‘Villagisation’ in Ethiopia The Development & Human Security ‘Realpolitik’

Public Lecture - Respublica Literaria CXII, MMXV

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economics, AAU

Abstract

     The villagisation programme to transform rural society started in earnest in Jan 1985 under the Dergue to relocate more than 30 million peasants over a nine-year period. The plan now is to resettle 1.5 million people in four regions: Gambella, Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz. The aim is to give rural people better access to amenities such as agricultural extension services, schools, clinics, water, electricity and cooperative services. It would strengthen local security and self-defence. Improved economic and social services would promote efficient use of natural resources and would lead to increased production and a higher standard of living. Nonetheless, critics point to the fact that instead of improved access to services, however, new villages often go without them altogether and the resettlement of people is connected to leasing large areas of land for commercial purposes.

      Good intentions of the state notwithstanding, it must listen to the social and environmental activists and convince its sceptics by proving itself right. In this regard, it must host roundtables for dialogue to convince them that the human and environmental impacts will not adversely affect the intended purpose of the schemes. It must ensure that all recommendations of impact assessments are implemented correctly by setting up a monitoring system that checks on progress. On the other hand, international lobby must also refine its advocacy so that protests that are not based on scientific facts and solid evidence and impact assessment evaluation do not hamper well-meaning development projects. In fact, a balance must be created between what is logically tenable in terms of the incessant dependency on international charity and ‘unsubstantiated’ militancy against such development projects, without which, that dependence will not be addressed. Ultimately, the legitimacy of the fledgling political pluralism process underway will depend in important ways on it being perceived as reasonably honest, transparent and accountable to its citizens in the execution of the state’s responsibility. A skilled and committed leadership at the district and federal levels can mitigate conditions that are hostile to political pluralism.

     Key words: villagisation, resettlement, conflict, ACM, service provision, political pluralism

See talk here

Unravelling African Integration Physical Infrastructure, Energy, ICT & Trade: the Greater Horn & the Great Lakes of Africa - A Comparative Case Study

     Africa faces the usual panoply of challenges endemic in developing countries with too few instruments and too few resources, while also grappling with the perennial problem of managing development. 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, infrastructure development (energy, ICT, roads, railways, hydro dams, power transmission and industry – sugar factories, metallurgy, fertilizer plants…), a consumer goods revolution is just beginning in much of Africa.

      Emerging export industries—in mining, manufacturing and exportable services—are already making their mark as sources of growth in the economy and will soon overtake traditional foreign exchange earnings from minerals and agricultural goods. However, two overwhelming pressures in Africa’s current economic climate—inflation and challenging new regulations—are putting strains on private business and could potentially dent the country’s positive growth prospects. 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.

       Much of the public investment laid out in the two cases are needed, justified, and on the whole appropriate, but how such investment is to be financed remains only partially addressed and the issue of who should carry out the investments is—in at least three specific cases—quite questionable. The case for government investments in public goods such as roads and power infrastructure is undeniable, as it is laying the essential foundations—the necessary conduits and circuitry—of a modern economy.

Key words: infrastructure, transformation, entrepreneurship, capital, policy, trade, peace & security

See paper here

Enterprises, Employment & Human Security in the Greater Horn of Africa

         A major contributing factor to the appalling situation of the youth in Africa is that there is and has been a shallow understanding of, and a feeble grip on, the essential components that constitute the required human qualities for development, and the intensive and comprehensive nature of their development and utilisation processes. Human security, a post-Cold War concept, is a multi-disciplinary understanding of security involving a number of research fields, which equates security with people rather than territories, with development rather than arms. It is about ensuring freedom from want and freedom from fear for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity refers to an emerging paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities that arise from unemployment and lack of entrepreneurship.

