Brexit, EU & African Unity: Sovereignty Contests in Multi-Nation Union’s Public Management

Brexit, EU & African Unity:

Sovereignty Contests in Multi-Nation Union’s Public Management

Public Lecture - Respublica Literaria RS-CXXXIX-I, MMXVI, Vol. X No. VII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

The only certainty in all this is uncertainty –Brexit breeds uncertainty on the markets and uncertainty over the future of trade relations between the UK and Africa. A few notes can be summarised regarding Brexit’s impact on Africa and the process of African Unity that is taking shape following the mirror image of the EU. The dysfunctional nature of the EU is what led to the Brexit. The African Union Commission shares (if not even worse) that dysfunctionalism. This may alert African nations that are already fed-up nursing a dysfunctional AU to halt their contributions. Brexit might also affect UK’s leadership in the EU to promote advocacy for African development. The same principle applies to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Over the years, African farmers have constantly criticised the CAP for the subsidies it affords European farmers, which they argue undermine the concept of a level playing field. The UK was possibly the loudest voice for CAP reform within the EU.

Africa faces the usual panoply of challenges endemic in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) with too few in­struments and too few resources, while also grappling with the perennial problem of non-integration. These are sequencing of policy reforms, all subject to the political constraints of containing the disruptive impacts of policy reforms to acceptable levels. This is a particularly important problem for Africa given the very narrow margins for manoeuvre imposed by fiscal and external deficits, subsistence levels of household income for much of the population and a complex political weave in the regions social fabric. Getting the priorities right and managing change are thus particularly vital issues for African integration. Hence, Africa should modify regulatory policies that inflate business costs and depress urban consumer incomes, go for bolder and more unconventional agricultural policies and put in place a smarter set of policies for the financial sector.

The Fourth EU-Africa Summit, Roadmap 2014-2017 held 2-3 April 2014, Brussels on the theme of Investing in People, Prosperity and Peace, committed to enhance Africa-EU cooperation for the years to come. They confirmed that the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES), adopted at the Lisbon summit in 2007, setting out the vision, values and principles to which we are committed, remains the strategic political reference for EU-Africa relations.

Key words: Brexit, Africa, EU, UK, Trade, aid, Union

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Shaken Piers of the Middle East Peninsular Pipsqueaks and Hegemons - Vol. X No. VI, CXXI, MMXVI

Shaken Piers of the Middle East 

Peninsular Pipsqueaks and Hegemons

Public Lecture - Vol. X No. VI, CXXI, MMXVI

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD,

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economics, AAU,

Abstract

           Samuel P. Huntington in his work The Clash of Civilizations proposed that people's cultural and religious identities would be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. In this, Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his classic The Anarchical Society, the scholar Hedley Bull argued that there was a perennial tension in the world between forces of order and forces of disorder, with the details of the balance between them defining each era’s particular character. This lecture is premised on ‘Shaken Stalwarts of Arabia, Western Islamophobia & Quo Vadis Middle East’ addresses the challenges faced by the Arab states in the brutal wars they are involved literally throughout the region. The Arabian pillars shaken today are the international community normalises diplomatic and trade ties with Iran, the US engages Iran as a partner toward restoring stability in the region and the US-Iranian nuclear deal moves forward. US legislators appear willing to mirror the anti-Saudi ground sentiment by passing a bill that opens The peninsular hegemon to lawsuits by families of the 9/11 victims. Another pillar that is being shaken is the Wahhabi pillar that has been inculcated as part of the Saudi national identity (Saleem, 2016). Islamophobia has become a significant factor driving politics in many Western countries. Islamophobia – fear of Muslims – is now highly visible among European populations concerned about terrorist responses from Islamic groups claiming Jihadi links.

Key words: Middle East, Shaken Piers, Islamophobia,

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Geo-Strategic Menaces: The Middle East & Greater Horn of Africa - RP Vol. IX No. XVIII, CXXII, MMXV

Geo-Strategic Menaces:

The Middle East & Greater Horn of Africa

Public Lecture, CX, MMXVI

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD,

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economics, AAU,

Summary

       

      The Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) is a multiplicity of geo-politics, a rich chronicle and abundance of art, music and literature. It is situated at the cross roads the main trading route between the east and the west. This has made the region so prone to conflict that people pluck what they wish from that variety to generalize that have allowed outsiders to play proxy politics with the region. The Horn is also a region that has been at an historical crossroads. Traders have travelled through the region, north to south and west to east. Empires have grown and subsided. Islam and Christianity embedded themselves in the region from the earliest days of each faith. The river Nile links nations in a mortal association for survival. Along the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, its people were engaged in trade for millennia. It straddles a geographical space of such strategic importance that those who treat it with indifference will one day pay a price for their neglect, whilst those who try to manipulate it will get their fingers burnt.

