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Ethiopia: Public Health Situation Analysis (PHSA)

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The government of Ethiopia’s most recent assessment of food security needs projected that 15.8 million people will face hunger and need food assistance in 2024. This includes over 4 million people who are internally displaced and 7.2 million who have high levels of acute food insecurity and need emergency assistance. According to the same government assessment, 51% of the 15.8 million in need of food assistance (8 million) are in Tigray and Amhara regions; with 4.5 million and 3.5 million in need of food assistance in 2024 in the two regions respectively.

The areas worst impacted by food insecurity are where communities have yet to recover from the 2020-2022 conflict, where the recent harvest was severely disrupted leaving households with no, or limited, food stocks.

Just like in northern Ethiopia, food insecurity and high rates of malnutrition are adding to protracted needs for water, health, protection, agriculture, and livelihood support in pockets of Oromia, Somali, South Ethiopia, and South West Ethiopia regions.

Moreover, increasing outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, cholera and measles are worsening the situation in different parts of the country. Limited access to health services, medical supplies, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, and trained health workers remain to be gaps in responding to the different disease outbreaks that affect the country. Roughly 60% of those living in cholera-affected woredas do not have access to safe drinking water, leaving people dependent on untreated water from rivers and ponds. A total of 60% to 80% of communicable diseases are attributed to limited access to safe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene services.

According to the Humanitarian Response Plan for 2024, 21.4 million people need humanitarian assistance with 15.5 million people targeted for assistance. The El-Nino driven drought has impacted Ethiopia’s summer rains, resulting in severe water shortages, dried pastures and reduced harvests in many areas. A Flood Alert was issued in January 2024 by the Federal Government calling for preparedness and early response for the March-May rainy season. Over two million people are expected to be affected and one million people to be displaced in areas at risk.

Operationally, the humanitarian response in Ethiopia is hampered by low funding levels. The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan was funded at just 34%, indicating a significant gap in resources required for effective response.

Additionally, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) is grappling with acute funding shortfalls, further exacerbating the challenges faced in addressing humanitarian needs. Notably the Health Clusters requirements for 2023 were only 24% funded, while WFP were only able to assist with 60% of the standard monthly entitlement in February 2024 due to a lack of funds.

According to the 2024 Humanitarian Needs Overview, the current multifaceted humanitarian crises are unfolding amidst a backdrop of severely weakened and overwhelmed national disaster and social protection response capacity. Since 2020, access to basic social services across Ethiopia has been in decline, attributed to a combination of natural and man-made crises. The second most populous country in Africa, Ethiopia’s 123 million people are affected by a multitude of complex issues. Conflict, internal displacement, socio-economic hardships, persistently limited access to safe water and sanitation, collapse of public services and natural hazards, including disease outbreaks, recurrent floods, locust outbreaks, loss of livestock and consecutive droughts, have increased the humanitarian needs in Ethiopia in 2024.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization (WHO) – Ethiopia.

Uganda engages communities in physical and mental health activities as part of the World Health Day Commemoration

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The Ugandan Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO), and its partners carried out awareness-raising and community engagement activities to commemorate World Health Day in Uganda. In line with the theme “My health, my right,” these activities included a public sports walk, mass screening for communicable and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and a blood donation drive.

The event was organized at the WHO Country Office in Kololo, Uganda. It brought together the country’s stakeholders, including government representatives, the UN family, development and implementation partners, and the media.

World Health is commemorated every 7th of April, this edition takes place just six years before the evaluation of countries’ progress toward achieving universal health coverage, the Ministry of Health and WHO emphasized the need to strengthen collaborative efforts to support Uganda in ensuring equitable access to comprehensive health services.

“Ensuring that all Ugandans fully enjoy their right to health requires collaborative efforts from all sectors, partners, and communities under the one health approach,” said Dr Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero, Uganda’s Minister of Health. “It is my appeal that we all channel our energies towards achieving universal health coverage in Uganda,” she added.

During the “Walk the Talk” public sports walk, participants were encouraged to engage in activities that promote physical and mental health. With support from the STOP TB Partnership, Victoria University Medical Centre, and Uganda Blood Transfusion Services, participants were screened for non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, as well as communicable diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B, and tuberculosis.

Dr Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, WHO Representative to Uganda, welcomed the country’s progress in key healthcare areas. “Uganda has made significant progress in reducing maternal and child mortality, as well as new HIV infections by 40% between 2010 and 2022. These results are commendable, but further efforts are needed to ensure that all people in Uganda have access to integrated, person-centered health services,” he said.

Doctor Yonas added that implementing the existing public health policies, strategies, and guidelines, improving efficiency in the use of resources, and promoting community empowerment and participation will accelerate Uganda’s progress towards achieving universal health coverage.