        There is simply no alternative to defining the scope of the state and the establishment of sound institutional capacity for real-time strategy development, sensitivity analysis, policy coordination, and attention to the details of implementation of entrepreneurial employment. Hence, public and private sector employment generation schemes underpin the need for community commitment (targeting, rationalising and effecting public works schemes) to the success of public works initiated. Participation implies local commitment, decisions, innovativeness, resource contribution and legitimate social capital to preside on the collective will and decisions of community, who, at the end, determine the requisite basis that participation to happen. The foci of the initiative are grounded on a firm conceptual base for remunerated safety nets in developing methodology for comprehensive self-assessment of the population and analyses of the operational capabilities: objectives, inputs, outputs, effects and impact of employment-support projects.

       In addition, it concerns outlining proposals for capacity development on mechanism for participation that can assure sustainability. These include building the rules and institutions of finance and the market and legal empowerment of the poor that seeks to generate new policy recommendations that will reduce poverty through secure, enforceable property and labour rights, within an enabling environment that expands legal business opportunity and access to justice.

Key words: employment, entrepreneurship, human security

See talk here

Battles of Adwa & Guræ, the Calamity of 18th, 19th & 20th Centuries & Dawn of Pan Africanism

     

     Axum, the Seat of the earliest Ethiopian kingdom and one of the holiest grounds, the Church of St. Mary of Zion. The earliest monasteries in Ethiopia, established by the “Nine Saints” who spread the gospel are also found in Tigray. Thus, it is properly considered the birthplace of Ethiopian state, religion, culture and civilization. As the area through which all trade and communications passed to and from the ports of Adulis and subsequently Massawa, it was the gateway of the Ethiopian Empire. During the last quarter of the 19^th century, there had been constant internal and external warfare and famine in Tigray.

     During 1890, Menelique received the response to his letters to the European powers announcing his coronation and requesting their recognition. Notably, Britain and Germany responded that according to Article XVII of the Wuchalle Treaty concluded with Italy, Menelique’s communication ought to have been made through Italy. Angered by this response, Emperor Menelique at once wrote to King Umberto on September 26, 1890, denouncing Article XVII of the Treaty of Wuchalle. The relation between Ethiopia and Italy rapidly deteriorated. Ultimately, an advance party led by Ras Makonnen and aided by Ras Alula, Ras Mikael of Wollo and Ras Wolle of Yejju as well as a number of other commanders was dispatched to join Mengesha in Tigray. On 7^th Dec 1895, Ethiopia gained her first victory at Amba Alage. After the arrival of the Emperor with the Empress Taitu and King Tekle Haymanot of Gojjam, the Ethiopian forces successively defeated the Italian army at Mequelle on 21 Jan 1986 and at Adwa on 1^st of March, 1896.

     Adwa has become a quintessential emblem and a pedestal for Pan-Africanism - an important political form of a religious Pan-Africanist worldview appeared in the form of Ethiopianism. Ethiopia’s African diasporic religious symbolism grew in the 1800s among blacks in the US and the Caribbean, through a reading of Psalm 68:31, Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth its hands unto God, as a prophesy that God would redeem Africa and free the enslaved.

Key words: Adwa, Victory, Mequelle, Amba Alage, Menelique, Mengesha, fascist Italy,

See the talk here

Happiness in Ethiopia - Ethiopia PCV Kirsten Kuwatani

Alternative Conflict Management Principles and Community Protocols to Resolve the Natural Resources-based Competition and Allocation in Ethiopia Case - Gambella Region

The Gambella region has been plunged in ethnic driven conflicts, which claimed and continue doing so thousands of innocent lives since 1950s. The Gambella regional state of Ethiopia, situated in the western part adjacent to South Sudan, is home of Nuer, Agnuak, Mejenger, Opo, Komo and other highlanders. This lecture proposes alternative conflict management, a multidisciplinary field of research and action that seeks to address the question of how people can make better decisions together, particularly on difficult, contentious issues. The voluntary problem-solving and decision-making methods most often employed are conciliation, negotiation and mediation. Conciliation, negotiation and mediation processes are found in traditional as well as modern local level dispute resolutions. Many traditional leaders have extensive experience in dealing with disputes within their own communities or between a particular community and outside interests, though not enough information is available about how these and other processes are carried out by local political systems in addressing disputes. In addition, in many countries, the terms conciliation, negotiation and mediation refer to processes that have been formally institutionalized and are increasingly conducted by professionals. In the process, a body of information is being developed about what works best in managing various types of contemporary conflicts through collaborative rather than adversarial means. The goal of research in the area of dispute resolution is neither to impose a model of alternative conflict management nor to define a process. Rather it is to anticipate ways in which specific existing systems of dispute resolution or conflict management can be adapted to other cultural contexts. These approaches complement these more adversarial strategies, and broaden the range of tools available to communities and interest groups who are involved in conflict.

