Podcasts about Addis Ababa University

Nejat Abdurahman, Millennial, is a Keynote Speaker, the Author of The Art of Managing Up, and founder of N-BAC, a business advisory & consulting firm that helps organizations and leaders transform the way they lead. She is a certified leadership and emotional intelligence coach andDISC Practitioner who enables organizational growth and transformation through learning and leadership development. A continuous learner herself, Nejat lovesto spark passion for learning and help people unlock their potential. Nejat earned her MBA from Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst, and her BAdegree in Economics from Addis Ababa University.What You'll Learn in This Episode: 0:00 Introduction2:15 Taboo Subject?7:35 Feeling Unappreciated 8:11 Confidence and Humility10:36 Personal and Team Acknowledgement Example12:59 Mobilizing your boss18:56 Self-awareness and Leadership20:24 Emotional Intelligence22:47 Being Dismissed25:36 Holistic Approach28:02 Generational Insights32:12 20-Something Self AdviceQuotable Moments:“One thing that keeps people from managing up are the myths associated with it.” “I thought I was the right person in the pipeline for the promotion and contributing this much, and someone else is hired?!” “We're pretty bad about marketing ourselves and it's always difficult.” “I wish I had this so much sooner.” “Which one is priority for the organization and boss?” “Communicate with others the way they would like to communicate, not the way you want to becommunicate.” “Self-leadership is the foundation of great leadership. The foundation of self-leadership is self-awareness.” “Self-awareness is really knowing who you are, your goals, strengths, talents, passion, what gives you energy, and tendencies (how you communicate).” “Emotional intelligence is a lifetime skill – it's having the knowledge of our own emotions and regulating them and understanding others and leading with empathy andcompassion.” “Leadership is for people. Managing includes resources.” “Instead of thinking about yourself, think about the work you are doing, the learning. the purpose, the mission.” “Focus on self-love a lot.”   Three Episode Takeaways:  1.   When we think of managing up there are myths associated with it including we're arrogant or being out of integrity. We also think if we just do our work, datawill speak for itself and others will see the value added we bring. When someone manages up and actively sharing what is being contributed new opportunities open up. 2.   There are two extremes of leaders: 1.Totally promotes themselves or 2. Focus on the team at the loss of personal accomplishments. The in-between is to do both. 3.   Make sure your hard work is aligned with the organization and your boss so your work is adding value and appreciated. Nejat makes the distinction between a great and productive relationship with your boss. When having difficulty with yourboss, think about the different communication styles and remember to ask how they would like you to communicate to have a more productive relationship.  Special Offer:Managing Up Assessmenthttps://nbac.outgrow.us/nbac-3 Episode Resource: The Art of Managing Uphttps://www.amazon.com How to reach Nejat: nejat@n-bac.com Website: https://www.n-bac.com/ https://www.facebook.com/nejat.h.abdurahman/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/anejat/ How to reach Yo:  Our website:www.girltaketheleadpod.com You can send a messageor voicemail there. We'd love to hear from you! email:yo@yocanny.com FB group: Girl, Take the Leadhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/272025931481748/?ref=share IG:yocanny  YouTube LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/yocanny/ 

In this episode about being a part of the beloved community of God, Julia hosts a conversation about how current events are impacting our New American sisters and brothers. About a quarter of Vineyard Columbus is foreign born, so this is a very personal conversation for many! And Julia's mother was born in a DP camp after WW2 and entered the US as a refugee when she was a child, so it's personal for her too. It's also personal for our guests: Dr Seleshi Asfaw is President and CEO of ETSS, an immigration and refugee organization here in Columbus. Flo Gimei is on the board of ETSS, she herself came to the US decades ago, and she's a long time member of Vineyard Columbus.Listen in to not only hear some personal stories, but also to learn more about some of the challenges that New Americans are facing right now. Please check out our show notes for more resources and ways to serve, and if you do know someone needing practical helps like Know Your Rights materials, please feel free to point folks to vineyardcolumbus.org/immigration... where we've also posted a longer explanation of our Theology, Posture, and Pastoral Practices regarding immigration, immigrants, and refugees. And if you're someone who wants to help, volunteer, or who is able to volunteer to do some much needed translation work for us, please reach out to podcast@vineyardcolumbus.org and we'll point you in the right direction.Dr. Seleshi Ayalew Asfaw, currently the President & CEO of ETSS, has an extensive and distinguished background in the medical and public health fields. He earned his Doctor of Medicine from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, followed by a master's in public health Methodology, Education, and Behavioral Sciences from the Public Health School in Brussels, Belgium. He has been a driving force behind the design and implementation of ETSS Adult and Youth refugee programs, reflecting his deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing new immigrants. His passion for aiding their transition to life in the United States is evident in his work.Flo Gimei is a dedicated wife of over 25 years and a proud mother of 2 adult children. She is a Technology Executive Director in the financial industry and has served on the ETSS board for 3 years. She has been a member of Vineyard Columbus for 20+ years where she has actively served as a small group leader for over 15 years, a leader of the International Women's Breakfast, and she has also served as a member of the Church Council.https://www.crisohio.orgvineyardcolumbus.org/immigration

Exactly 50 years ago, on September 12, 1974, Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie, was deposed after 44 years in power. A popular uprising and series of nationwide strikes put an end to the monarchy. The military then took over, leading to the feared Derg dictatorship, which remained in power until 1991. But the new Communist regime was opposed to the demands of Addis Ababa University students, who were central to the revolution. To explore this key moment in Ethiopian history, we spoke with surviving witnesses and key figures from that era. FRANCE 24's Clothilde Hazard and Olivia Bizot report. 

In this episode we are joined by Linda Anala Tesfaye and Bikila Warkineh. Linda is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Ethiopia. Bikila is the Head of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management at Addis Ababa University and works as Associate Professor of Ecology. His research centers on the broad area of the ecological sciences and ecosystems ecology. He is strongly interested in the science, politics, and policies of natural resource management, climate change, sustainable development, and how these are linked with socio-economic development. Bikila and Linda give us insight into the history and current developments in tree planting in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a long history with tree planting and more generally greening initiatives. Through the Green Legacy Initiative, Ethiopia has become a forerunner in ecological restoration in the African context. The activities in Ethiopia go beyond just tree planting, but really working toward developing a resilient and green culture in the face of climate change. One key facet of the work being done in Ethiopia is the widespread use of native species in the planting projects. This model has had many positive regional impacts and has strongly influenced the approach to tree planting in its neighboring countries.  Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi Want to learn more about Linda's research? https://www.hanken.fi/en/person/linda-annala-tesfaye  Want to learn more about Bikila's research? https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=stfEp1EAAAAJ&hl=en  Want to learn more about our collaborator, Addis Ababa University? https://www.aau.edu.et/  Interested to learn more about the Green Legacy Initiative? https://greenlegacy.et/green-legacy/home  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/exalt-initiative/message

Welcome to a special episode of our new series that puts youth voices front and center. Today, we're discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education and employment from the perspective of students. This conversation is particularly relevant as the World Bank's EdTech team focuses on leveraging technology to improve education, bringing students essential digital skills for the future, especially in light of emerging technologies like AI. Join Robert Hawkins, Global Lead for Technology and Innovation in Education at the World Bank, as he engages in conversation with Momo Bertrand, Education Specialist at the World Bank, alongside Rahel Gezahegn Mamo from Addis Ababa University, and Damilare Oyedele from the African Leadership University. Learn more about the World Bank's work to prioritize STEM skills for youth in Africa: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/empowering-africas-future-prioritizing-stem-skills-youth-and-economic-prosperity Read our Knowledge Pack (KP) on Technology for Literacy: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099118104132241674/pdf/P174252041cdd605a0b94c0e783c0bba0ec.pdf A podcast produced by Lucía Blasco.

Understanding Person-Centered Care for Older Adults in Six Developing Countries: Ethiopia [Episode 4] Download the Transcript The impact of population aging is universally recognized and has been extensively studied in wealthier, developed nations. But we know much less about how aging is experienced in low- and middle-income countries and how developing countries are responding to the current challenges created by the aging of their populations. The rapid rate of population aging in many developing countries—fueled by falling fertility rates and a shift in the predominance of chronic diseases rather than acute and infectious illnesses—has left little time to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of aging populations. The GSA Interest Group on Common Data Elements for International Research in Residential Long-term Care has developed a limited podcast series to provide insights into how culture, competing population health priorities, political conflict, and resource limitations influence older adults, their families, and paid/formal caregivers in six nations along a trajectory of national development, including Brazil, China, East Jerusalem, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Thailand. Guest: Nigussie Tadesse Sharew, MS Nigussie is a doctoral student at the University of Adelaide, Adelaide Medical School in Australia, where he is studying the pharmacogenomics of drugs used in the treatment of mental health disorders. He holds two master's degrees in clinical epidemiology from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and adult health nursing from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He was an Assistant Professor at Debre Berhan University in Ethiopia, where he has served as Dean of the College of Health Science for three years and as head of the nursing department for two years. Host: Barbara Bowers, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA, Emerita Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, School of Nursing; Founding Director of the UW–Madison School of Nursing's Center for Aging Research and Education Moderator: Jing Wang, PhD, RN, FAAN, Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire, College of Health and Human Services This podcast limited series is supported by the GSA Innovation Fund. 

Aron Kamil is an experienced Digital Marketing Specialist with over 35 companies under his portfolio. He has a demonstrated history of working in marketing and advertising, with skills in areas such as Market Planning, Graphic Design, Content Strategy, and Digital Marketing. Aron is currently taking a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing/Marketing Management from Addis Ababa University. In his career, Aron has gained experience across various roles including Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Manager, and Online Marketer. In addition to that he gives training seminars on how to build a digital marketing business. Aron Kamil LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aron-kamil- Gugut is an entertainment/educational podcast which is focused on discussing different perspectives on technology, philosophy and day-to-day lives of everyday people. For any inquiries

Listen Now to Alexandra Johnson, M.D. on BREEMA We had an opportunity this week to learn about and experience  this modernized ancient practice of Breema, thanks to Dr. Alexandra Johnson, at her clinic in Santa Cruz, CA. In our current divisive war-ridden climate, Breema is a relatively simple yet profound practice of being present, in the moment, in a high state of harmony with oneself, and hence the world. The awareness that the inner world reflects the outer, the microcosm is the macrocosm, As Above So Below, and non-dual states of contemplation all touch on the same principals of consciousness, where our body, mind, and feelings are in harmony with each other. Alexandra R. Johnson, MD, is trained in Family Medicine at the University of Colorado, with a fellowship in obstetrics. Throughout her medical career, her emphasis has been on finding simple and meaningful paths to optimal health. She served as teaching faculty for the University of Colorado and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, worked at a refugee clinic in rural Colorado, and is a specialist in developing physician wellness curricula. Her work focuses not only on improving immediate symptoms of illness, but on developing a connection to the body that supports insight into how our unconscious conditioning affects our health. Dr. Johnson has used Breema‘s universal principles extensively in both prenatal care and labor to cultivate an open, nurturing environment in which great transformation can take place.  I think you’ll enjoy our interview with her and come away with some practical tools for your own practice. Enjoy! L-R Al Lundell, Alexandra Johnson, Sun Lundell at Breema clinc in Santa Cruz

Will Ethiopia compromise on its Grand Renaissance Dam? Yet, another meeting is held with Egypt and Sudan, and Addis Ababa insists the dam won't harm its neighbours. But will it accept a binding agreement? And what will be the long-term consequences of this dam? Join Host Mohammed Jamjoom Guests: Yilma Seleshi - Professor of Water Resources and Engineering, Addis Ababa University. Sara Kira - Founder and Director of the European North African Center for Research. Allam Ahmed - Professor of Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development, University of East London. 

This episode of the JOINT podcast explores the obstacles faced by the European Union in achieving a cohesive foreign and security policy.Focusing on case studies from Syria, Libya, and the Horn of Africa (with a focus on Ethiopia and the Tigray War), Jesutimilehin O. Akamo (Research Coordinator at the Africa Peace and Security Programme of the Institute for Peace and Security Studies - IPSS at Addis Ababa University), Francesca Caruso (Research Fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali - IAI) and Özlem Tür (Professor of International Relations at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara), moderated by Caterina Bedin (Research Fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research - FRS), discuss the impact of regional fragmentation, as to say when regional rules of engagement erode or collapse altogether.In these contexts, where the central authority is challenged and the competition between multiplying actors creates instability, what can be done to improve the EU's strategy in navigating the complexities?Join us as we delve into the intricate impact of regional fragmentation and discuss potential solutions for a more effective EU foreign and security policy.