Like many other countries, Uganda is constantly affected by public health emergencies, including the recent Ebola outbreak, COVID-19, and the current food insecurity in the Karamoja region. The country also faces socio-economic challenges that result in unequal access to comprehensive health services, with more than half of its population not fully covered.

WHO continues to work with its partners, mobilizing financial and technical resources to support the country in improving its health system to achieve Universal Health Coverage.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Health Organization (WHO).

About wages

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About wages

How much do you pay your workers? Do you think you pay too much? Or do you pay according to what you can afford? Do you pay what is average in your sector? Do you pay by a monthly salary or individual incentive pay scheme? Do you cut down on wages when the company is going through a difficult time? These are issues that you as the business owner or manager must take decisions on and cannot afford to delegate to others. Pay matters are very important indeed.  Today we will look into some issues related to pay, that matter to the success of your company.

Let us have a look at two similar companies, which operate in the same sector, furniture for instance. Company A has 100 workers, with a salary of Birr 5000 per month. Company B also has 100 workers and pays them 6000 Birr per month. Company B’s productivity is 25% higher than company A. Secondary benefits are the same for both companies. Which company will have higher labour costs, company A or B? It is tempting to conclude that company B’s labour costs are higher but is that really so? While company A produces 1000 chairs per month, company B produces 1250 chairs. In relation to the labour rates, the chair costs 500 Birr each for company A and 480 Birr for company B. With a selling price of 800 Birr per chair, the return for company A will be 300,000 Birr, while company B will earn 400,000 Birr. Taking away overhead and other production costs of say 200,000 Birr, the profit for company A will be 100,000 Birr and for company B it will be 200,000 Birr. In other words, with a 20% higher pay and 25% higher production, company B makes double the profit than company A. It could even afford to pay its workers still more. Paying workers less may cost the company instead.

Suppose your company is struggling and your profits are going down. You need to take measures. You decide to let your production manager go. After all he is expensive with a salary of 25,000 Birr per month, and you replace him with a younger and cheaper production manager at 10,000 Birr per month. You expect that your costs will go down, but the opposite may happen instead, because the new production manager is less experienced, slower, and less capable. The paradox is that as a result your costs have increased by cutting on salary costs! So don’t confuse wages with production costs and realise that the wages may not represent that much a portion of your total production costs, as you may think. Check your accounts and analyse your figures.

It is often thought that low wages present a competitive advantage. One reason why foreign companies invest in countries like Ethiopia, is that the labour rates are relatively low. Cutting down on wages is tempting but there are more effective ways to compete, like quality, service, delivery, and innovation. In reality, low labour rates are an ineffective way to compete.

Another misunderstanding is that individual pay schemes, based on performance are the most effective way to motivate workers to be more productive. While this is certainly so for certain jobs, individual pay schemes may negatively affect teamwork. So, where you want people to work together, such payment schemes may result in the opposite. With individual pay schemes there is also the danger of fraud with workers carrying out services that are not really necessary to boost their production figures. Salespeople may become aggressive in their approach to customers, eager to boost their sales, chasing them away instead. Individual pay schemes absorb a considerable amount of management time and resources. They certainly have their value and place, but management needs to carefully consider the purpose and kind of jobs it will be used for. Group or team-oriented pay can be effective instead, resulting in cooperation among workers and peer pressure to perform.    

In conclusion I suggest that managers who are trying to improve performance of their workers or who want to solve organizational problems by using pay as the only tool will get disappointed by the result. Not much may happen while in fact they will spend a lot of money instead.

People want more than money alone for their work. They seek an enjoyable work environment, also in Ethiopia. Workers will look for another job if that is not what they find in your company. Many business owners and managers think too much about wages, when other management tools work just as well, or even better.

Finally, be careful in recruitment. If somebody joins your company for money alone, he will also leave for money. It is therefore important to retain workers by making sure they like the work, the people, and the way the company is managed. Not the money, which every company can offer. Emphasizing pay as the primary reward encourages people to come and to stay for the wrong reasons. Make sure that workers are not stuck into working in a company where they don’t want to be simply for the money. Make sure also that the messages sent by the way you pay workers are intended. For example, talking about teamwork and cooperation and then not having a group-based component in the pay system but individual pay schemes instead is contradictory and indicates what the company believes is really important.       