Key words: Gambella, ACM, conciliation, negotiation and mediation, knowledge management

See paper here

Great Leaders Erect Their Outfit on an Elevated Human Security & Rights Locus

African Union Summit 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Human Rights with a focus on the Rights of Women

Public Lecture - XCV, MMXV

Addressing Human Security through Leadership

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

The theme of the paper addresses leadership and public management challenges and reform in Africa, augured on the hypothesis that the relative potency of leadership requires a plural set of rules and governing institutions, which promote and protect rules of peaceful participation and competition and human security. Notwithstanding the fact that the effectiveness of leadership is intertwined with the notion of objectivity, a noxious illusion persists that a political civil service of the developmental state model would deliver superior public goods, prevails all over Africa. The recommendations augur on evolving a meritocratic state that can deliver visionary public spending, fiscal policy discipline and inward foreign direct investment; coupled with prudent oversight of financial institutions and legal security for labor and property rights -- a brand of governance that unleashes free enterprises in a pluralistic milieu. Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on what is the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved. It also requires a broad and long-term perspective on what is needed for sustainable human development and how to achieve the goals of such development. This can only result from an understanding of the historical, cultural and social contexts of a given society or community. A society's well-being depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society.

Key words: civil service, governance, impartiality, leadership, objectivity

Slums are the litmus test of civilizations.

Robert Kaplan, the Coming Anarchy, Atlantic Monthly

Click here to see the article

A Glimpse of History Power, Treachery, Diplomacy and War in Ethiopia 1889-1906

      Axum, the Seat of the earliest Ethiopian kingdom and one of the holiest grounds, the Church of St. Mary of Zion, is located in what is now known the Regional State of Tigray. The earliest monasteries in Ethiopia, established by the “Nine Saints” who spread the gospel are also found in Tigray. It was also during the Axumite period that the first group of Moslems that migrated from Arabia and sought refuge in Ethiopia. Thus, it is properly considered the birthplace of Ethiopian state, religion, culture and civilization. As an arena for trade and communications to and from the ports of Adulis and subsequently Massawa, Tigray was the gateway of the Ethiopian Empire.

            During the last quarter of the 19^th century, there had been constant internal and external warfare and famine in Tigray. August Wylde who came to Adwa right after the Italo-Ethiopian war in 1896 pointed out that when he had visited Adwa during his earlier visit in 1884. It was a flourishing town of about 15000 inhabitants, the commercial centre of the district. Now it is a ruin, a charnel house. War and pestilence have done their work, leaving their mark in ruined homes and blackened walls. I do not think there were a thousand people left in Adwa

See paper here

Operative Clashes and Nexuses: ‘Resilient’ vs. ‘Conventional’ Human Rights

Operative Clashes and Nexuses:

‘Resilient’ vs. ‘Conventional’ Human Rights

African Union Summit 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Human Rights with a focus on the Rights of Women

Political transition in Africa: Africa leadership Forum and Global Coalition for Africa Study – 1993

African Union Summit Public Lecture - CXL, MMXV

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies, College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

      Almost three quarters of a century ago, the human community proclaimed a bold and revolutionary vision of the future. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 asserted that every person on the planet has certain fundamental rights that every society should aspire to their realization equally, cannot be doubted. Notwithstanding The Declaration, the perils of algorithmic power reveal that states who routinely abuse human rights will have to uphold them to remain legitimate to their digital citizenry where they theoretically draw their power from. The caveat is any system of concepts that claim to be universal must contain critical elements in its fabric that are indubitably common to all humans.