**Note: This is a special experiential and participatory workshop. The movements will entail sitting or working on the floor. Please wear comfortable clothing and find a quiet, carpeted or lightly padded area. What allows painful events to continue affecting us over time? How can we transform our relationship to these events, to reduce their traumatic impact? These are the questions Breema Bodywork teachers Angela Porter, MFT, and Alexandra Johnson, MD, will explore in a special experiential and participatory workshop.** Breema Bodywork is a "teaching of the heart, an expression of the unifying principle of Existence." Angela and Alexandra will lead a variety of somatic (body-based) movement practices to help nurture connection between the body and mind, open possibilities to process events in a new way, and strengthen the capacity to assimilate, heal, and live fully. "To experience unity in our life, we must be unified within ourselves. A first step in this process is to bring body and mind together to bring us from a passive state to an active one." Angela Porter, MFT, is an activist and somatic therapist specializing in the treatment of trauma and addictions. She has trained in multiple modalities, including Gestalt Therapy, Somatic Therapy, counseling psychology, and EMDR. As an instructor and practitioner of Breema Bodywork since 1998, Angela uses the mind-body connection as the foundation of her work with individuals and groups. Outside of her Oakland-based private practice, Angela serves as adjunct faculty of graduate psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, JFK University, and The Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley. She also teaches clinical trainees at various institutes. Formerly a program director and group facilitator at various substance abuse treatment centers, Angela has a passion for supporting veterans, formerly incarcerated men and women, and people with co-occurring mental health concerns. Angela enjoys traveling internationally to teach workshops for therapists, doctors, nurses, midwives, other healthcare professionals, and teachers. Alexandra Johnson, MD, is an integrative and functional medicine physician specializing in family medicine, women's health, and care for the underserved. Even before her medical training, she was interested in holistic care, learning Breema Bodywork and also certifying as a doula. In addition to studying and teaching Breema locally and internationally for over 20 years, she has served as teaching faculty for the University of Colorado and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. During her time in Ethiopia, she developed an infection in her brain, leading to significant health challenges, only to reinforce the role of Breema to transform body and mind. Her work in prenatal care, and labor and delivery, incorporates the Breema principles. To facilitate cross-talk between home birth and hospital birth providers, she was featured in the 2016 film, Why Not Home? Her current clinical practice in Northern California integrates Breema, hypnosis, diet, and personalized medical care. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA, with her husband -- who is also a Breema instructor -- and their five children. Please join us in this special offering to experience individual embodiment practices in a collective field.

Ethiopia's government and rebel forces in the northern Tigray region have agreed to end hostilities, but this isn't the first ceasefire in the two-year conflict. So, what are the terms of the deal, and will it last? Join host Folly Bah Thibault. Guests: Kaiderin Tezera - Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University. Gebrekirstos Gebreselassie - Founder and Chief Editor at Tghat.com. Martin Plaut - Senior research fellow at Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

