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Inaugural GITEX Africa shows high global interests in Africa

Staff Reporter
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The cross-continent support of the global tech community has culminated in a sold-out GITEX Africa 2023, with an expansion phase now underway as construction ramps up of a purpose-built super venue in Marrakech Morocco for Africa’s largest and most influential tech and start-up event.

The inaugural GITEX Africa will make its historic debut from 31 May-2 June 2023, welcoming more than 900 exhibitors, start-ups, and visiting delegations from 95 countries for three days of intensive outcome-focused public-private sector collaborations in the world’s next biggest digital economy.

GITEX Africa is held under the High Patronage of King Mohammed VI of the Kingdom of Morocco, and hosted by the Digital Development Agency (ADD), the public entity leading the Moroccan government’s digital transformation agenda under the authority of the Moroccan Ministry of Digital Transition and Administration Reform.

Ghita Mezzour, Minister of the Moroccan Ministry of Digital Transition and Administration Reform, said: “The Kingdom of Morocco is honoured to host the 1st edition of GITEX Africa Morocco in 2023, an event which constitutes a real opportunity for our country to deepen the efforts made and the work carried out in recent years in the field of digital transition and technological innovation.

“It falls perfectly in line with the efforts of the Kingdom of Morocco to strengthen South-South cooperation in the digital field, and to contribute to the influence of the African continent on the international level. GITEX Africa Morocco will thus aim to promote multi-sector technological innovation and the digital transformation of the continent.”

“The potential for tech on the continent of Africa is limitless and the time for action is now,” added Mohammed Drissi Melyani, General Director of the Digital Development Agency (ADD). “As the catalyst for Morocco’s digital transformation, ADD is involved to promote innovation in many sectors and to push all the involved partners of the ecosystem to ensure Smart digital transition.

“As the African continent is beginning to create an enabling environment for technology innovation to thrive, GITEX Africa Morocco is a real opportunity to gather the tech moguls and promote investments and we are deeply engaged to contribute to this first edition’s success.”

GITEX Africa 2023 is affiliated with GITEX GLOBAL, the world’s largest tech and start-up show hosted in Dubai.  “Africa has a great story to share with the world in their digital cities evolution powered by a talented youth generation and future focused governments,” said Trixie LohMirmand, CEO of GITEX Africa’s organiser KAOUN International, who announced the event’s expansion plans during a Moroccan tour recently meeting key tech stakeholders, exhibitors, government entities and media.

“That GITEX Africa is so well received in its inaugural edition is a strong validation of the world’s confidence and optimism in the growth of the African digital economy. Every company with an internationalisation strategy must partake in the digital revolution of the world’s most watched continent.”

Converging transformational technologies at Africa’s showpiece tech event

With the African Union’s bold mission to unify the continent into a secure Digital Single Market by 2030, GITEX Africa exhibitors are rousing optimism about the proliferation of trends shaping the continent’s tech ecosystem, from increased internet connectivity and a rampant start-up scene, to the rise of artificial intelligence and a flourishing fintech sector.

IBM, a global technology and consulting company, will utilise GITEX Africa 2023 to amplify their commitment to the continent.  Badrane Kaddour, Africa Partner Ecosystem Leader at IBM, said: “Our portfolio is built around hybrid cloud and AI, the two most transformational technologies of our time.  Our go-to-market approach brings together the necessary software, consulting, and infrastructure that our clients require, from across our expanding ecosystem of partners.

“Attending the inaugural GITEX Africa is an opportunity for us to highlight our commitment to the continent, expand our presence and market reach through our ecosystem of partners as well as showcase our latest technological innovations that are helping our customers increase productivity, reduce costs and fuel growth.”

With an African presence spanning more than two decades, global cybersecurity heavyweight Kaspersky is another exhibitor investing in Africa’s vast potential.  CEO Eugene Kaspersky commented: “For more than 20 years now we’ve been working to protect Africa’s businesses and ordinary users – securing the continent’s technologies and fast-growing economies.

“It’s important that we share expertise and exchange knowledge needed for protection against cyberthreats, which are constantly growing in both volume and sophistication. Today, we’re glad to be part of the first edition of GITEX Africa, the continent’s largest tech event – participation in which we deemed simply essential in helping to build a more secure digital world together.”

Moroccan exhibitors elevate Africa’s thriving tech revolution

Major players from Morocco’s tech landscape have also signed on for this much-awaited business venture, in-line with the North African country’s unifying economic mission, where 60 percent of its foreign investment is directed towards Africa.

Maroc Data Center (MDC); MTDS, a leading cybersecurity and technological solutions provider; Ribatis, a provider of e-Gov platforms for African public administrations; and CASANET, a pioneer in the ICT industry, are among the Moroccan exhibitors with a joint mission to elevate Africa’s thriving tech revolution.

Yassir Lamrani, CEO at CASANET, said: “As one of the Moroccan tech pioneers, we would not miss this inaugural event that marks the start of a new era for Africa’s bold digital ambitions. The African tech ecosystem is one of the fastest growing in the world, and since GITEX Africa is the most sought-after tech event in the continent, we’re hoping to meet Africa’s brightest IT minds, and to connect with the African youth who hold the future of tech in Africa.”