       Pundits have asked whether African laws that derive from colonial masters and notion of rights that stem from the Magna Carta and ‘democracies’ that treated blacks inhumanly as the Declaration came into force, do embrace the rights of all humans. Is it bound to be bigotry and obligated to fail because those societies whose conception of rights are not accommodated will take it as an imposition from other cultures? For instance, does the Declaration have African roots, if not; should Africa see it as as alien idea that is imposed from without? In addressing these questions, the article defines resilient rights as unique adaptive strategies of peoples that lead to self-empowered and sustainable livelihoods, which are critical for freedom from fear and freedom from want – one of the most basic human rights. It discusses the emergence of resilient rights inherent in community governance dynamics that have been relegated to the dignity of incipient archaism by vocal non-state human rights agencies and advocacy groups. Resilient rights ideology and agency relate to complexes of ideas, beliefs, goals and issues that can come into co-operative play or competitive contestation amidst the full range of significant participants and their activities for realising self-empowerment and hence self-contained rights.

Key words: resilient rights, human rights, international humanitarian law, 

See article here

The Philosophical Ascent of Contemporary Political Theory & Development Edicts: Quo Vadis Africa?

The Philosophical Ascent of Contemporary
 Political Theory & Development Edicts: Quo Vadis Africa? 
CXXXIX, MMXV

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business & Economic, AAU, 
costy@costantinos.net

Seventh International Conference on African Development (7^th ICAD)

 Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development through Pluralistic Good Governance and Global Partnerships with African States, Jul 27-29, 2012, Western Michigan University,

Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA,

Abstract

Africa heralded the birth of a new consciousness, a kind of non-identity that was based on determined bonding acts of human societal formations and not on geological precincts. More than millennia, the Axumites united into an Abyssinian kingdom, not by vouching their uniqueness but by exalting it and merging it in the new one. Today, of course, plaguing guerrilla-cum-military dictators, that openly deny and denounce the value of the rational dialogic, have isolated themselves, choosing to suppress citizens that have risen against deceit, betrayal and even treason. They shattered multi-ethnic human formations and replaced it with a series of war hawk ethnic regimes; spawning in the end, irredentist splinter groups. Philosophers from Marx and Adam Smith to contemporary pundits including Croce, McIlwain, Crowther, Azar Gat, Inglehart, Welzel, Avineri, and Birdsall have argued intelligently and scripted road maps for political change.

This think piece in political theory is predicated on an analysis of pluralist societal transformation and developmentalism promoted by regimes and their Nobel Prize flaunting patriarchs, as against real politic in currency today that augurs on freedom from fear and want. It delves into the penury of ideological narratives of post-colonial regimes: developmentalism, which conformed to neither the delusionary neo-liberal camp nor the insipid venom of African Socialism. In combination with the vacuum in political theories and the resultant paradigmatic gridlock, the ills of governmentality were predicated upon the perpetuation of unbridled power. Hence, in political theory, openness of pluralistic liberalisation process can be understood as a dynamic two-way operation of generic forms on particular contents and particular contents on generic forms. Deployment of the conceptual and institutional machinery of pluralism is at the same time the representation of specific needs, interests, motivations, claims, rights and obligations by individuals and groups. Going beyond structuring or rearranging political actors and institutional activities in their spontaneous, often turbid reality, such operations should result in their transformation into transparent agency and practice within a plural political system.

Key words: pluralism, developmentalism, neo-liberalism, generic vs. particular representations 

See article here

An Epic Chronicle: ‘Renaissance’ of Ethiopian Contemporary Art (2005-2015)

   

  The history of art in Ethiopia goes back millennia as depicted in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church paintings. Modern art in Ethiopia is pioneered by Artist Agegnehu Engida (Geberew, Aénd Béel… died of unknown causes in 1950, shortly after finishing the painting Twelve Donkeys). This was followed by Artist Ale Felege Selam’s painting and the modern art belongs to titans such as Maître Artist Afewerk Tekle (glass elimination), Gebre Kisrstos Desta (abstract), Alexander Skunder Boghossian  (magic scrolls) & Lulseged Retta (The coordinator of the Art of Ethiopia). Taddesse mamecha is a ‘drawing’ pio­neer. Other pioneers are Taddesse Mesfin, Worku Mamo, Abdulrahman Sherif, Desta Hagos, Taddesse Bekayneh & Worku Goshu - not necessarily in that order.