My guest on this episode is Stefan Dercon - author of the recently published and most excellent book ‘Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose'. Development scholars have produced many explanations for why some countries did better than others after the Second World War. Factors like geography, quality or type of institutions, foreign aid, and protective trade policies, have been argued as what explains this divergence in national prosperity between countries. Dercon's contribution will no doubt be plugged into this long-running debate - and in my opinion, he comes closest to having a ‘‘first principles'' explanation than anyone I have read on the subject. Other theories leave you with nagging questions - Where do good institutions come from? Are countries condemned by their histories? Why do some countries use foreign aid better? Why are some countries with rich geographic endowments doing worse? Why does protective trade lead some countries toward becoming industrial exporting giants, and some others into a macroeconomic crisis?Dercon argues that countries that have done better do so by working out a ‘development bargain'. This comes about when the people with power and influence (elites) in a country find a cooperative agreement (bargain) to consciously pursue economic development and national enrichment. Development bargains are not simple, they are often messy. And elites are not a bunch of altruistic do-gooders. Rather, through many complicated networks of intra-elite competitions and cooperation, they decide to gamble on the future by betting that economic development will deliver the biggest win. Dercon does not claim to have found the holy grail of development - and there are still many questions to be answered. But his argument does lead to one inevitable conclusion. Countries and their people will have to figure out what works for them and how that delivers prosperity.Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. He was the Chief Economist of the UK's Department of International Development (DFID).TranscriptTobi; Was your experience really what inspired you to write the book?Stefan; Well, you know, what inspired me definitely is just the contrast that I've had in terms of things I do. Because I've been an academic for a long time, I have more than 30 years writing and studying and, you know, I was one of these academics who like to, as one sometimes puts it, you know, like, likes to get mud on their feet, you know, mud on their boots. I used to work mostly on rural households and in most countries, these are amongst the poorest people, and you just get to know what's going on there. I have a policy interest, and I was just lucky 10 years ago, a bit more than that, I got a job as a Chief Economist in the UK aid agency, and it's just that contrast of having had the chance and the opportunity to get involved on the policy side, on meeting all the more senior people...and it's just that contrast between still enjoying being surrounded by people and what they do and understands livelihoods of poorer people, combined with being in the policy space, I felt like, you know, I have a unique perspective that I wanted to communicate. And it was just a quest to communicate, actually. If anything, I wanted just to tell more of these stories because I think, from all sides, we tend to misunderstand a lot of what's going on and how things work in practice. And that's definitely the case on the academic side. We're so far sometimes from reality that I wanted to tell that story a bit more.Tobi; And I mean, after you wrote the book, and after publication, I presume from some of the feedback that your book is actually quite successful. I gave so many copies away, right, I can't even count. I think at some point, I temporarily bought out Roving Heights' entire stock. So how has the reception been generally?Stefan; I mean, look, what you just told me makes it much more worthwhile than if white kids in Oxford are buying the book. So what I'm really pleased with is that it appealed to a much broader group of people. And actually, you know, if I'm really honest, I hadn't expected that people like you or I was in Bangladesh last week that young people there would actually appreciate the book, you know, that you would actually get people that think about these problems in these countries are actually interested in it. And I'm very pleased that people find it both worthwhile to read and quite interesting. Of course, I get some academics. One story last week in Bangladesh, I had a question, you know, how Lenin fitted in my book. Now, I had to struggle with the answer of how Vladimir Lenin would actually fit into the book and thinking, you know, that's an academic typically responding to, you know... I don't know, I'm not a deep theoretician but it was written out of a kind of pragmatic sense of what can I learn from economics and politics that actually is worthwhile communicating. So it's well received. And if I'm really honest, I don't mind that there are pdf copies circulating as well and things like that. Actually, as long as it's read, you know, you write a book, not because you want the highest sales, but you actually want it to be read, and that actually makes it really interesting that people seem to be able to relate to it. Another group that, actually, I found really interesting that can relate to it is people that are either civil servants working in governments like - in yours, as well as maybe aid officials and International World Bank officials, IMF officials, who actually find it helpful as well. You know, and there's usually a huge bridge between them, there's a huge gap between how in Washington when we think about these things, or in London or in Abuja, and so that's pleasing as well. You know, I don't give a solution to the things but I think I touched on something of where a big part of the problem of development lies is that actually, we are, unfortunately, in quite a few countries, still with governments that fundamentally are backed by elites that don't really want to make the progress and do the hard work. And that's an unfortunate message. But at the same time, you have other countries that are surprising countries that make the progress. And so clearly, there is a lesson there that it's not simply like the problem is simple. Actually, the problem is to some extent, simple. It's about, fundamentally, do you want to actually make it work, make this progress work? And I think that echoes with quite a lot of people - the frustration that many of us have, that some countries seem to be stuck and not making enough progress and we need to be willing to call it out for what it is that it's not entirely the fault of those people who are in control, but they could do far more for the better than they actually do.Tobi; For the purpose of making the conversation practical and accessible, in the spirit of the book itself, I'm going to be asking you some very simple... and what I consider to be fundamental questions for the benefit of the audience and people that probably have not read the book. So there have been so many other books on development that have also been quite as popular as yours, Why Nations Fail comes to mind, and so many others, The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, some of which you actually reviewed in the opening chapters of the book. And at the heart of most of them is some kind of fundamental concept that then defines how the body of work itself or the central idea itself works, whether it's institutions, or culture, or industrial policy, or whatever. For your book, you talked a lot about the development bargain, what is the development bargain? And how does it work?Stefan; So the way I look at any country in the world, and I mean, any country, rich or poor country is that one way or another, there is a group of people, which I call for convenience, ''the elite.'' It's not like a pejorative title or a title to applaud them, but simply as a descriptive title. The group of people, in politics, civil service, in business definitely, maybe the military, maybe even civil society, key universities, public intellectuals, I talk about the group that I refer to as the elite, these are the people that have power, or they have influenced one way or another, that can be quite broad. Now in every society, I think it's that group that tends to determine what politics and the economy will look like, what the direction of a country will look like, in any society. And I call that underlying idea [as] they have essentially a form of an elite bargain, a bargain between the different people, they don't have to agree on everything, but to have some kind of an agreement that this is the principle by which, you know, my country will be run in politics and in the economy. Now we could have lots of these elite bargains. We could have an elite bargain that, for example, is based on: if I happen to have power, then everything that I'll do is to reward the people that brought me to power. I'll give them jobs in government. I'll give them maybe contracts, I'll do something, you know, technically, we call this Clientelist. You could have another one where he's saying, Look, no, we're going to run this country, totally, where everybody gets an equal right or equal opportunity, and in a particular way. And so you could have political systems that are around this. Now you could have all these things coming together. You could have also regimes that basically say, Well, the main purpose for us is to keep us as a small group in power, you know, he could have a particular way of doing it. Or indeed, to make sure we use it entirely to steal anything we can get and we'll actually put it in our own pockets, you could have a kleptocracy. You could have lots of these different things, you know, you could have different societies. Now, what I mean by development bargain, is actually fundamentally where that underlying elite bargain values, the underlying idea is that we want to grow our economy, and we want to do this in quite an inclusive way. We want to have developmental outcomes as well. And we make this a key part of the elite bargain. So basically, I define a development bargain as an elite bargain - the deals that we have in running our economy and our politics, that fundamentally, one big way we will judge it is that when we make progress in the growth of the economy, and also in development for the broader population, and I call that the development bargain. And I want to actually go a step further and say if you don't have this, you will never see growth and development in your country. You could have leaders talk about it. They could make big development plans, but if underlying all this there is not a fundamental commitment by all these key players that actually it's worthwhile doing, we're not going to achieve it. And maybe I'll make a quick difference here with say, how does that difference...(now, you mentioned Why Nations Fail.) Now, that underlying elite bargain, of course, the nature of your rule of law, your property rights, all these things, they clearly will matter to some extent, but Why Nations Fail puts this entirely into kind of some historical process. And a lot of people that talk about getting institutions right, they say, Well, you need to get institutions right before you can develop, and they seem to come from a long historical process. In my concept of elite bargain, I would actually emphasize [that] even if your country is not perfect in these institutions, even if there's still some corruption left, even if there are still some issues with the political system, even with the legal system, we actually have countries that can make progress if, fundamentally, that commitment is there amongst the elite. So you don't have to wait until perfection starts before you can start to develop. And that actually [means that] I want to put much more power into the hands... sorry, agency is the better word, I put much more agency in those who at the moment are in control of the state. History may not be favourable for you, there may be a history of colonialism, there may be other histories, factors that clearly will affect the nature of your country at a particular moment in time. But actually agency from the key actors today, they can overcome it. And in fact, in the book, I have plenty of examples of countries that start from imperfection, and actually start doing quite interesting things in terms of growth and development, while other countries are very much more stagnant and staying behind. Tobi; You sort of preempted my next question. I mean, since say, 1990, or thereabout, when the results of some of the ''Asia Tigers'' started coming in, maybe also through the works of people like Wade, Hamsden and co., countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, have become like the standard for economic development, and subsequent analysis around issues of development always look at those countries and also their neighbours who have actually made some progress, maybe not as much as those specific countries. But what I want to ask you about in your book is, you talk about some of the works on development trying to reach for some kind of long history or some kind of historical...I don't want to say dependency or determinism, but you get my point. So my point is, if we go outside of these Asian Tigers, if we go back to say, Japan, or even the second industrial revolution, America, Germany, the Netherlands, can we observe the development bargain as you have described it? Is it also consistent through history?Stefan; I would say Absolutely. I mean, one of the things with when we look at these countries with longer-term success, you mentioned correctly, you know, the Koreas and also Japan, or going back in time to the Industrial Revolution, the second industrial revolution and so on, actually, we take for granted that actually they really wanted to succeed. And it's actually one of these things, and especially in recent history, [South] Korea came out of deep conflict, of course, it was also called War so they got certain support as well. But it was really important for both Japan and Korea after the Second World War, for Japan to re-emerge and for Korea to emerge. It was a form of also getting legitimacy towards their own population. So it was a real underlying deep commitment by that elite in these countries to try to make a success of it. We take it for granted, if we go back in history, take England in the 19th century...I mean, it was a very strong thing, it's like, you know, we wanted to show that actually, we are ruling the world on commerce and all the kinds of things, there was a deep motivation. And of course, also the pressures, you know, remember, the society was being very fractured, and we can't call growth in the 19th century in Britain very inclusive. [There was] a lot of change happening, and indeed, you know, very poor people I think actually initially didn't manage to take up. But especially if we come to the early 20th century became this kind of thing surely [where] development in the form of growth was also when it's a little bit broader shared, became quite part of it. And it's one of these things that when you look at politics, whether it's in the 1930s or 40s or 50s or now, whether it's in England or in America, actually growth and development, I won't take it for granted. People are voted out of office because they are not managing the economy well. There is a lot of political pressure in Europe now. And it's really political because ''oh you're not dealing with the cost of living crisis right or you're undermining the real income increases.'' You know, the US election, we ended up interpreting Trump as an election that actually [served] people [who] had stayed behind in the process of growth and development. Actually, in the politics of most richer countries, it's so much taken for granted that that's a big part of the narrative. So it's an interesting one (maybe, if I may) just to [use] China, I find it a really interesting one. Because, you know, the historical determinism is problematic there. And of course, some people would say, China should never have grown because it has the wrong institutions. But of course, it is growing fast. But if you think of a bit of what would be historical institutions that are relevant? China has had centralized taxation for 2000 years, a centralized bureaucracy for 2000 years, a meritocratic bureaucracy for 2000 years, you know, it actually had a history that actually acquired strong institutions. But funnily enough, when did it start? Just at the moment of deep weakness in the 1970s. When the Cultural Revolution had destabilised the legitimacy of the state, ideology was totally dominating, Mao died in the early 1970s and mid 1970s the Gang of Four came up, which was his widow, it was all turbulence. And actually lots of people thought China would disappear. It's at that moment, it picked up that kind of thing, you know, and actually, fundamentally, if you read all the statements of that periods, they became fundamentally committed, ''we need to make progress in our economy, that's our source of legitimacy.'' So even there there, that's where you see that actually really emerges and this became something that they needed to achieve - a fundamental commitment to growth and development as a form of getting legitimacy to the population. So in a very different way, as some of the other countries, but it's the same principle. Legitimacy of a lot of countries is equated with progress and growth and development, which is essentially a feature of a development bargain.Tobi; Obviously, all societies have some form of elite bargain. Not all elite bargains are development bargains. That's the gist of your book, basically. Now, what I'm trying to get at here is elite bargains that are not for development, that do not benefit the rapid progress of a society, how do they emerge? You talk about the agency of the people that are running the country at a particular point in time. To take Nigeria as an example, a lot of people will blame Nigeria's problems on colonialism. And I'm also quite intolerant of such arguments, at least up to a point. But what I'm trying to get at is that how do elite bargains that are not for development, how do they emerge? Is it via, also, the agency of the elites of those societies? Or are there features of a particular society that kind of determine the elite bargain that emerges? For example, sticking with Nigeria, a lot of people will argue that our elites and our institutions will think and look differently if we don't have oil.Stefan; Yes. Tobi; Right. The state will be less extractive in its thinking, the bureaucracy will be less predatory, right? A lot of people would argue that. So are there other underlying factors or features in a society that shape the kind of elite bargain that emerges, or this is just down to the agency of the people who find themselves with power and influence? They are just the wrong type of people.Stefan; So, Tobi, you make an excellent point here, and, so let's take this a little bit in turn. Leonard Wantchekon, the economic historian at Princeton, from Benin… he gave a nice lecture not so long ago, at Yale, it's on YouTube. And he made this very helpful statement, and he said, you know, if it's between history and agency, I would put 50% history 50% agency, okay. And I will actually add to it [which] is that depending on where you are, history is a little bit more or a little bit less. And so clearly, and he was talking about Africa in general, colonialism will matter. It has shaped your institutions and, you know, the way countries have emerged and the way they decolonized, all these things will have mattered, and they make it harder and easier and so on. But you alluded to it as well [that] at some level, it's already a long time ago now. Of course, it's still there, but it's a long time ago. So over time agency should become much more important. The point though, that you raise about oil makes a lot of sense. So the problem with a development bargain is that actually for a political elite, and for a business elite, dare I say for a military elite, the status quo is, of course, very convenient. Status quo is something that is very convenient because it involves very few risks. So the problem with growth typically is that, actually, new elites may emerge, a new type of business elites may emerge, they may question the economic elite that exists. As a result, it may change the politics. And in fact, if you go back to history, as we were saying, of course, that's the history of Britain where all the time, you know, there has been a shift of who is the elite, there's always a new elite, but it's shifting. So growth is actually a tricky thing. Because it actually, in that sense, changes relative positions in society. Now, that's obviously the case in every society. But it will even more so if the status quo is actually quite of relative affluence, if the status quo is actually quite a comfortable position to be. Now if you have natural resources, you don't need growth, to be able to steal. You can just basically control the resources that come out of the ground. And so your supply chain for stealing money can be very short, you don't have to do a very complicated game. If you need to get it from growth in the economy, it's much more complicated, and it's much more risky. Okay. And so it's not for nothing, that actually clearly, more countries that didn't have natural resources in recent times, over short periods of time, managed to actually get development bargains and basically leads gambling on it. Because actually, the status quo was not as lucrative as the status quo can be if you have a lot of oil or other minerals. And so you're right, and it makes it just really hard...and it actually means in fact [that] even well-meaning parts of the business elite in Nigeria will find it very hard to shift the model entirely. Because you know, you are a business elite, because you benefit from the system one way or another. I'm not saying that you steal, but it's just [how] the economy is based in Nigeria on a lot of non-tradables, is helped with the fact that you have so much to export from oil and so you end up importing a lot, but you can also keep your borders closed or anything you feel like keeping the borders closed for. And that helps for a lot of domestic industries, because protectionism, you know, you do all the things. So the system self sustains it. And with oil, there is not that much incentives to change it. So yes, it is actually harder if you have natural resources to actually reengineer the system to actually go for growth and development. So yes, it is the case. But it hasn't stopped certain countries from not going that route. You know, Malaysia has oil? Yes, it's not a perfect development bargain. But it has done remarkably well. Indonesia, in its early stages, also had oil in the 1970s as an important part, it managed this kind of relationship, and then maybe come the agency in it, you know, do we get enough actors that actually have the collective ability to shift these incentives enough to start promoting more outward orientation, try to export some new things from your country, all that kinds of stuff? And that is indeed what happened in Indonesia. There in the early 1970s, they had oil, but they also learned to export shoes and garments early on, they took advantage of good global situations. And Nigeria didn't, you know, and then agency comes into it, you know, the managers of both the politics and the relationship between politics and business, including from the military, they went in a particular route, and they had choices and they didn't take them. I'm pretty sure if you go back and, you know, there will be moments of choice and we went for another - as people call it - political settlement... another equilibrium that actually didn't involve development and growth as the key part. So yes, it makes it harder. But the agency still, still matters.Tobi; From that point, my next question then would be, what shifts an elite bargain more? That's kind of like do question, right? What shifts an elite bargain? These questions do sound simple. And I'm sorry, but I know they are incredibly difficult to answer. Otherwise, you wouldn't have written an entire book about it. Right. So what shifts an elite bargain more towards development? I mean, you talked about China, we've seen it also in so many other countries where the country was going in a particular direction that's not really pro growth, pro-development, and then there's this moment where things sort of shifts. So it may be through the actions of particular actors or events that inform those. So what... in your experience as a development practitioner and looking at all these places...What are the factors that have the most influence in shifting the elite bargain? Is it just luck? I mean, when I think about China, what if Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues had actually lost that particular power struggle after the death of Mao? So did they get lucky? Is it luck? What's going on?Stefan; You know, I wouldn't use title of gambling but there has to be a little bit of luck involved as well, you know, the circumstances have to play in your direction. But it's not just luck. Okay. So it's an interesting thing when you look at a couple of the countries, what were the moments that people within the elite managed to shift it in another direction? So. China is interesting because it was going through conflict, not deep conflict or violent conflict, but there was a lot of instability in China at the time, at the end of the Cultural Revolution in that period. Other countries like Bangladesh came out of conflict. And so conflict, definitely, or coming out of conflict creates a moment. But of course, there are lots of countries that come out of conflict that make a mess of it. It's a window of opportunity. And it probably is linked with something related to it, which is legitimacy. When you come out of conflict, most of the time, leaders need to reestablish legitimacy. This is clearly something that happened to Rwanda coming out of the genocide, Kagame clearly had to establish legitimacy, you know, he represented a very small group of people within the country and he needed to get legitimacy overall and he chose growth and development to doing that. I think Ethiopia is similar, that actually Meles Zenawi coming from Tigray, he needed, you know, post 2000, coming out of the Eritrean war at a time, and all kinds of other crisis that he was facing in his own party even, he needed to get legitimacy, and they thought he could get legitimacy for his regime through growth and development. So legitimacy-seeking behavior can be quite important. Now it has another side to it. If there's a crisis of legitimacy, that's the moment when the leader can actually take advantage of it. A crisis of legitimacy is actually saying, ''Well, look, we better go to something that begins to deliver to people.'' And why I'm actually suggesting it is that actually, there are in certain countries, a bit of pressure from below also seems to be quite useful. But there is a role there and I find it very hard to define exactly because I'm always scared of autocrats and so on. But the point of leadership is there. So I don't mean it as the strong leader, but more to do with the kind of group of people that manages to take other people along and convince them that is the kind of thing that they need to do. So if you go to Indonesia, I don't think it was Suharto personally, who was the great thinker there that did it. But he clearly surrounded himself with a group of people that included technocrats and also other people from politics, that actually managed to push this in a particular direction in doing it. So how do we get it? While it is actually people taking advantage of windows of opportunity to actually nudge towards it? Okay. But it's hard. We're talking Nigeria, other people have asked me questions about Brazil, about India, you know, large countries like yours with very complicated elite bargains that have national and state level things and so on... it's really complicated. Rwanda in that sense is well defined, you know, we have one well-defined problem and, you know, we could go for a particular model. It can be quite complicated to have some ideas on that on Nigeria, but maybe we can come to that a bit later.Tobi; So, I'm curious. I know you didn't cover this in your book. So let me let you speculate a bit on the psychology of elite bargains or development bargains specifically now. Given that I've also tried to look at some of the societies that you described, and even some others that you probably didn't mention, I don't think there's been a society yet where this is a gamble true, but where the elites have sort of lost out by gambling on development. So why don't we see a lot more gambles than we are seeing currently?Stefan; Actually, unfortunately, we see gambles that go wrong. I mean, for me, and I've worked a lot on Ethiopia, Ethiopia as a gamble that went wrong at the moment. And Ethiopia... you know, just think a little bit of what happened and maybe typify a little bit in a very simplistic way the nature of the gamble. You know, you had a leader under Meles Zenawi, under the TPLF - the Tigray and rebel group - where in the end the dominant force in the military force that actually took power in 1991. And they stayed dominant, even though they only represent, you know, five 6% of the population, they remain dominant in that political deal. Though other groups joined, but militarily, it was the TPLF that was the most powerful. So it also meant that the political deal was always fragile because in various periods of time, you know, my very first job was teaching in Addis Ababa University so I was teaching there 1992 93... you know, we have violence on the streets of students that were being actually repressed by the state, they were demonstrating against the government. You know, over time, we have various instances where this kind of legitimacy, the political legitimacy of that regime was also being questioned. Now, one of the gambles that Meles Zenawi took was to actually say, look, there's a very fragile political deal, but I'm actually going to get legitimacy through growth and development. So he used development as a way of getting legitimacy for something that politically and you know, just as Nigeria is complicated, Ethiopia is complicated with different nationalities, different balances between the regions, that he actually wasn't quite giving the space for these different nationalities to have a role, but he was gambling on doing it through growth and development. How did this go wrong? You know, I kept on spending a lot of time, but in the 2010s after Meles Zenawi died, very young from illness, the government still tried to pursue this. But actually, increasingly, they couldn't keep the politics together anymore. They were almost a different nationality, they were always on the streets, there was lots of violence and so on. And then in the end, you know, the Tigrayans lost power in the central government, and then, of course, we know how it escalated further after Abiy. But in some sense, the underlying political deal was fragile and the hope was that through economic progress, we could strengthen that political deal to legitimacy. That gamble is fine. Now it's a very fractured state and unfortunately, all the news we get from the country is that it's increasingly fractured. And I don't know how we'll put it together again. So that's a gamble that failed. Now, we know more about it. And it was very visible because it lasted quite a long time. Many of these gambles may actually misfire if they don't pick the right political moments. You know, if you don't do it at the right moment, and if you're a little bit unlucky with global circumstances, you fairly quickly could get into a bit of trouble politically, and whatever. For example, with the high inflation we have in virtually every country in the world now, it is clearly not the moment to gamble. It's extremely risky, [and] fragile, and your opponents will use it against you. So it's another thing like, you know, we don't see them gambling, you know, there are relatively few windows of opportunities at which you can gamble. And there are some that will go wrong. And even