Ton Haverkort

Exponential risk of financial crime

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Exponential risk of financial crime

When digital businesses are welcomed, they have created an even greater number of uncertainties. This demands that CEOs and business leaders prioritize innovation as a top strategic priority. If they want to achieve their targets in the century’s goal and growth, they should have an open appetite to challenge cyber risks.
Today, it is easier than ever to challenge dynamic digital businesses and drive radical change without advanced risk control models.
Apart from other sectors, the financial industry is more liquid in form and exposed to disruption risks. The more the sector is digitized, the more it becomes exposed to technological risks, specifically the exponential risk of financial crime or cybercrime. Today, insurers prioritize consulting and mitigating this risk.
Most technological bankers and insurers aim to make their services invisible and seamlessly integrated into their customers’ lives, thereby managing their expectations and providing optimum satisfaction.
However, these technological-driven, digitized bankers and insurers will also face cyber-attacks and the risk of financial crime. Financial crime is becoming a major concern for all leaders, including board of directors, CEOs and other executives.
Due to a delay in implementing proper control systems, companies suffer potential damage to their liquid assets, customer information, stored data, and other intangible assets.
Cyber incidents are not only an emerging risk for bankers and insurers, but they will also impact the telecom industry.
In the Ethiopian financial and telecom industries, digital transformation has become a strategic imperative for competition and survival. For digitalized visionary leaders, nothing will challenge them more than exponential financial crime or cyber-attacks.
This risk is vicious and affects all aspects of IT and core business. Choosing the right core solutions, integrating with digital power supplies, and outsourcing some support systems require careful consideration and attention. Managing these risks is the biggest and toughest job in dealing with financial crime and cyber-attacks, and it is frequently demanded by the CEO to analyze and measure their impact on the company. Thus, the job of IT specialists requires unusual effort and daily reports from their departments provide essential strategic input to convince everyone in the company. However, the board of directors needs assurance of the business’s stability in the face of such destructive risks.
Managing technological risks will not only give confidence to the company’s leaders but will also uphold the brand value of the company for the end users who place their trust in them. Financial crime or cyber attack, if not managed, can destroy all values (extrinsic, intrinsic, and credence value).
The knowledge of cloud technology, intelligent automation, and digital labor effectiveness becomes meaningless and may be canceled from budget items due to non-willingness to suffer again.
Financial risk is exponential due to its short digital lifespan on a certain IT system.
Since companies incur huge costs, the attack will leave them without getting ROI. As they try to manage the attack, every core system at their disposal will become obsolete. Digitalized businesses are always built upon technology with a shorter lifespan and urge companies to focus on cyber-attacks and financial crimes. This case is more severe in banking, insurance, and telecom services.
Cyber attackers, using malware or social engineering, can gain access to valuable information, such as credit card numbers, customer personal identification numbers, login credentials, and government-issued identifiers. Weak patch management, legacy systems, and poor system log monitoring were cited as the main reasons why digital financial service (DFS) providers’ systems are susceptible to hacking attacks. In addition to financial losses resulting from a data breach, providers’ reputation and customers’ trust are at risk.
The fraudsters accessed sensitive customer information, such as account types and last transactions, which allowed them to pose as legitimate customers and apply for loans in the victim’s name.
To protect against data breaches, DFS providers need to regularly update their systems and software, patch their systems, use strong encryption for data at rest and in transit, and implement 24/7 system log monitoring.
So far, it has been observed in digital businesses, such as banking, insurance, and telecom, that no matter what networking they use, malicious individuals can hack past security precautions to gain access to stored information. These risks can be managed through other soft skills, like firewalls. In today’s environment, it is unrealistic to expect that defenses can prevent all cyber incidents. The financial industry should continue developing capabilities for detecting incidents when they occur, minimizing the impact on business and critical infrastructure, and tying these capabilities together in a comprehensive framework.
Threat actors are increasingly deploying a wider array of attack methods to stay one step ahead of financial services firms. For example, criminal gangs and nation-states are combining infiltration techniques in their campaigns, and they are increasingly leveraging malicious insiders. As reported in a Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) survey of global financial services executives, many financial services companies are struggling to achieve the level of cyber-risk maturity required to counter the evolving threats.
Although 75% of global financial services firms believe that their information security program maturity is at level three or higher, only 40% of the respondents are very confident that their organization’s information assets are protected from an external attack. This is particularly true for larger, more sophisticated financial services companies.
Threat actors are increasingly deploying a wider array of attack methods to stay one step ahead of financial services firms. For example, criminal gangs and nation-states are combining infiltration techniques in their campaigns and increasingly leveraging malicious insiders. Some researchers depict global financial service executives and many financial services companies as struggling to achieve the level of cyber-risk maturity required to counter the evolving threats.
Nothing challenges the digital business more than cyber-attacks. If they occur, they can destroy a company’s endeavors.

Asseged G/Medhin is CEO AT(@t) Insurance Brokerage & Consulting Firm. You can reach him via assegedg42@gmail.com

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