        Art can transform any experience into beauty, and by so doing transforms its horrors in such a way that they may be contemplated with enjoyment. Scho­penhauer believed that the forms of the uni­verse, like the eternal Pla­tonic forms, exist beyond the worlds of ex­perience, and that aesthetic satisfaction is achieved by contemplating them for their own sakes, as a means of escaping the painful world of daily experience. Fichte, Kant & Hegel are in a direct line of development. Schopen­hauer was influenced by Kant's view of disinterested contemplation. Nietzsche concurred that life is tragic, but thought that this should not preclude ac­ceptance of the tragic with joyous affirmation, the full reali­zation of which is art that con­fronts the terrors of the universe.

       True to these centennial philosophies, Art of Ethiopia has opened the doors to the world stage for young Ethiopian artists. Through the years, it has come of age in all possible dimensions. Forms and content of Art of Ethiopia have also expanded enormously. Though each has its particularities, yet, each year’s Art of Ethiopia encompasses oil paintings, watercolour compositions, sculptures, graphics, art on canvas, cotton, acrylic, crayon and charcoal art works. Mr. Antony Wade, General Manager of Sheraton Addis said, each year it is becoming more difficult to choose which works of art should be exhibited, as the population of talented artists is ever growing and the quality is continuously improving.

See article here 

Afewerk Tekle -1932-2012 - A Titan Rests

     

      Afework was so much more than those long ago metaphors extolled in our minds. He was a rural boy, blessed with loving parents and who grew into an artist with piquancy for life and a love of challenge, a pied piper who brought our nation to the modern era of philosophical aesthetics. A man of the African renaissance, he epitomised the African, who knew the true meaning of the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty that changed the trajectory of many lives through art, the basis of the highest spiritual development.

      He taught us that beauty is everything that the human spirit finds pleasing and congenial to the exercise of spiritual and intellectual freedom; an avant-garde concept of aesthetics that began to challenge traditional views, in his pencil, stained glass, brushes and canvas…

Words cannot describe how the world would feel when we know that Afework will not be with us in person anymore, a senseless vacuum of incredulity for the loss of a laureate that personified intellectual, spiritual and moral vigour. These fleeting memories will remain frozen in our mind forever, the tapestry of art Afework has left in his paintings, stained glass windows, in the Africa Hall, St George Cathedral, The Trinity Cathedral, Maskal Flower, in his work on the ‘Backbones  of African Civilization, ‘African Movement’, African Atmosphere, ‘African Unity’ and African Heritage’.

     I knew the legend Afework through his works of art and his compassion for humanity that many may not have been fortunate enough to share; as a board member of the Red Cross during the 1984 famine that hit our nation with apocalyptic force and a million compatriots perished. He raised his voice against a regime that heralded terror and pestilence -- what was branded by BBC THE HIDDEN FAMINE’. Afework raised his voice in the global advocacy for change when he led the candle light vigil on the eve of Glasnost ‘LIGHT THE DARKENSS’ ‘yibra bechelemebet’ in 1989.

     Today is our chance to say thank you to a colossus who perked up our lives, to truly realize what we are now without his persona. Nevertheless, if we did not know what he has done to inspire hundreds of Ethiopian young artists, especially during the past five years, life without him would have certainly brought back harrowing images of the dark ages before the renaissance.

     Out of that tension between his elitism, which stoked Afework’s ambition and a post-Cold War dream in his bones of a leveling democratic shtick in Africa, emerged, through art, his frenzied comprehension of the African fantasy of a new era, an idea that espoused his virtue of aristocratic arrogance and human nobleness that merged with a scuttle for accomplishment.