some that I described as successes, you know, we don't know whether they will last, whether they will become the new Koreas. I'm cautious about that. So, we need to just see it a little bit. Although I don't see Nigeria taking that gamble. So that's another matter.Tobi; No, no. I mean, that's where I was going next. Let me talk to you a bit about the role of outsiders here. We're going to get the aid discussion later. So currently in Nigeria, obviously, the economy has been through a lot in the last several years, a lot of people will put that firmly into the hands of the current administration. Rightly so. There were some very terrible policy choices that were made. But one point that I've quite often made to friends is that, to borrow your terminology, I don't think Nigeria was under the influence of a development bargain that suddenly went astray seven years ago. We've always been heading in this direction, some periods were just pretty good. And one of those periods was in the mid to late 2000s, when the economy seemed to be doing quite well, with high oil prices and also, the government actually really took a stab at macro-economic reforms. But if also you look carefully at the micro-history of that period, you'll see the influence of, should I say, outside legitimacy, you know, trying to get the debt forgiveness deal over the line and, you know, so many other moves that the government was making to increase its credibility internationally was highly influential in some of those decisions and the people that were brought into the government and some of the reform too. And my proof for that when I talk to people is to look at the other things that we should have done, which, we didn't do. We had the opportunity to actually reform either through privatization, a more sustainable model of our energy policy - the energy industry, generally. Electricity? People like to talk about telecommunications and the GSM revolution, but we didn't do anything about electricity, we didn't do anything about transportation. Infrastructure was still highly deficient and investment was not really serious, you know. So it was not... for me, personally, it was not a development bargain. Now, my question then would be, could it have been different if some of the outside influences that are sometimes exerted on countries can be a bit more focused on long-term development, as opposed to short-term macro-economic reforms on stability? You know, institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, I know they have their defined mandates, but is it time for a change? I think they actually have a lot more influence than they are using currently.Stefan; You make extremely valid points. And I think I will broadly agree with you with what you just implied. And I'll take a stance on it now. So the first thing, of course, and you correctly saw that something very misleading in Nigeria's growth figures is that periods of high growth are not at all linked to much action by economic policymakers. But it's still largely linked to oil prices. And we have this unfortunate cyclical behaviour in policymaking. Where the behaviour when prices are really good, is just always missing taking advantage of the opportunity. While when things are bad, we're talking about all kinds of things one ought to be doing but then saying, ''we can't do it because the prices are low.'' And so there is this kind of strange, asymmetric thing about policymaking that we always have the best ideas when we can't do them, and then we don't have the ideas we should have when the going is good. And this is in a way what you're alluding to. Of course, the role of outsiders that gets very interesting is what these outsiders were focusing on, actually, I think it was in the interest of the, call them, semi-outsider inside government...some of these technocrats that were brought in. And I can understand it entirely, you know, there were some really sensible finance ministers at various moments and so on. They were focused on actually things that were relatively easy in that period. So they were actually relatively easy, because the going was quite good. And so actually you created that strange impression, and it's a little bit like together with the outsiders, with World Bank, IMF, but actually, we're dealing with something really dramatic but, actually, we were not at all setting a precedent because it was actually, relatively... relatively politically low cost to do these things at that moment. Okay. So it was progress of sorts, you know, getting the debt relief, and so on. But arguably, you know, it's not a bad thing. But this actually was quite a low-hanging fruit and many of these organizations like these ideas of low-hanging fruits, because actually, politically, it played well, it increased the stature internationally of Nigeria...but, actually, it didn't really cost the elite much. It wasn't really hard for the elite to do these things. [If they did] the difficult things, they would really have started to change Nigeria. And so there is something there that I'm struck by the last sentence you said that some of these outsiders may be focusing on the wrong things. I think it has to be the insiders wanting to focus on these things, on these more difficult things. And then I do agree with you, the outsider should be smarter, and better able to respond to this. There's a problem with the outsiders here as well, take something that clearly you still struggle with and struggled forever with - electricity reform, the electricity sector. It's so complicated, and it's set up so complicated in all kinds of ways and whatever. So much inefficiency, so much waste that then it doesn't function and everybody, you know, complains about it. But it becomes politically very sensitive because there are definitely vested interests linked to it now and it becomes very hard to unravel it. Now the problem is if you ask typically a World Bank or an IMF for advice, they will make it very simple and say, Oh, just privatize the whole thing and do the whole thing. Now. You know that in a politically sensitive environment, you just can't privatize everything, so you privatize a little bit, but anything that's really with vested interests you won't touch. But these are the inefficient bits. So the easy prey, you privatize, and that's someone else making even more money off it because it's actually the efficient part of those systems that gets privatized, and then the inefficient part is still there and costs even more money. And so what I think these outsiders could do better is to have a better understanding of Nigeria's political economy, which is complicated at the best of times, but really understand, where can we start actually touching on something that we are beginning to touch on something vested interests that we begin to unravel a little bit some of the kind of underlying problem of, you know, politically connected business, you know, all the way to party financing or whatever...that you need to start unraveling somehow, where actually the underlying causes of inefficiency lie. Because the underlying causes of inefficiency are not just technical, they're actually not just economic. The underlying causes are these kinds of things. So I think why the outsiders did what they did at that time, it actually suited the government at the time, the technocratic ministers, that's the best they could do because that was the only mandate they had. Together with the outsider, they'd say, Well, that's certainly something we could do. But actually, fundamentally, you didn't really change that much. You don't still have then wherever it goes a bit bad, I'll get six or whatever exchange rates, and I'll get all kinds of other macroeconomic poor management, and, of course, nothing can happen when there's a crisis. There's no way we can do these more micro sector-specific reforms than doing it. So yeah, you're absolutely right. But let's not underestimate how hard it is. But starting to do the things that you refer to is where we need to get to to doing some of these difficult things.Tobi; The way I also read your book is that the two classic problems of political economy are still present, which is, the incentive and the knowledge problem. So I want to talk about the role of knowledge and ideas here. Let's even suppose that a particular group of elites at a particular time are properly incentivized to pursue a development bargain. Right? Sometimes the kind of ideas you still find floating around in the corridors of power can be quite counterproductive. A very revealing part of your book for me was when you were talking about the role of China. Also, I have no problem with China. The anecdote about Justin meme stood out to me quite well, because I could relate to it personally because I've also been opportuned to be at conferences where Justin Lin spoke, and I was slightly uneasy at how much simplification happens. I mean, just to digress a little bit, there was a particular presidential candidate in the just concluded primaries of the ruling party, I'm not going to mention the name, who is quite under the heavy influence of the China model. Right? Always consults with China, always meeting with Chinese economists and technocrats. And my reaction when he lost the primaries was ''thank god,'' right? Because what I see mostly in development thinking locally, I don't mean in academic circles, a lot of debates are going on in academics... is that the success of China and Asia more broadly has brought the State primarily into the front and centre. If you look at this current government, they will tell you seven years ago that they meant well. You know, judging by the Abba Kyari anecdotes where government should own the means of production. He may not believe that, like you said, truthfully, but you can see the influence of what has been called ''state-led development.'' In a state where there is no capable bureaucracy. The government itself is not even optimized to know the problem to solve or even how to solve that particular problem. Right. So broadly, my question is, if an elite chooses to pursue a development bargain, how does it then ensure that the right ideas, which lead to the right kind of policies, and maybe there might not even be the right policies - one of the things you mentioned is changing your mind quickly, it's an experimental process - but, you know, this process needs people who are open to ideas, who change their minds, who can also bring other people in with different ideas, you know, so this idea generation process in a development bargain, how can it be stable even if you have an elite consensus is that chooses to pursue development?Stefan; Look, it's an excellent question. And last week, or 10 days ago, when it was in Bangladesh, I was very struck that, you know, as a country I think that has the development bargain, there was a lot of openness. And you know, I was in the Ministry of Finance, and people had a variety of ideas, but they were all openly debated, there was not a kind of fixed mindset. And it is something that I've always found a bit unfortunate dealing with both politicians and senior technocrats in Nigeria. Nigeria is quickly seen as the centre of the world, there's nothing to learn from the rest of the world, we'll just pick an idea, and then we'll run with it and there's nothing that needs to be checked. And, you know, I love the self-confidence, but for thinking and for pursuit of ideas, you know, looking around and questioning what you hear whether you hear it from Justin Lin, who by the way, I don't think he's malign and he means well, he just has a particular way of communicating but it is, of course, a simplified story that you can simply get, and then you'll pick it up. And of course, if you ask the UK Government, the official line from London, they will also tell you there is only one model when they're purely official, but privately they will be a bit more open-minded, and maybe Chinese officials don't feel they have that freedom to privately encourage you to think a bit broader and so you have maybe a stricter line. So how do we do that? I think we can learn something here from India in the 1970s and 1980s. So when India after independence, it had a very strict set of ideas. In that sense, India was as a child of its time as a state, you know, state control, state-led development, there were strong views around it and India ended up doing a lot of regulation. They used to refer to India as the License Raj. Like a whole system based around licensing and everything was regulated by the state. So the state had far too much say in terms of the activity, despite the fact that the underlying economy was meant to be very entrepreneurship and commerce-led, but you had a lot of licensing rules, and so on. And of course, its growth stayed very low in the 1970s and 80s, it was actually very stagnant. It changed in the 1990s. Partly came with a crisis - in fact, a balance of payments crisis - it needs to reform and Manmohan Singh was the finance minister, then, later on, he became maybe a less successful Prime Minister. But as a finance minister in the early 90s, he did quite amazing things. And then during the 90s, gradually, every party started adopting a much more growth-oriented, more outward-oriented type of mindset. Now, why do I say this? Because actually, during the 1970s, and 80s, you had think-tanks, all the time pushing for these broader ideas. It took them 20 years. But there were really well-known think-tanks that kept on trying to convince people in the planning commission, economists in the universities and so on. And to critically think, look, there must be other ways. So actually, funnily enough, in India, it has a lot to do with the thinking and the public debates, that initially the politicians didn't take up, but actually found the right people to influence... you know, you actually have still in the civil service some decent technocrats there, they don't get a chance. But there are decent people, I know some of them and so on. But there needs to be a feeding of these ideas. And actually, this is where I would almost say there's a bit of a failing here, in the way the public discourse is done [in Nigeria] and maybe voices like you, but also more systematically from universities from think tanks and so on to actually feed and keep on feeding these ideas. There is a suggestion [by] Lant Pritchett - you know he's a former Harvard economist, he is now in the UK - [who] wrote this very interesting paper and he said, some of these think tanks who are actually getting a little bit of aid money here and there and he said, that's probably the best spent aid money in India ever. Because the rate of return and he calculates this number is like 1,000,000%, or something. Because he basically says the power of ideas is there. And I do think there is something there that I'm always surprised by that there are some very smart Nigerians outside the country, they don't really get much of a hearing inside the country, then there are some that are actually inside the country, the quality of debate is maybe not stimulated to be thinking beyond. It has to do probably with how complicated your country is, and of course, the Federal status plays a role. I just wonder whether maybe this is something that needs to start in particular states. You know, there are some governors that are a little bit more progressive than others. Maybe it is actually increasing and focusing attention over this on a few states to get the debate up to a high level and to actually see what they can do and maybe it's where the entry point is, but you need ideas I agree with you and I do worry at times about the kind of critical quality... there are some great thinkers in Nigeria, don't get me wrong, but the critical quality of ideas around alternative ways of doing the economy and so on, and that they get so easily captured by simple narrative, simple national narratives that are really just too simple to actually pursue. I mean...yeah.Tobi; That's quite deep. That's quite deep. I mean, just captures my life's mission right there. It's interesting you talked about Lant Pritchett and the question of aid, which is like my next line of question to you. There was this brief exchange on Twitter that I caught about the review of your book in the guardian, and the question of aid came up. I saw responses from Martin Ravallion, from Rachel Glennerster, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing her name right. So it's sort of then brings me to the whole question of development assistance, aid, and the way intervention has now been captured by what works. One fantastic example I got from your book is on Bangladesh, and how both systems work. You know, there's a broad development bargain, it's not perfect, nothing is, no society is. And there's the pursuit of economic growth. And also, it's a country where aid money and all forms of development assistance is quite active, and is quite huge, and it's actually quite effective. Now, my question is that basic insight from your book, which is for aid spending to be a little bit more biased, not your word... a little bit more bias to countries that have development bargains broadly? Why is that insight so difficult for, I should say, the international NGO industry to grasp? Why is it elusive? Because the status quo, which I would say, I don't mean to offend anybody, but which I will say is also aided by development economists and academics who have sort of put methodology and evidence above prosperity, in my view... because what you see is that, regardless of how dysfunctional the country is, broadly, the aid industry just carves out a nice niche where they do all sorts of interventions, cash transfers, chickens and, of course, you can always do randomized control trials and you say you have evidence for what works. But meanwhile you don't see the broad influence of some of these so-called assistants in the country as a whole. And these are institutions who proclaim that they are committed to fighting extreme poverty and we know what has vastly reduced poverty through history has always been economic growth and prosperity. So why is this elusive? Have those agencies and international development thinking itself been captured?Stefan; Look, I think I should make you do my interviews in the future. Yeah. So I've got to hire you to give...Because, look, I've been inside the aid industry and, in fact, the two people that you mentioned, you know, I would call them my friends, although one of them clearly is very cross at me at the moment. But you know, these are people I've worked with, and so on. And I am worried that there is such an obsession within the aid industry to prove their effectiveness. And I know I've been under pressure, you know, I've worked in it and sitting in London and getting your newspapers to say you're wasting all this money. It's really affecting a lot of people. And it was really hardwork for these 10 years that I sat inside it. But it's about just the humility that you just described, you know, and I want to make this distinction between...I'm about to make two distinctions. So the first one is - you made it well, even Bangladesh, something is going on. And you know, with all the imperfections, the government is trying to do something, and largely by staying to some extent out of the way. And there's some good stuff happening. So there's growth picking up and so on. So you can do all kinds of things. And I think aid in Bangladesh has been great at trying to make sure that the growth that was taking place in that country was a bit more inclusive than it probably would have been. I think it's great. And I think the aid industry should be proud of it. There is a great book that I quote as well also by Naomi Hossein and she calls it The Aid Lab and this is a bit like in praise of it. You know, if we do it carefully with some community and complement what's going on in a country that is deeply poor, you know, you can actually do really good things. Because in the book, I also mentioned Ghana that, actually, aid has been pretty effective because something had begun to change in the 90s, and so on. And we can question that to some extent and, of course, it's none of this perfection. But if you then come to a country where, you know... probably the two of us agree [that] there is some form of stagnation in that kind of [country], there's no development bargain, the elite bargain doesn't really push everything forward. Just be humble to say, look, I have a little niche, and there will be some chicken farmers that are happier, we'll do some good things in health... in health, actually, it's quite straightforward to do good things. But they are to call these good things, don't classify this as if you are leading the fight against extreme poverty, leading the fight against the change in these countries. Because, actually, if the local elite is not leading their change, and those people who have the power and influence not leading their change, the best you can do is doing good things. So I'm happy for us to be able to say we do good things. And it led me in the context of an interview to say like in India, as doing a lot of good things means that aid was actually in itself quite irrelevant, because the real change came, as I described in the 90s, actually, there was a real shift in gear, and suddenly their own development spending became gradually more effective. And of course, you can help them then to make it more effective. But, you know, I was a bit sad, and Martin Ravallion now took issue with it and wanted to emphasize... you know, and I don't want us to ever say, look, we did it. I mean, it's such a lack of humility I'll say this. At some point, we may have been supportive of doing it, but it's always the countries that did it. And the people there that did it. And other times just be humble and say, well, we may be doing something reasonably good, we may improve health outcomes, education outcomes, but not necessarily the whole country may do it in the schools that we work in, or whatever. And it's, that's good, you know, that's just as there are Nigerians that do good things via their own organizations and so on, they do good things. And it's probably teachers in the country, within the state schools that do some of these good things in the best practice stuff. And so yeah, they improve things, but overall, have the humility to say you're not changing Nigeria, because unfortunately, Nigeria is not being changed at the moment.Tobi; So my question then would be, is it reflective of the current intellectual climate in development economics where randomized control trials, they pursue...I know Lant Pritchett has really come down quite heavily on this particular movement, though, sometimes he seems to be the only one standing, maybe not quite literally true and I'll give you two examples from Nigeria, right? In 2012, when the anti subsidy-removal protests broke out, when the government on the first day of January removed fuel subsidy and prices suddenly went up. And the labour movement, the student movement, opposition politicians mobilized the population against that particular move. Some form of resolution that the current president at that time reached was to do what they call a partial removal of subsidy, you know, prices will go up a little bit and the government then did a scheme - an entrepreneurship scheme - where you submit a business plan and you're paid to get $50,000 to do a business.And I read a particular study by David Evans of the World Bank of how fantastically successful this particular scheme was, and of course, no doubt, it was successful. I mean, if you get $50,000 to do business in Nigeria, that's a lot of money. I don't need econometric analysis to know that, but maybe some people do. But the truth is, if you look today, I can bet you that a lot of those businesses are probably dead now due to how the economy as sort of evolved after that. Secondly, at the time we were having these debates and protests in 2012, the subsidy figure there was $8 billion annually, today it is $15 billion. So if you say you have evidence that something works, what exactly is your time horizon for measuring what works? And if you say something works, works in whose benefit, really? The most recent example was in 2018, 2019, where the government was given a small amount of money to small retailers, they call it Trader Moni. I'm sure there were World Bank officials and economists (I have a lot of respect for them) who are measuring the effectiveness of this thing. But you could see clearly that what was politically going on was the government doing vote buying. Right? So if you say something work, works for whom? Right? That was my response to Rachel on Twitter, but she didn't reply me. My question then to you... Sorry, I'm talking too much... Is this reflective of the current intellectual climate in development economics? Stefan; So yes and no? Okay. So, well, i'm going to have to be very careful. Of course, Rachel...I know her very well. And, actually, I have not that many gripes with her. She comes out of, indeed, the whole school of RCTs. By the way, I also actually do RCTs. I like it as a tool to actually study things. And I'll explain in a moment a bit more. So I do these randomized control trials as well. But I am very, very sympathetic. And I actually totally agree with your frustration around this idea to creating that impression about what works. You know, I have it in the book, I even mentioned it, there was a particular minister that at some point announced we're only going to spend our money on what works, you know, like a great slogan, as if you have all the answers, you know what to do. And of course, there is a technical meaning to it. Technical meaning would mean, if I do something and if you haven't done it, what would have been the outcome? And the paper that you refer on the entrepreneurship, this entrepreneurship for the $50,000... I know actually the research very well, the original was from David McKenzie and then other people commenting on it. Yes, relative to a counterfactual, yes, it was actually much bigger than an alternative scheme, you know, then that's something. So you could say, well, you know, as a research question, as a researcher, I find it interesting. From a policy point of view, I'm so much more cautious. And I'm totally with you. You know, first of all, in the bigger scheme of things, how tiny maybe it be... now there are some people who would say, well, we don't know anything, really, what to do in this whole messy environment so at least [to] have something that does a bit better than other things is maybe a useful thing to know. I think it comes back to that humility. As a research tool, it's great at getting exact answers. As a policy tool, I think we need to have much more humility. Because are these ideas tha totally transforms everything, that is actually makes a huge difference? Not really. It probably means that we can identify a little bit and I think even Pritchard wouldn't disagree with [that] sometimes a few things are a little bit better than other things. And if we want to do good, maybe it's helpful in medicine whether we know whether we should spend a bit more money on X or on Y, that it actually does a little bit better in the functioning of a health facility or not, if we spent a bit more money on that practice or on that practice, same in teaching in the school, if we do a little bit more of that in a very constrained environment than something else, that's useful, it doesn't change dramatically. And I categorize it with doing good. With humility, if we do good, it's helpful to know which things are a bit better than other things...when we try to do good. It's an interesting thing, even in Rachel's thread, she actually used it, we can still do quite a lot of good with aid. Actually, funnily enough, I don't disagree that deeply with her and say, Yeah, we may be able to do it good, but don't present it as if we, in the bigger scheme of things, which is where you're getting that, make any difference. And this is where I'm also sympathetic with Lant in saying, Look, sometimes we seem to be focusing on the small trivial things and yeah, it's useful to know but meanwhile the big picture is what you were describing, there's so much going on and, actually, nothing changes there. And so I categorize it in a bit of the same thing. Because I'll now give you an account, which is then go to Bangladesh again. Look, I think it was extremely useful in Bangladesh at some point to really have ... an RCT - a randomized control trial. So really careful evidence to show that a particular program that BRAC, the biggest NGO in the world, the local NGO, was actually what it was actually doing to the ultra-poor. In fact, two weeks ago, I was visiting the program again. And I find it really interesting because it's really helpful for BRAC to know that that program, when I do it in a careful evaluation relative to other things, that actually this program is really effective. And that, actually, we know for BRAC that they can have so much choices to spend their money on poverty alleviation, the things that we can dream up, to actually know this is actually a really good thing. And why of course does it work? Well, it works relative to doing nothing, but of course, it helps in Bangladesh {that] growth is taking place and it actually can get people to become [a big] part of it. In fact, I was visiting people that, whether we use a Nigerian or Bangladeshi definition of extreme poverty, they wouldn't have been in that state 10 years ago and so this is their being six, seven years in that program, and it was really interesting that I was sitting into some interviews they were doing, and I looked over my shoulder, and they now had a TV and a fridge. And I say, okay, an extremely poor person in Bangladesh would not have had this. So there's clearly something happening. Now, that's not simply because of the program. It's also because the whole country is improving. But I'm pretty sure and what the data showed is that those who actually had a program would have found it a bit easier to take part in that progress. And I'm pretty sure that the TV, and the fridge, probably was helped, to some extent, by the programme. In fact, we have very good evidence in the kind of evidence that Rachel Glennerster talks about. So again, I think it's all about a bit of humility, and understanding better what we mean by it. And to be honest, I think there are lots of people who work in that field that are careful with it. And that actually will do it, use it well. It gets just really worrying that people, often more junior people than Rachel, they've never really been in the field properly and then they make massive statements. So they work in big organizations, and they use that evidence, overuse it and overstate it. I think Rachel is actually careful, even her thread was very careful, although your question is a very good one. But it's very careful. But it still allows other people to overinterpret this whole thing. And then I get really worried. I'm actually going to put out a thread on Twitter in the coming days where I'm going to talk about tribalism in development economics... where I'm good to deal with your question as well because I think the way the profession has evolved is that you need to be in one tribe or another, otherwise, you're not allowed to function. I think, you know, you need to be eclectic, you know, no one has this single answer. And there's too much tribalism going on, much more than I've ever known before. You know, you need to be Oh, a fan of that, or you need to be the historical approach, or the Political Economy approach, and the whole... we should learn from all these bits. That's the idea of knowledge that you learn from... as much as possible from the progress in different parts of a discipline, or in thinking.Tobi; I'm glad to have caught you on a free day because having a lot more time to have this conversation has made it quite rich for me personally, and I'm sure for the audience as well. So I just have a couple more questions before I let you get back to your day. The first of those would be...um, when I first became aware of your book on Twitter, it was via a Chris Blattman thread. And he mentioned something that I have also struggled with, both personally in my thought and, in my conversation with people. And somethin