        Terrorism has intensified and the conflict in the Gulf has forged a shift in alliances with Yemen as an epicentre of a religious Armageddon. The GCC have unexpectedly converged in what many might think to be among one of the most unlikely of places. While it may have been difficult to foresee this happening, in hindsight it actually makes quite a lot of sense. The lecture ends by a discussion focused on the questions is the GCC’s move into Eritrea predicated on destabilising ‘Christian’ Ethiopia as much as silencing Shite ‘rebels’? Is the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari incursion onto one of the most contested regions as a staging point or is there a veiled schema that may strengthen the irredentist agenda of the pariah state and the Al Shabaab in Somalia against Ethiopia? (Korybko, 2015:1). Winning the hearts and minds of the people of GHA will steer a delicate path away from the caprices of clientelism; those from outside will do well to understand GHA history and politics, lest they contemplate it is an easy proxy.

Key words: GCC, Yemen, Eritrea, Somalia, proxy war, cannon fodder

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Addis Abeba: Is the Exuberance on Property and Real Estate Boom a Prescription for a Meltdown?

Addis Abeba:

Is the Exuberance on Property and

Real Estate Boom a Prescription

for a Meltdown?

Public Lecture - Respublica Literaria XXII, MMVIII

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

       The most important factor driving estate development and rental rates is on the demand side: income. We have witnessed a growing number of rich people (although still in the minority) who want to live in only a few metropolitan areas, primarily those on the Bole; displacing hitherto wealthy underclass of the past regime. In addition to increasing demand for pricier homes, supply of new homes has been constrained. Focused on supply and demand factors for the rise of residential real estate prices, we turn our spotlight on spec­ulative investor sentiment. Since the early 1990s, the rate of growth for housing prices has risen every year. This has created an investor psychology in the nou­veau riche millionaires that crowd the trendy cafés and pubs of Addis and the raw meat alleys of Nazareth. For many Addis Abebans the real estate market has been the latest get-rich-quick in-thing. Indeed, a multitude pack of homeowners and investors have become wealthier as they watched their estate values increase or their investment properties sell for multiples of what they paid for them just a few years ago.

        Nevertheless, the run-up in real estate especially office buildings may be ending and the housing mar­ket's “extraordinary boom” may collapse as it has historically done in the infamous Florida Real Estate Craze. Indubitably, this will herald the transition from urban government to urban governance: two diametrically opposite approaches in urban administration and decision–making systems. Ur­ban government comprises city management on official state authorities. Urban Governance, on the contrary, is a process based on the interaction between official organisations and authorities, which lead city development on the one hand, and of the civil society or the public domain on the other.

Key words: urban government, urban governance, real estate meltdown

Addis view from Sheraton pool

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Ethiopia - Theoretical undergirding for ‘Statist’ Growth & Transformation Public Policies & Plans

Statist ‘Corporate’ Supremacy

Theoretical undergirding for

‘Statist’ Growth & Transformation

Public Policies & Plans

Sustainable Development & Poverty Reduction Programme (SDPRP, 2001-2005), the

Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP, 2006-2010) and the Growth and Transformation Plan I (GTP, 2010-2015)

Public Lecture - Respublica Literaria XCXIII, MMXVI

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

    Notwithstanding Venezuela’s poster child of the perils of rejecting economic fundamentals - to achieve social goals, it is better to use – rather than repress – the market, Ethiopia’s statist ‘corporate’ supremacy is a tool used since 2006 to set a framework for state-led and private sector implemented infrastructure development. It is a broad and very complex process. The main hypothesis in addressing the public sector driven efficiency wave is that ‘in the absence of institutional investors in the major infrastructure works, more market contracting to the private sector by the state will lead to greater cost efficiency, without the welfare state having to loose monopoly of the means and instruments of production’. critical policy reflection: a seminal goal which, done well, simultaneously facilitates a kaleidoscopic of other ends, best conceived as the hub around which all other developmental ends cluster - skills, abilities, and values critical to success in industrialisation and robust ‘democratic’ rules, institutions, policies and practices.

     Ethiopia has recorded significant and sustained progress in economic and social development, pursuing a state capitalist public sector-led growth strategy that focuses on promoting growth through high public investment supported partly by low nominal interest rates. While the strategy has contributed to robust economic growth in the past, recent developments indicate a build-up of vulnerabilities, which need to be addressed in order to sustain this level of performance. The nation had placed MDGs & SDGs at the centre of its overall development context. The purpose here is to set forth a theoretical framework for public policy implementation by synthesizing the related and theoretically consistent concepts of public management, good governance and indigenous society directorial institutions. Liberalisation of the major economic sectors (finance, telecom, aviation, shipping, energy ), with the government holding on to majority shares, could trigger a process of virtuous change based on inward FDI and improvement and complementarities between public and private investments.

Key words: statist ‘corporate’ supremacy, critical policy reflection, infrastructure contracting

See paper here