Djibouti announced at the United Nations its readiness to facilitate crew change operations in Djibouti for any ships passing through the Bab el Mandeb strait, with the necessary support provided by the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority (DPFZA).
The country is responding to the joint statement of the IMO and UNCTAD – the UN’s maritime and trade bodies respectively – to support crew changes and ensure that maritime personnel can return home safely when the time comes to do so.
Travel restrictions imposed due to COVID-19 mean that crew changes have been delayed but they cannot be postponed indefinitely; it is estimated that starting in mid-June 2020 as many as 300,000 seafarers a month will require international flights to enable ships’ crew changeover and 70,000 cruise ship staff are waiting for their repatriation.
“DPFZA recognises and is grateful that the maritime community continue to provide essential services through the global pandemic to ensure that word trade continues to flow and is committed to being part of the global solution to support these key workers,” DPFZA said in a statement sent to Capital. “DPFZA also calls on other countries to take similar steps to facilitate coordinated support for seafarers around the world and calls on all ship-owners to support the effort by availing air repatriation solutions for maritime personnel,” the statement adds.
Maritime transport depends on the 2 million seafarers who operate the world’s merchant ships, which carry more than 80% of global trade by volume, including most of the world’s food, energy, raw materials, as well as manufactured goods and components and is vital to sustainable development and prosperity.
IMO and UNCTAD have been continuously highlighting the risks to shipping and trade arising from the COVID-19 impacts and have called for collaborative efforts to address the challenge.
“For shipping to continue to operate safely, we are seeking the support of Governments to facilitate crew changes and ensure crew wellbeing, by facilitating repatriation and safe return home of seafarers, marine personnel, fishing vessel personnel and offshore energy sector personnel, as well as access to medical care for sick or injured crew and to medical prescriptions,” said in a joint statement.
Djibouti offers crew change support for all ships
The global movement
The global movement relay of former Lycée Guebre-Mariam students provided one month worth food supply, mask, sanitizers and sanitary items for 100 families who live around the school and who are vulnerable to food security in collaboration with Mary Joy Center. 
Also the association is planning to give another batch of donation for additional 100 families who are living around Alliance Ethio Francaise to alleviate the food security of the vulnerable people and also provide assistances to health care products to visually impaired and the disabled.
During the handing out ceremony Amakeletch Teferi said “the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in Ethiopia, beyond its impact on health, has a huge implication and effect on the livelihoods of the most destitute and most vulnerable segments of the urban society. It is the awareness of this fact that pushed Alumni of the Lycée Guebre-Mariam to create a relief committee “I Care Ye Lycée Lij”, and undertake the launching of a fund-raising campaign both locally and globally in order to help the most vulnerable citizens elevate the challenges they are facing.”
Axian Group shows interest in Ethiopia’s telecom sector
AXIAN Group has become one of the African telecom operators to express interest to invest in Ethiopia.
At the last week of submission of expression of interest (EOI) for telecommunications service licenses that will come to an end tomorrow mid-day a handful companies have filed their EOI.
According to the information Capital obtained, AXIAN, who is stated as the fastest internet provider in the continent, has expressed its interest to be one of the two private telecom operators in Ethiopia.
Two years ago the then ruling collation EPRDF decided to open the telecom sector besides sell a share on the state owned monopoly, Ethio Telecom.
In its statement the company that commence operation 150 years ago from Madagascar and operate in six African countries said that it would like to expand its foot to Ethiopia and execute its best experience on telecom operation in other countries.
“In Ethiopia, the second most populous nation in Africa with more than 105 million population with median average age of 18, AXIAN Telecom will bring economic prosperity to Ethiopians through affordable, seamless, fast and state-of-the-art Tiers 1 telecom services that will allow job creation, nurturing entrepreneurship and supporting Ethiopia’s Digital Transformation Strategy that was just approved by the Council of Ministers on the 15th of June 2020,” the group said in a statement.
Different reports indicate that the telecom operators enabled to boost the internet connectivity of the biggest island in the continent that will create jobs and hard currency earnings.
“By making Madagascar the country with the fastest internet connection in Africa, we have addressed the challenges of economic development, rural isolation and geographic disparity with an ambitious investment policy that involves installing more than 10,000 km of fiber-optic cable and modern mobile technologies, including 4G, 4G + and soon 5G,” in its statement the company says, “Madagascar has become the global centre of BPO, resulting in significant employment gains as well as bringing revenue from abroad into the country´s economy.”
“We see similar traits of our operation in Madagascar existing in Ethiopia, that a large tech-savvy young graduates look for employment and strong connectivity being a game changer for both forex revenue generation and job creation by making Ethiopia preferred destination for international outsourcing & BPO center through fast connectivity,” the company said.
The information Capital obtained indicated that AXIAN Group recorded USD 1.1 billion in global turnover in 2019, with USD 1 billion investment in its operations.
AXIAN also operates the largest network of petrol stations and distribution network of petroleum products in Madagascar, as well as several telecommunications and mobile-money operators across the Indian Ocean and Africa.
By developing and investing in new infrastructure on an international scale, AXIAN advances financial inclusion in the countries where it operates.