Bekele Shanko joined full-time missionary work with Campus Crusade for Christ International in Ethiopia in 1993. Since then, he has held diverse leadership roles for the organization, including National Director for Ethiopia for five years, Area Director for Southern and Eastern Africa for 11 years, and Global Vice President since 2010. Bekele also serves as President of the Global Alliance for Church Multiplication (GACX), a global network of church-planting organizations, which he helped to launch in 2011; President of the Global Academy for Transformational Leadership (GATL), which he founded in 2008; and leader of the task force “Body of Christ in Every Place,” as part of the Finishing the Task movement. Bekele was involved in designing and leading major national and international evangelistic projects, such as Operation Philip in Ethiopia, Operation Sunrise Africa in Southern and Eastern Africa, and Global Church Movements, which seeks to plant a church for every 1,000 people worldwide through training and church multiplication. Before joining Campus Crusade for Christ, Bekele worked for the Ethiopian government as a head of information management for the National HIV/AIDS Control Program for five years. He holds a B.Sc. degree in Statistics and Mathematics from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, an M.A. in Organizational Leadership from Azusa Pacific University, a doctorate in Global Transformational Leadership from Bakke Graduate University, and certificates in Executive Leadership and Executive Negotiation from Harvard Business School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. Bekele and his wife Shewa have four children — Nathan, Elim, Philip, and Nesiel and over the course of their ministry, the Shankos have lived in Ethiopia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the United States. Episode Talking Points Growing up years in Ethiopia Bekele's father and the witch doctor Bekele and Bill Bright Barriers to partnership in the body of Christ Kingdom principles of partnership Power in unity, humility in relationships Discipleship crisis The good news Resources Never Alone: From Ethiopian Villager to Global Leader --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-monday-christian/support