GITEX Africa DIGITAL SUMMIT leads power-packed conference programme

Leadership dialogues and outcome focused meetings will meanwhile dominate at GITEX Africa via a power-packed multi-sectoral conference programme including The GITEX Africa DIGITAL SUMMIT and the GITEX AFRICA CEO Forum.

The GITEX Africa DIGITAL SUMMIT will unify 250-plus government and private sector leaders, policy makers, investors and academics, to steer Africa’s transformation into a single digital market.  Critical themes covered at the world’s most influential forum for dialogues, exchanges and collaborative intentions, range from analysing the current state of play in the continent’s digital economy, to fast-tracking an integrated and inclusive digital public infrastructure.

Lacina Koné, the DG and CEO of Smart Africa – the pan-African organisation driving the continent’s digital transformation – is a headline speaker at the two-day summit.  Smart Africa is an alliance of 36 African countries tasked with Africa’s digital agenda, to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent and usher Africa into the knowledge economy through affordable access to broadband and the use of ICTs.

“I am pleased to see GITEX coming for the first time to Africa, the land of all digital opportunities,” said Kone, who will be part of a panel discussion titled: ‘Uniting Towards One African Market,’ adding that Smart Africa aims to achieve an inclusive multi-stakeholder approach that encourages innovation through data sharing and cross-border data flows while protecting individuals’ rights.  “We look forward to promising insightful exchanges at GITEX Africa where businesses will meet and decisions will be made.”

North Star scales African imagination converging 400-plus start-ups

GITEX Africa 2023 has also partnered with North Star, the world’s largest start-up event, to deliver North Star Africa, converging more than 400 start-ups – including 100 Moroccan start-ups – from across the globe to extend engagements, build connections, and scale imaginations in an African tech ecosystem where investment reached US$6.5 billion in 2022.

Saudi-headquartered food tech company NOMU Group is among those looking to foster prosperous partnerships in Africa.  “Africa’s start-up ecosystem has matured significantly with banks and governments creating mechanisms that support the start-up community,” said Shehab Mokhtar CEO & Co-Founder at Nomu Group, which operates the Jumlaty and Appetito e-grocery and food-tech start-ups in Saudi, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.

“The African continent is emerging as a hotbed for foreign investment, due to the rise of mobile penetration, better internet infrastructure and a growing fintech start-up ecosystem.  At GITEX Africa, Nomu Group looks forward to connecting with tech innovators, start-ups, investors and global innovation hubs, while at the same time collaborating, and exploring new ventures in the world’s rising tech continent.”

UN Committee against torture publishes findings on Ethiopia

Staff Reporter
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The UN Committee against Torture (CAT) on Friday, May 12, 2023 issued its findings on Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg and Slovakia after reviewing the six States parties in the latest session.

The findings contain the Committee’s main concerns and recommendations on each country’s implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

On Ethiopia, the committee said that it was disturbed by reports of summary executions, deliberate attacks on civilian populations, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment.
“While welcoming the signing of the Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the TPLF in November 2022, the Committee expressed its deep concern about the alleged extensive violations of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee laws, including in Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions against civilians, in particular ethnic Tigrayans, human rights defenders, dissenting journalists and protesters. The Committee was disturbed by reports of summary executions, deliberate attacks on civilian populations, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary and prolonged detention without charges and judicial process, incommunicado detention in unofficial facilities or military centres, recruitment and use of children in the hostilities, conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, trafficking in persons, denial of access to humanitarian assistance and the destruction of civilian property by all parties to the conflict. It urged Ethiopia to investigate all alleged violations, especially those that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in the conflict in Tigray and surrounding areas. The Committee further asked Ethiopia to ensure full and unconditional humanitarian access to all conflict-affected areas,” the report reads.

CAT further states “The Committee was gravely concerned about complaints of torture and ill-treatment by police officers, prison guards and other military and security forces members in police stations, detention centres, federal prisons, military bases and in unofficial or secret detention places. It also noted with concern that there is still no independent, effective and confidential mechanism to handle complaints of torture or ill-treatment in detention facilities and that existing investigation bodies lack the necessary independence. The Committee requested that the State party take measures to ensure all complaints of torture and ill-treatment are investigated by an independent body and that the suspected perpetrators and the superior officers responsible for ordering or tolerating these acts are duly tried and punished.”