The company also claimed that these investments materialize by delivering the fastest internet in Africa (and even faster than few European countries) have made us the number-one telecommunications operator. AXIAN Telecom also possess around 3,300 telecommunications towers on the African continent that support its telecom operations and cutting-edge mobile networks in Madagascar, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Comoros, Senegal and Togo.
In all the countries where it operates and AXIAN Telecom now boast having deployed more than 13,600 km of terrestrial fiber optical backbones and invested in 13 international submarine cables.
The Group is also a partner of the upcoming 2Africa submarine cable project, which will shore up connectivity throughout the continent while creating better connections between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
According to the Ethiopia Communications Authority EOI invitation document issued on May 21, the initial license term that will be given to an operator will be 15 or more years with the possibility of renewal.
WHO TO TRUST?
Modern society, as many previous societies were, is a comprehensive social compact between rulers and the ruled. The rulers are those who decide on behalf of everybody. The ruled are those who are always at the receiving end. Traditionally, the ruled prefer to defer to those in positions of power, at least in those past eras when power was also responsibility and not only plunder. In earlier phases of the existing world order, even when there were plenty of bad apples in the community of the rulers, the ruled, by and large, assumed (at times to their dismay) the collective ruling leadership can be somewhat trusted, at least when it comes to critical matters concerning the larger society. This was and still is the crux of the social compact that holds, albeit tenuously, modern societies together!
In late modernity, this long established compact or trust (that withstood the polarization of old) between the ruling classes and the sheeple (human mass) seems to have been irreversibly fissured if not altogether broken. The modern rulers of the global system seem to be out of sync with the needs and aspirations of the masses. The modern rulers’ obsession is about themselves and nothing more. The ridiculous level of polarization, both within and between countries, is one obvious reality that illustrates the bad governance at play. In order to fulfill their objectives, the reigning elites use all kinds of weapons to render the sheeple (human mass) docile. Lies remain the main tools of this dangerously destabilizing endeavor. There is literally no area of governance where lies are not effectively employed today. Lies permeate every nook and cranny: from lies regarding economic data to Covid-19, from terrorism to color revolution, etc., etc.! Ultimately, the highly centralized machine that continuously spews out lies after lies (all across the globe) will face the music! For a start and unlike before, the prevailing deceitful ways can easily be exposed, even if these truths are not allowed to circulate freely! The lost legitimacy of the status quo, on many fronts, is another indicator of situations getting progressively worse. The world system, most likely, has now entered its twilight zone!
Almost all global institutions have now lost their credibility, as a result of this extreme divergence of interests between the ruled and the rulers. For instance, the whole global educational infrastructure, for the most part, is now used not to enlighten but to indoctrinate and brainwash; to make sure the populous remains zombified. As science became ‘big’, it also succumbed to the cheap political manipulation of the parasitic elites of the status quo. Even in the general field of the sciences, it seems the only genuine intellectual sanctuary left for the deeply reflective is in the realms of pure mathematics. No wonder the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman, working from his mother’s rural home, emphatically refused the establishment’s prestigious awards. He declined the Millennium Awards (a million US dollars), the Fields Medal (mathematics’ equivalent of the Nobel Prize), European Mathematical Societies’ prize and many others, that were extended to him on the account of his seminal proof of Poincare’s conjecture. Grigori even threatened to stop doing math if establishment cretins (media, politicos, etc.,) don’t stop bothering him. In his own words; ‘I’m not interested in money or fame; I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.’ Hallelujah!
Big science is now half-truth (life sciences) and wild speculation (astronomy) because of the management imposed on it by transnational capital and its subservient states. The implication; plenty of venerable sciences and scientist are now part and parcel of the weapons of ‘institutions of lies’ or the Ministry of Truth, to use Orwell’s lingua. WHO’s entanglement with Big Pharma is well known and documented, long before Covid-19 came to the scene. See Al Jazeera’s documentary films on the matter. How this whole project of inculcating the global sheeple with untold lies will end up is anybody’s guess! On our part, we recommend, at least to our critical readers, web sites/documents that are written, supported and managed by independent researchers and not politicians, propagandists or any other malicious promoters of lies! To this end, we suggest the critical articles of Swiss Policy Research (www.swprs.org). See the article next column.
What exasperates the ongoing mistrust between the ruled and the rulers is also the chronic lack of (all rounded) quality leadership. See the ‘Hutch Report’ on page 50. The continuous degradation of leadership has been visible since the Deep State (DS) aggressively took over the critical functions of global governance. Even in the most enlightened societies of the Nordic countries, trust in their institutions has been gradually eroding, thanks to the influence of the Anglo-American nation-states’ worldview, which desires to sustain the parasitic relations between the two protagonists (ruled & rulers). At the center of it all, it is empire’s aspiration, led by the DS, which is the major obstacle to decent coexistence at the global level. It is empire’s sick and wicked ideology that is fostering mistrust all over the planet.
The eerie relevance of the old accomplished manipulators’ teachings to our reality is frightening. ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.’ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister. Finally here is the American ‘father of spin.’ “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the [public] is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” Edward Bernays. Good Day!