If you are interested in collaboration please reach out to Dr. Zewde at: yared.zenebe@aau.edu.etLink to the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2467981X22000087?via%3Dihubdoi: 10.1016/j.cnp.2022.02.001If you would like to get in touch with the show our email is: clinicalneuroasktheexperts@gmail.com Links to the Internal Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology Social MediaTwitter - https://twitter.com/ClinicalNeuroph/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ClinicalNeurophysiology/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/clinicalneuroph/Linkedin -https://www.linkedin.com/in/ClinicalNeurophysiology/detail/recent-activity/ 

The LabOpp Global Leaders podcast is a series of conversations about Careers, the Lab Industry, Training, and People. Our special guest this episode is Yosef Tsegaye. In sharing his story, we learn about the value of early career roles in blood services, elements that drive medical laboratory professionals to consider roles in academia and research in Ethiopia, and examine his most recent publication in Frontiers in Immunology “Alteration of Endocrine Hormones and Antibody Responses in Different Spectrum of Tuberculosis Disease” If you would like to get in touch with Yosef, you can find him on LinkedIn. Some of the organizations mentioned during this podcast: · Wollega University https://wollegauniversity.edu.et/ · Addis Ababa University http://www.aau.edu.et/ · Ethiopian Ministry of Health National Blood Bank Services https://www.moh.gov.et/site/National_Blood_Bank_Services · Armauer Hansen Research Institute https://ahri.gov.et/ · Frontiers in Immunology https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology · Alteration of Endocrine Hormones and Antibody Responses in Different Spectrum of Tuberculosis Disease Yosef et al. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.849321/full · Ethiopia Public Health Institute https://ephi.gov.et/ If you have suggestions for future guests or comments about this podcast, please visit us at labopp.org/podcast/ Thank you for leaving a rating and review to help us share this podcast! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/labopp/message

Our guest is Dagnachew Birru (PhD) who is currently the Global Head of R&D at Quantiphi. Dr. Dagnachew has many years of experience as an idea-driven technology researcher, developer, and leader in systems employing Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and smart algorithms, resulting in 50+ issued patents. He was born and raised in Northern Ethiopia. Dr. Birru grew up in a very difficult time where there were no role models who could inspire him professionally. He was curious to learn about technology that he used to disassemble his dad's radio to learn where the sound was coming from and how it worked. He used to do some work to financially help his family. Dagnachew was a bright young man that he betted on himself that when he sat for a national exam he said "If I pass this exam, I will move forward and continue my education or else I will be a businessman". He passed and went to Addis Ababa University to study Electrical Engineering. Dr. Birru had high grade and the university hired him as a lecturer. After serving for about a year, he and his friend were able to secure a scholarship in Netherland where Phlips was funding the program. He studied Master of Science -Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Electronics Engineering and Signal Processing from Technische Universiteit Delft. His PhD thesis helped him secure his job at Philips in New York, USA. Dr. Birru have worked at Philips, Philips Lighting & Signify all of which are Philips companies and he served in many different levels started from a researcher to team leadership roles and to more higher positions such as Head of Research & Sr. Director, Head of Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence. He is currently Global Head of R&D at Quantiphi where he focuses further shape, build and lead a world-class R&D function, reimagining business with AI-led solutions, and laying the foundation for the next phase of growth. Quantiphi, Founded in 2013, is an award-winning AI-first digital engineering company driven by the desire to solve transformational problems at the heart of business. As always, I was privileged to learn Dagnachew Birru's Tech Journey first hand. I would like to thank Dr. Birru for his time and willingness to share his tech journey and respond to all of the questions from audiences and myself. I would also like to thank everyone who made it to the live session on clubhouse. Please help us spread this wonderful recording here on LinkedIn & all of the social media platforms. Share | Comment | Like Follow Teferi Kassa | Follow Habesha in Tech

This episode we welcome the man who wears many hats; Dr. Abebe Bekele, founding Dean of the School of Medicine and Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Global Health and Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda. Dr. Bekele is a renowned thoracic Surgeon and a Professor of Surgery at Addis Ababa University, School of Medicine in Ethiopia. He is a fellow of the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa (COSECSA), the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the University of Washington, as well as the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER). He has published innumerable journals, reports, and book chapters and has received international awards and recognition for his monumental contributions to the improvement of surgical care in SSA and worldwide. With Dr. Bekele, the term “many hats” is an overwhelming understatement, as his titles and accomplishments are far too vast to enumerate without composing a comprehensive memoir. In addition to his clinical and academic ventures, he has taken on a prominent role as a global surgery advocate while demonstrating his infinite passion for health equity in all of its representations through his work and activism. He is the epitome of a global surgery and surgical education champion, and his proactivity in the promotion of gender equity, sustainable partnerships, and the decolonization of global health shine brightly in this field. This episode sees Dr. Bekele share his experiences and wisdom, beginning with a detailed description of his career path, ambitions, and moving through to his establishment of the School of Medicine at the UGHE. He details the pragmatic solutions that UGHE has adopted in order to tackle issues in gender equity as well as provide training on social justice, human rights, and social determinants of health to their medical students. If one thing is emphasized above all in this episode, it is the importance of establishing resilient and multifarious training programs for medical professionals. He accentuates that clinical training must be centered around district hospitals in order to create well-rounded acute care surgeons. Students may then attend larger urban referral centers for specialized procedures to top off their skillsets once they have mastered treating the most common pathologies that they will encounter first. Dr. Bekele proclaims the importance of the altruistic humanitarian aid that is being offered to address barriers to care in Africa, but emphasizes that this help must come in the form of an equitable and sustainable partnership in order for it to succeed. To facilitate this, the UGHE has designed a model –  The Seven Steps of Sustainable Partnerships. Learn more at https://ughe.org/  Contact:  instagram: ott_globalsurgery twitter: OFFTHETABLE_POD email: offthetablepod21@gmail.com patreon: https://www.patreon.com/offthetablepodcast

Today I welcome traffic collision experts Michal Grivna and Yasin Jemal Yasin to talk about new research on collisions and the pandemic. Prof. Michal Grivna is a leading expert in injury control and safety promotion. Prof. Grivna´s research included topics related to childhood and adolescent injuries, school safety, traffic safety, baby walker injuries, child vehicle occupant protection, playground injuries, trauma registration and other public health issues. He is collaborating as a consultant with various public health and preventive medicine institutions in the United Arab Emirates and abroad, including Department of Health Abu Dhabi and Dubai Health Authority. He played a leading role in activities of the European Child Safety Alliance and implementation of WHO Safe Community Program. He is currently a mentor of young scientists in WHO Violence and Injury Prevention Mentorship Program. Yasin Jemal Yasin holds BSc degree in Environmental Health from Haramaya University, Ethiopia, Masters Degree in Public Health (MPH) from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and MSc in Environmental Sciences from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia, and a certificate in Clinical Research from Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, USA. He is also a faculty member in School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Mekelle Univeristy, Ethiopia. He is a 3rd year Ph.D student in the Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), UAE. My Ph.D thesis title is "Risk factors affecting the patterns and severity of road traffic collisions: Global and UAE perspective."

This week, I am joined by my very dear friend Ahadu. He is originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and completed his undergraduate degree at Addis Ababa University majoring in law. Afterwards, he did a post graduate degree on International and Commercial Law at the University of Greenwich in London. He is currently the Commercial Legal Counsel for DIAGEO Ethiopia.  In this episode we discussed how each of us managed our finances as students and how we had to do not-so-pleasant jobs to make money. Furthermore, we discussed the importance of budgeting and keeping track of our expenses as a student while also opening up space for splurging now and then. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to internationaliebyruth@gmail.com or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

Important episode to consider what does principled anti-imperialist solidarity suppose to look like for the Horn of Africa with critical three points1. Let's examine the left content creators and journalist position as being too pro Abiy/PP due to the sourcing info from the Abyssinian (Amhara region)/PFDJ alliance that is led to the creation of the new diaspora based #NoMore movement and current development...Why did they do this? Maybe the motivating factor is for social media traction/audience metrics/donations etcYou take away the TPLF you can see why the people and advisors or allies of Abiys are neoliberal and reason why is in alliance with them is they all share common ideology views on neoliberalism and overall Abyssainid views on what is Ethiopia and its future..Including Berhanu Nega as education minister, in a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday. The others are Belete Molla, who comes in as innovation and technology minister and Kejela Merdassa as the head of the culture docket.The Ethiopia's far-right -ultra-unionist PM Dr Abiy Ahmed and his conspirator ally Professor Berhanu Nega's parties- namely Exclusive Prosperity Party (EPP) and Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice (ECSJ) are advocating Western liberal democracy and liberal economy as model capable of saving Ethiopia and its subjects.   Berhanu Nega wrote policy papers for the World Bank, which were later included in the Kinijit (CUDCoalition for Unity and Democracy) ManifestoThe Kinijit (CUD) Manifesto. Attached snippet calling for the implementation of free market liberal democracy “[Mr Abiy] is extremely interested to see a strong private sector that can generate jobs for the millions of youths that are currently unemployed,” said Mr Abebe, 38, who worked at the World Bank before Mr Abiy asked him to join the commission.“And I think that is consistent with the whole economic reform agenda. For so long economic growth has been fuelled by state investment and now the state should cede space to the private sector and play its natural arbiter role as a regulator,” he said. https://www.ft.com/content/38c9e736-7e49-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/15/suspicion-and-fear-linger-as-ethiopia-campus-wars-go-quietWed 15 Apr 2020 07.21 EDTThe government is now looking at alternative funding models, including student loans. “There should be some kind of co-financing from the private sector,” said Tassew Woldehanna, president of Addis Ababa University. “Students need to start paying.”In January, the Minister of Higher Education suggested that free tuition was partly to blame for conflicts because it made it harder for universities to maintain the quality of education and housing for the roughly 200,000 new students enrolling each year. In 2000, Ethiopia had just two universities; now there are 45. It is one of the fastest expansions in higher education in the world, but without a concomitant rise in standards.Abiy and Crrypto connectionCardano is not new to Ethiopia, in 2018 the government signed a deal with Cardano to incorporate blockchain technology to the agritech industry. According to United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, since Ethiopia is a latecomer to: Jack Dorsey vocalized his support of Project Mano, a group of Ethiopia-based entrepreneurs who want to get the Ethiopian government to consider mining and storing BitcoinI would like to thank @IMF & my dear sister @KGeorgieva for IMF's extraordinary support of Ethiopia's Home Grown Economic Reform Program amounting to USD 2.9 billion. Building on our past success, we have embarked on a new journey to set Ethiopia on a path to prosperity.https://twitter.com/AbiyAhmedAli/status/1205152845818945536"Borrowing from IMF and WB, is like borrowing from [one's] mother"- PM Abiy speaking in a peace conference in Addis Ababa..... "Because after they give us a billion birr, they tell us to pay it in 20, 30 yrs with a 2, 3, 4 % interest rate. What has hurt Ethiopia is not borrowing from these institutions but from companies or other countries. ....https://twitter.com/Kal_KidanY/status/1208046969618337793He was invited to The Economist party https://amp.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/09/19/ethiopias-democratic-transition-is-in-peril?__twitter_impression=true‘My model is capitalism': Ethiopia's prime minister plans telecoms privatisationhttps://www.ft.com/content/433dfa88-36d0-11e9-bb0c-42459962a8122. There are voices on Twitter who pushes the TPLF line under the veneer of anti-imperialist positioning aswellTo answer the second point Under TPLF was SOE but corrupted and was making concession to the IMF and global finance to certain extentEthiopa 75%+ of its budget via aid financing, it basically is a USAID client state to an extent, and Abiy's agenda highly depends on WB + IMF financing, Ethiopia has privatized SOEs in phases 1994-98 /1999 - 2004. Impact analyses show that privatiz|n only benefited 2 large conglomerates. 1st -TPLF/ EPRDF's EFFORT, 2nd -MIDROC, with close tie with EPRDF. Both operate as duopoly hindering competitiveness That “reliant on donors” part hurt. All those years of “fast growth” and “10 %+ growth” and Ethiopia is still one of the most aid dependent countries on the continent? 3. Examining the #NoMore Movement the way forward and recognizing what's rightQuote by Wallelign Mekonnen Nov. 17, 196 was a Marxist student activist and militant active in the Ethiopian Student Movement https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ethiopia/nationalities.pdfSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/horn-of-africa-leftists/donations

In this episode, Ethiopia Insight Election Project's Tobias Hagmann asks Leul Estifanos, an Ethiopia Insight court reporter and a law graduate of Addis Ababa University, to reflect on issues he raised in the EIEP's 'Reforming Ethiopia's draconian laws amid a derailing transition'.

