity, innovation and art continue to be degraded.
The best answer to the prejudice that still plagues majority white societies is to look to the motherland itself. In Senegal, a francophone nation on the far west coast of Africa which I called home for several years in my twenties, resistance against colonial power is still a driving force in art. There is important and vibrant work, from DJ Awadi, founding member of hip-hop group Positive Black Soul, who is reviving the sounds of highlife music in his eclectic fusions, to Germaine Acogny, the legendary choreographer and mother of contemporary African dance. I visit Acogny at Mudra Afrique, her school in the sandy expanse of Senegal’s coastline, where dancers selected from across the continent learn her method, transcending the widest range of ethnic and linguistic boundaries. As Acogny tells me, her mission to fuse the traditional and contemporary is more profound than a form of choreography. “Africa is a force,” she explains. “And here, Africans need to know that as well, and be proud of what they are. People without culture disappear from Earth.” Senegal’s first president, Léopold Senghor, was a powerful proponent of this philosophy, which he and others – notably the Martinican writer Aimé Césaire – dubbed négritude. The poet-president invested a monumental 30 per cent of Senegal’s budget in culture and the arts, a powerful commitment for a new nation, and one from which Britain could well learn.
Modern Kenya too has much to teach us about policy responses to our greatest challenges. The east African nation has positioned itself as a country willing to take bold measures on climate change and sustainability, and that evolution is reflected in its art scene. Arriving in a country that has banned plastic bags – your airline warns you to leave any in your possession on the plane when you touch down — it’s perhaps no surprise that sculptors such as Meshack Oiro are creating fusion pieces that experiment with form and space using metals, plastics and other waste materials salvaged from Nairobi dumps. These contemporary stories have to be understood within the historical context of a country that experienced one of Britain’s most audacious and criminal land grabs. Outsiders’ perceptions of Kenya risk being layered in decades of colonial romanticism over this land – a narrative we unflinchingly explore in the series. I visit the house where Danish author Karen Blixen wrote Out of Africa, a novel that did so much to promote the idea of Africa as one vast, empty savannah, populated by many majestic creatures and a few inconsequential humans. I interview Mau-Mau veterans at the site of one of the torture camps Britain built to “deradicalise” the men and women whose crime was to fight back against the appropriation of their resources and the exploitation of their labour.
The Kenyan painter Michael Soi is emerging as a leading voice in the conversation about the new wave of colonialism threatening so many African nations’ sovereignty – the scramble for influence, credit and resource extraction. Soi’s paintings probe the role of China, as well as Kenya’s political elite, with humour and satire. Seeing Xi Jinping painted in a nappy, Soi-style, is a rare visual treat. Growing up with African heritage in Britain, at a time when it still had a nostalgic longing for colonial greatness, left me profoundly unaware of the true complexity of art in African countries. No single series could really remedy that – the breadth of artistic tradition and contemporary creativity across the African continent far exceeds what hour-long films about three countries can offer. But after a life spent re-educating myself, making this series has taught me two things. The first is that in Africa there is no tension between tradition and contemporary art: African cultures are always reinventing themselves with the same innovative spirit and talent that have earned them the global influence they have today. The second is that, in every one of these countries, I still have so much more to learn.
(Financial Times)

Italy funds archeological missions in Ethiopia

Staff Reporter
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Italy funds archeological missions in Ethiopia

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.

Why Ethiopia should go for GMOs

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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.

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