This episode of the PRS Global Open Keynotes Podcast discusses plastic surgery in low-income countries and assess the impact on reducing global disease burden. Guests are Paul Truche MD, MPH; Yegeremu Eado, MD; and Scott D. Corlew MD, MPH. This episode discusses the following PRS Global Open article: “The Plastic Surgery Workforce and Its Role in Low-income Countries” by Paul Truche, Ellie Moeller, Taylor Wurdeman, Kathrin Zimmerman, Norma Cruz, Kiran Nakarmi, Shankar M. Rai, Yegeremu Eado, Laura Pompermaier, John G. Meara, and D. Scott Corlew. Read it for free on PRSGlobalOpen.com: https://bit.ly/PSinLowIncomeCountries Dr. Corlew is a board-certified plastic surgeon and Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Eado is a plastic surgeon at ALERT Hospital and Addis Ababa University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Truche is a Research Fellow in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Your host, Dr. Damian Marucci, is a board-certified plastic surgeon and Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Sydney in Australia. Your guest co-host, Dr. Murilo Secanho is a plastic surgery Resident at São Paulo State University in Brazil and a 2021 PRS Global Open Resident Ambassador. #PRSGlobalOpen #KeynotesPodcast #PlasticSurgery

This episode of the PRS Global Open Keynotes Podcast discusses plastic surgery in low-income countries and assess the impact on reducing global disease burden. Guests are Paul Truche MD, MPH; Yegeremu Eado, MD; and Scott D. Corlew MD, MPH. This episode discusses the following PRS Global Open article: “The Plastic Surgery Workforce and Its Role in Low-income Countries” by Paul Truche, Ellie Moeller, Taylor Wurdeman, Kathrin Zimmerman, Norma Cruz, Kiran Nakarmi, Shankar M. Rai, Yegeremu Eado, Laura Pompermaier, John G. Meara, and D. Scott Corlew. Read it for free on PRSGlobalOpen.com: https://bit.ly/PSinLowIncomeCountries Dr. Corlew is a board-certified plastic surgeon and Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Eado is a plastic surgeon at ALERT Hospital and Addis Ababa University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Dr. Truche is a Research Fellow in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Your host, Dr. Damian Marucci, is a board-certified plastic surgeon and Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Sydney in Australia. Your guest co-host, Dr. Murilo Secanho is a plastic surgery Resident at São Paulo State University in Brazil and a 2021 PRS Global Open Resident Ambassador. #PRSGlobalOpen #KeynotesPodcast #PlasticSurgery

After eight months of war in Ethiopia's Tigray region, thousands of people have been killed, and a humanitarian disaster is unfolding. Ethiopian government forces alongside Amhara and Eritrean militia are accused of atrocities including mass rape and ethnic cleansing, forcing millions to migrate to neighbouring Sudan. On the other hand, the Tigrayan rebels in the north have recaptured major territory that was held by government forces, including the capital Mekelle. Though the leaders of the Tigray People's Liberation Front have agreed to a government-offered ceasefire, it is still uncertain the ceasefire will result in an end to the war and ensure a lasting peace in the region. Guests: Mastewal Taddese Terefe Lawyer, formerly with Ethiopia's Federal Attorney General's Office Hailu Kebede Head of Foreign Affairs for the Salsay Weyane Tigray party Mesenbet Assefa Assistant Professor of Law at Addis Ababa University

Kiya Gezahegne is a feminist researcher and lecturer specializing in migrant studies, adolescent research and gender policy. She is passionate about harnessing the power of research to drive more supportive policies for women, girls, youth and refugees across Ethiopia. Kiya currently serves as the in-country qualitative researcher for Gender and Adolescents: Global Evidence (GAGE), and also contributes to the Ethiopian National Women's Policy. In this special World Refugee episode, Kiya shares her insights into the Ethiopian refugee experience (including hardships specific to women and girls), the importance of adolescent empowerment in driving nationwide change, and the role of research in transforming gender equity paradigms nationwide.Highlights:How GAGE, the world's largest study on gender in adolescence, is working to empower youth in developing countriesWhat inspired Kiya to specialize in refugee research and elevating the struggles of migrantsWhy so many Ethiopian migrants are fleeing poverty, ethnic conflict and political repression to seek refuge in the Middle East, Europe and the States – and how their destinations are influenced by an underground industry of migration “brokers”The most common hardships faced by women along these migration routes, including sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, physical abuse and financial pressures from the family they left behindThe importance of adolescent-specific research in driving nationwide changeKiya's work with the Ethiopian National Women's Policy and its impact on gender equityConnect:Website: www.gage.odi.org Linked In: Kiya Gezahegne Bio:Kiya Gezahegne is an experienced feminist researcher and lecturer based at the Social Anthropology at the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. She has been involved in ethnographic research on a range of adolescent related areas including education, health and nutrition, voice and agency, psycho social well-being, economic empowerment and bodily integrity. Her other research interests include international migration, refugee studies, gender policy, religious identity, borderland conflict, marginalization and slavery in the contemporary world. She also contributes to policy processes including the analysis of the Ethiopian National Women's Policy. She has authored several publications related to adolescents including recent publication on "Adolescent sexual and reproductive health in Ethiopia and Rwanda: a qualitative exploration of the role of social norms", among others. She is in-country qualitative researcher for Gender and Adolescents: Global Evidence (GAGE) project run by ODI (Oversees Development Institute).Support the show (http://bit.ly/donatetodfg)

In this ARA dialogue I speak with the Ethiopian artist-researcher who gave the closing address at our ARA2020 Conference. Berhanu is currently a lecturer in the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design at Addis Ababa University and is a doctoral candidate in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alle School where he was the gold medal winner in his final year, and subsequently studied for his Master of Fine Arts at the Utrecht Graduate School of the Arts in the Netherlands. Berhanu has been engaged with numerous individual and collective artistic projects both inside and outside the studio environment and has exhibited the results of his projects in Ethiopia, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Georgia, Italy, Greece and Spain. In the last few years, Berhanu has been working with a particular emphasis on the human issues that have come from the modernisation of urban spaces, notably in his home city of Addis Ababa. In this discussion, Berhanu talks about the ground-breaking Interdisciplinary Arts Practice MA programme which he helped introduce at the Alle School in 2014. The two year programme allows students from a range of backgrounds - fine arts, music, performing arts, as well as architecture, psychology, and philosophy - to work collaboratively using different research modalities. We also explore Berhanu's own artistic-research projects, notably his contribution to the collective project Despite Dispossession, and his own intervention into the history of dispossession in Addis Ababa: "Care and Become". Finally we explore Berhanu's ideas concerning mourning in the context of the suffering and anger in the global south, and the role of artistic research in such conditions. Useful Links: Despite Dispossession: An Activity Book. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/46498 Closing Address: Artistic Research in Africa-rethinking the" avant-garde" http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/29233

In this ARA dialogue I speak with the Ethiopian artist-researcher-activist who gave the closing address at our ARA2020 Conference. Berhanu is currently a lecturer in the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design at Addis Ababa University and is a doctoral candidate in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alle School where he was the gold medal winner in his final year, and subsequently studied for his Master of Fine Arts at the Utrecht Graduate School of the Arts in the Netherlands. Berhanu has been engaged with numerous individual and collective artistic projects both inside and outside the studio environment and has exhibited the results of his projects in Ethiopia, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Georgia, Italy, Greece and Spain. In the last few years, Berhanu has been working with a particular emphasis on the human issues that have come from the modernisation of urban spaces, notably in his home city of Addis Ababa. In this discussion, Berhanu talks about the ground-breaking Interdisciplinary Arts Practice MA programme which he helped introduce at the Alle School in 2014. The two year programme allows students from a range of backgrounds - fine arts, music, performing arts, as well as architecture, psychology, and philosophy - to work collaboratively using different research modalities. We also explore Berhanu's own artistic-research projects, notably his contribution to the collective project Despite Dispossession, and his own intervention into the history of dispossession and violence in Addis Ababa: "Care and Become". Finally we explore Berhanu's ideas concerning mourning in the context of the suffering and anger in the global south, and the role of artistic research in such conditions. Useful Links: Despite Dispossession: An Activity Book. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/46498 Closing Address: Artistic Research in Africa-rethinking the" avant-garde" http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/29233

Dunia Mekonnen Tegegn, Human Rights Lawyer and Gender Equality Advocate. Prior to her role as a Media Rights Research Fellow with Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) & Human Rights Consultant with the American Bar Association, Dunia worked as an Almami Cyllah Fellow with Amnesty International USA. She also worked as a Program Associate with Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Peace, and Development. Before coming to the United States, Dunia worked as a Human Rights Officer with the UN High Commissioner for Human Right’s East Africa Regional Office, and as an Alternative Care Expert with UNICEF. Dunia also worked as a Program Officer with UN Women Ethiopia on Human Rights and Ending Violence against Women and supported Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association, through pro bono services to victims of gender-based violence and providing legal advice on common property rights, child custody, maintenance, and other family law matters. Dunia is the first African scholar within Georgetown Law’s Women’s Law and Public Policy Program to hold a Master of Laws in National Security. She holds a Master of Arts in Human Rights from Addis Ababa University, Center for Human Rights. Dunia earned her bachelor's degree in law from Bahir Dar University. Leadership positions held Dunia served as the Co-chair of the Africa Program for the United Nations Associations in the National Capital Area, and as a co-lead for the Africa Program of Young Professionals in International Affairs. Dunia also served as a Legal Compliance and Diaspora outreach coordinator with Your Ethiopian Professionals Network. Dunia recently co-founded a Women’s rights organization in New Jersey, the USA that focuses on girls’ education and reproductive health rights in Sub-Saharan Africa. Memberships Dunia is a member of the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU), the Ethiopian Bar Association, and the Ethiopian American Bar Association in Washington DC. She is an active member of the Advocacy Network for Africa Forum (ADNA Forum) in Washington DC and contributes to its Human rights and Democracy, and Security working group.  

The Stele of Axum, a 4th century Ethiopian treasure, was finally returned by Italy in 2005. It had been taken from the ancient town of Axum in northern Ethiopia by invading Italian fascist forces in 1937. The huge 24 metre tall stele was originally erected to mark the site of a royal tomb during the Kingdom of Axum. The Axumites were a powerful and sophisticated civilisation which emerged in northern Ethiopia more than 2000 years ago. Alex Last spoke to Ethiopian archaeologist Tekle Hagos of Addis Ababa University about the return of the great monument. Photo: The Stele of Axum , now re-erected back in Axum, northern Ethiopia.(Getty Images)

Family Medicine in the COVID-19 Global Pandemic A Podcast Partnership Between the Besrour Centre and Canadian Family Physician Using the Besrour Centre’s network of international partners, Dr. Christine Gibson interviews family physicians around the world who are helping to manage this pandemic, finding the common thread of humanity between those on each side of the mask.  These stories are introduced by Dr. Nick Pimlott, Scientific Editor of Canadian Family Physician. Dr. Gibson is a family physician in Calgary, Alberta and is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary.  Dr. Gibson is an international consultant for family medicine development and capacity building. Dr. Gibson is the Co-Lead of the Narrative Working Group of the Besrour Center at the College of Family Physicians of Canada. As Dr. Gibson writes: “This is a timely opportunity to learn from our global partners on the front line of the Covid outbreak. Family physicians worldwide are stepping up to help their communities battle this illness as best we can. People are yearning for stories, whether for professional or personal reasons. Stories of hope and of communities in grief, stories of authentic experiences that we can all learn from and through. This is a unique experience in the history of humanity – a pandemic that is truly shared worldwide, revealing our interconnectivity in heroic and tragic ways. Now is the time for collective healing.” We hope listeners find these stories compelling and healing. This podcast was recorded on June 1st, 2020. Dr. Gibson's website: www.christinegibson.net  Meseret Zerihun is one of the first cohorts of residents to graduate as a family physician in her country of Ethiopia. She was enrolled in the first family medicine training program established in Ethiopia in 2013 at Addis Ababa University. She is now working as an assistant professor at Addis Ababa University, where she is involved in teaching, mentoring, educating, and supervising residents. She has demonstrated positive leadership skills and determination, which enabled her to be appointed as the Program Director and department head of the family medicine program at Addis Ababa University. Meseret has also been involved in delivering health care to underprivileged communities and is passionate about mentoring and encouraging future female leaders. and hopes to play a vital role in strengthening the primary care system in her country. She would like to pursue her PHD in global health and implementation science. Read Dr. Gibson's accompanying blog post at https://www.cfp.ca/blog

I had wtnessed the use of computers at Haile Sellasie I University some 50 yrs ago. What happened then and now? Some of us we have seen the growth of computers from mainframe to desktop, laptop, tablets and the cellular. How has the social media affected our life in creating facts and baseless stories (fake information) ?Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JHSCA4VS8F2NE&source=url)

Citizens of Ethiopia /ˌi θiˈoʊ pi ə /, a country in Africa's northeastern region, planted more than 350 million trees in less than a day. Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spearheaded the initiative in July. Some of the country's schools and public offices were suspended so more people could participate. According to the country's National Forest Sector Development Program coordinator, over 23 million people participated in the tree-planting effort. The initiative is part of the country's Green Legacy campaign. This reforestation campaign aims to have four billion trees planted from May to October, the country's rainy season. Apart from leading the campaign, Ethiopia pledged to work with other African countries to restore 100 million hectares of land by 2030 through the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative. With these initiatives, Ethiopia hopes to recover from the drastic deforestation in the country. Reports showed that over a century ago, around 30% of Ethiopia's land was forested. Now, that figure has gone down to below 4%. Ethiopian officials believe that the initiative has set a world record, surpassing India's 2017 record of 66 million trees. Ethiopia's initial goal was to plant 200 million trees in one day. The end result exceeded expectations, with the said number of seedlings planted within 12 hours. While it is still uncertain whether or not the Guinness World Records monitored the initiative, a special software was developed to verify the number of trees planted, according to the Prime Minister's office. A lot of environmental groups commended the campaign. However, one lecturer from the country's Addis Ababa University is concerned about the viability of the planted trees. He said that people should also focus on properly maintaining the seedlings so they will flourish.

This week on the podcast we are joined by Selam Bekele. Selam, who hails from Ethiopia, currently works as a development practitioner with more than 10 years of experience addressing critical social issues on the grassroots level and international development platforms. She now resides in Washington DC where she serves as a senior associate at Results Educational Fund. Additionally, Selam is the founder of Umoja, a non-profit organization that coaches and empowers young Africans to be positive change agents in their communities. She also holds an MA in Economic Development from the Catholic University of America, as well as a Masters in Gender Studies from Addis Ababa University. At her core, Selam is an activist who deeply cares about those who are underserved and underprivileged. Education is at the core of everything she has done, and she has leveraged that education to try and make a meaningful impact. Throughout the episode, Selam discusses her upbringing as a woman in Ethiopia, the oppression she has faced, her life journey, and how all of those things have shaped who she is and the work she does as an activist and advocate for education. Additionally, make sure to give Selam a follow on twitter @selseladu!

Rick Hodes is an American physician who has lived and worked in Ethiopia for over 30 years. Raised in Long Island, he is the Medical Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Ethiopia, a 105-year old NGO. He has been in charge of the health of Ethiopians immigrating to Israel. He has also worked with refugees in Rwanda, Zaire, Tanzania, Somalia, and Albania.  Currently, he practices in the basement of a busy Addis Ababa hospital, concentrating on spinal deformities, and rheumatic and congenital heart disease. All care is free. Unable to get free surgery for his first spine patients, he adopted them and brought them to the US. A colleague recently said “Rick has the largest collection of the worst spines in the world.” He collaborates with colleagues in Ghana, India, Israel, Germany, and the US. He is also the senior consultant at Mother Teresa's mission. Rick is a graduate of Middlebury College and University of Rochester Medical School, and trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview. Hodes first went to Ethiopia as a relief worker during the 1984 famine. He returned there on a Fulbright Fellowship to teach internal medicine at Addis Ababa University, and in 1990 was hired by the JDC to care for 25,000 potential immigrants to Israel. In 1991, he was part of “Operation Solomon,” which airlifted Ethiopian Jews to Israel.   Rick was a “CNN Hero" in 2007, and was ABC's "Person of the Week" in 2010. He is the holder of 5 honorary doctorates and has been commencement speaker at Brandeis, and UC Davis and University of Rochester Medical Schools. The American College of Physicians has awarded him “Mastership” and the Rosenthal Award for creative practice of medicine. He has published over 20 papers in medical journals. He is the subject of the HBO documentary “Making the Crooked Straight,” as well as the book “This is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes” by Marilyn Berger. A recent documentary, "Zemene", highlights the life of a young spine patient and her journey from rural Gondar to Addis Ababa, spine surgery in Ghana, and speaking in New York City. Rick lives with his family in Addis Ababa.  On this episode, Rick shares his one way ticket to an Ethiopia where everybody has a straight spine. He also shares his remarkable work in helping those with spinal deformities. Plus, Rick talks about his love of Ethiopia and some of his favorite places to visit in his adopted home country. Rick is just one of the dynamic guests featured on The One Way Ticket Show, where Host Steven Shalowitz explores with his guests where they would go if given a one way ticket, no coming back! Destinations may be in the past, present, future, real, imaginary or a state of mind. Steven's guests have included: Nobel Peace Prize Winner, President Jose Ramos-Horta; Legendary Talk Show Host, Dick Cavett; Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz; Fashion Expert, Tim Gunn; Broadcast Legend, Charles Osgood; International Rescue Committee President & CEO, David Miliband; Playwright, David Henry Hwang; Journalist-Humorist-Actor, Mo Rocca; SkyBridge Capital Founder & Co-Managing Partner, Anthony Scaramucci; Abercrombie & Kent Founder, Geoffrey Kent; Travel Expert, Pauline Frommer, as well as leading photographers, artists, chefs, writers, intellectuals and more.

In episode thirteen of season five we bring you a the rest of our conversation with Michael Melese from Addis Ababa University and Charles Saidu of Baze University Abuja

In episode twelve of season five we bring you a rundown of Data Science Africa's latest workshop answer a listener question about what got us excited at ICML and hear the first part of our conversation with Michael Melese from Addis Ababa University and Charles Saidu of Baze University Abuja

Episode 64: Dr. Paul DiMusto and Dr. Callistus Ditah Paul DiMusto, MD and Callistus Ditah, MD discuss UW's Global Health Program. Dr. DiMusto and Dr. Callistus Ditah spent time in 2018 at Addis Ababa University’s Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital in Ethiopia. How do you practice medicine when you don’t have all the resources you need or might want? That’s what Drs. Kohler, DiMusto and Ditah discuss on the Surgery Sett.

On the programme this week is Rahel Shawl, Founder and Director of Raas Architects, one of the leading architecture practices in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Rahel originally studied architecture at the Southern Campus of Addis Ababa University. Soon after graduating, Rahel established ABBA architects in partnership with a friend before going on to form Raas … Continue reading "Raas Architects – Addis Ababa"

uCodeGirl offers pathways to technology careers for teen girls by tapping into their curiosity, skills, and potential. Betty Gronneberg grew up in Ethiopia. She attended Addis Ababa University where she majored in statistics. Betty recalls a day in college when she saw her name on a list of students who had been accepted into the new Computer Science track. She was one of two female students on the list. This was 1991. The “world wide web” had not yet been invented. Betty learned to write simple programs in BASIC, an early computer language. Betty’s experience grew rapidly as the internet began to spread. She became a country-wide email administrator for Ethiopia. In 1995, she became the first webmaster for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. With each new assignment, Betty noticed that she was one of the few women in the room. In 1995, 37% of computing jobs went to women. Since women make up half of the population, that’s bad news. And, the news is getting worse. Today, according to Betty, “Nationally 18% of the technology sector is made up of women.” Betty began to ask a fundamental question. “In this great United States, where everything is possible, why are there not many women?” According to Betty, girls begin to lose interest in technology around middle school, when the girls are around 12 or 13 years old. They don’t see the relevance of technology in their everyday lives. Betty began to imagine an organization that helps young girls to apply technology in a fun environment. To help her work out the details of this new organization, Betty applied for and became a Bush Fellow with the Bush Foundation. From the beginning, as she was filling out her application for the Bush Fellowship, she began to refine her ideas. Through her experience with the Bush Foundation, she formed a new organization, uCodeGirl. uCodeGirl is a Fargo, North Dakota based nonprofit that focuses on building confidence and talent for young girls between the ages of 12 and 18, and to inspire them to pursue opportunities in technology. uCodeGirl is making technology fun, relevant, and accessible. Girls learn leadership skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. Leading women in technology provide mentoring. uCodeGirl also helps girls to learn hands-on skills. They provide a three-week summer camp where the girls can experiment with technology to solve their own problems. In the process, they help the girls to build a pathway to a career in technology. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Betty Gronneberg “We want to go to the young girls where the divergence happens and cultivate their confidence.” “Nationally 18% of the technology sector is made up of women.” “It’s like nothing changed, but everything changed.” “I have always been resourceful and resilient.” “We want to help young girls to see technology as a solution for real-world problems.” “We want to cultivate their confidence.” “When you exude that passion, it’s easy for people to say, I’m here to help. What can I do?” “Not everybody is an early adopter of your idea.” “Be okay with no.” “It takes all of us to be a tech savvy generation.” Social Entrepreneurship Resources: UCodeGirl: http://www.ucodegirl.org/ UCodeGirl on Twitter: https://twitter.com/uCodeGirl UCodeGirl on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uCodeGirl/ Bush Foundation: https://www.bushfoundation.org Book: Crazy Good Advice: 10 Lessons Learned from 150 Leading Social Entrepreneurs: https://tonyloyd.com/book  

Dr. Yohans Wodaje Emiru is the founder of Telemed Medical Services. Their flagship service is helloDoctor. For every doctor in Ethiopia, there are more than 30,000 patients. Compare that to less than 400 patients per doctor in the United States. Millions of Ethiopian patients are cut off from medical services due to geography and infrastructure. There are also cultural barriers to medical treatment. Some conditions can seem embarrassing to discuss face-to-face with a local doctor. Transportation costs or consultation fees may be a barrier to treatment. Yohans Wodaje Emiru has found a way to use technology to provide access to medical professionals using a simple hand-handheld phone. Yohans understands the challenges of medical services in Ethiopia. He graduated from medical school at Addis Ababa University. He worked in several roles, including being the Medical Director of Saint Urael Medical Services in Addis Ababa. He also worked in a remote town in a government hospital where he saw first-hand the challenges of Ethiopians to access medical services. HelloDoctor allows people to call at any time and from anywhere in Ethiopia and get instant professional medical advice. People call, describe their symptoms and a medical professional helps them decide whether to treat their symptoms at home, to obtain an over-the-counter product or to seek further medical services at a local clinic or hospital. For chronic illnesses such as diabetes, HIV or Tuberculosis, helloDoctor also provides Patient-Center Engagement and Tracking Services. HelloDoctor has received over 80,000 calls. They have directly impacted over 50,000 individuals. Between 50% to 65% of the medical conditions are sufficiently handled through the phone calls. The remaining patients have been helped through direct referrals. They also help patients to save money. They calculate that for every phone call received, they save their patients $3 in healthcare expenses. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Yohans Wodaje Emiru “These barriers can be bridged with the kind of service we are building.” “People launching new services is not something people are used to here.” “You have to pull all the strings you can to keep the music going.” “There are challenges you face every day. But if you believe in what you’re doing, it just passes.” “We monitor everything we’re doing.” “The most interesting thing is the money that people are able to save.” “You have to keep measuring. You have to keep talking to your clients.” “The first thing you start out with is, unless you’re very lucky, rarely the right solution.” Social Entrepreneurship Resources: helloDoctor: http://www.hellodoctorethiopia.com/ helloDoctor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/8896helloDoctor helloDoctor on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/8896hellodoctor/ More Stories of Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good Health and Well-Being In 2017, we’re emphasizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In March, we are focusing on Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good Health and Well-Being. You can read more about Sustainable Development Goal 1 here, Sustainable Development Goal 2 here, or learn about all of the Sustainable Development Goals here.

Dr. David Clifford is the Melba and Forest Seay Professor of Clinical Neuropharmacology in Neurology and Professor of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition, he is the Principal Investigator for the Washington University AIDS Clinical Trials Unit and Principle investigator for the NeuroNext Clinical Trials Unit. David received his MD from Washington University School of Medicine and completed residency in medicine and neurology at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Neurology before joining the faculty at Washington University. David has received many awards and honors during his career, including being named an Honorary Professor of Neurology at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, a Counselor of the American Neurological Association, as well as receipt of the Neville Grant Award for Clinical Excellence from Barnes Jewish Hospital, receipt of the Award for Humanism in Medicine from Washington University in St. Louis, and he was selected to serve on the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council. David is here with us today to tell us all about his journey through life and science.

A podcast of Professor Bekele Gutema, Fulbright Fellow, Howard University and Associate Professor, Addis Ababa University presenting the opening lecture of the Winter 2014 speaker series.