The committee also recommended Ethiopia should continue to develop and implement mandatory initial and in-service training programmes to ensure that all public officials, in particular law enforcement officers, military personnel, judicial officials, prison staff, immigration personnel and others who may be involved in the custody, interrogation or treatment of persons subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment, are well acquainted with the provisions of the Convention, especially the absolute prohibition of torture, and that they are fully aware that breaches will not be tolerated and will be investigated and that those responsible will be prosecuted and, on conviction, appropriately punished

Ethiopian Medina Eisa sets World U-20 best in Herzegovina

admin
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Medina Eisa narrowly denied her compatriot Senbere Teferi a third consecutive women’s 5km victory in Herzogenaurach as she sprinted to a world U20 best of 14:46 to beat her rival in a photo finish.
Further demonstrating her versatility, 18-year-old Eisa adds this latest victory on the roads to a CV that already includes a world U20 5000m win on the track in Cali last year and a second place finish in the U20 race at the World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst in February.
Senbere, who set the women-only world record of 14:29 at this event in 2021, made a move in the second half of the race, but her compatriots Eisa and Germawit Gebrzihair were ready to respond.
The defending champion sprinted towards the finish line and raised her arms in anticipation, but Eisa had chased her down and made it to the tape first, breaking it in 14:46.
Germawit finished two seconds behind them, while Lemlem Nibret was fourth in 14:57 and Yalemget Yaregal fifth in 15:00 in an Ethiopian top five.
There was also a close finish in the men’s 5km as Ethiopia’s long-time leader Yomif Kejelcha was surprised by Bahrain’s Birhanu Balew in the final strides and had to settle for second place this time, after his win in Herzogenaurach last year.
Another rising talent won the men’s half marathon, 20-year-old Tadese Takele surging away from his rivals over the final kilometer to win in 1:00:04.
Waving to the crowds and celebrating on his way to the finish line, Takele went from fifth in this event last year – when he set his PB of 59:41 – to first, winning by three seconds ahead of Kenya’s Josphat Chumo and Roncer Kipkorir.

The Population Decline Paranoia

Alazar Kebede
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For two centuries, overpopulation has haunted the imagination of the modern world. According to Thomas Malthus, writing in 1798, human population growth would always surpass agricultural production, meaning “gigantic inevitable famine” would “with one mighty blow level the population with the food of the world.”
Later, eugenicists like Margaret Sanger in the 1920s fretted over the wrong people reproducing too much, creating what she called “human weeds,” a “dead weight of human waste” to inherit the earth. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich predicted that in the 1970s, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” because of the “population bomb.” These days, environmentalists worry that too many people will overload the natural world’s resources and destroy the planet with excessive consumption and pollution, leading to catastrophic global warming.
A strain of anti-humanism has always run through population paranoia, a notion that human beings are a problem rather than a resource. This is exactly what the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi argued. Regarding this, if my memory is serving correctly, once he said that the newly born are coming in to the world not only with the mouth to eat, but also with two hands to work.
But as Jonathan Last, a senior writer for the Weekly Standard documents in his new book entitled “What to Expect When No One’s Expecting”, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As he writes, throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by very bad things. Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource.
Jonathan Last in his book provides a reader-friendly but thorough analysis of the demographic crisis afflicting the West and the very bad things that will follow population decline. The facts of population decline are dramatic. Women must average a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.1 children apiece for populations to remain stable. But across the developed world, and increasingly everywhere else, except few countries including Ethiopia, fertility is quickly declining below this number. All developed countries are already below the 2.1 line and the rates of decline among developing countries are, in most cases, even steeper than in the developed ones.
Japan and Italy, for example, have a 1.4 TFR, a mathematical tipping point at which the population will decline by 50 percent in 45 years. As for the rest of Europe, by 2050 only three countries in the EU, which today has an average rate of 1.5 TFR, will not be experiencing population declines. Those countries are France, Luxembourg, and Ireland.
Immigration from developing countries will not provide a long-term solution, as fertility rates are declining there as well. The average fertility rate for Latin America was six children per woman in the 1960s; by 2005, it had dropped to 2.5. At that rate of decline, within a few decades, Latin American countries will likely have a fertility rate lower than that of the United States.
According to Jonathan Last, the most general cause of population decline is modernity itself. Birth-rates started declining in the nineteenth century when industrialization and technological advances began to accelerate. Better nutrition, sanitation, and health care, for example, have reduced infant mortality in America from about 300 babies dying out of 1,000 live births in 1850, to about six today. More babies surviving lessened the need for multiple pregnancies, which in turn reduced family size.
During the Industrial Revolution, migration to cities made children less useful than they were on farms and more expensive. Easier divorce, reliable birth control, cohabitation replacing marriage, and women entering the workforce in greater numbers since 1990, about 70 percent of women have been working at any given time, have all contributed to the decline in marriage and the diminishing centrality of children in people’s lives. These forces have created disincentives to reproduction, not the least being the $1.1 million price tag for rearing and educating a child today.
Two larger cultural trends have reinforced the effects of technological developments and industrialization. As Last points out, fertility rates among the educated classes began falling in the middle of the eighteenth century, which was about the same time as the rise of capitalism. The pursuit of individual initiative and self-interest contributed to the erosion of community and family. Economic advancement requires mobility and fewer obligations. Constraints hamper self-improvement and risk-taking, after all. Having children, perhaps the greatest constraint of all, became less and less a factor in people’s calculations of their self-interests. Something else would be required to get people to procreate.
That imperative to reproduce used to be grounded in religion, but during the eighteenth century, secularization began to loosen the hold that religious practice, actually going to church rather than just self-identifying by sect, used to have on people’s behaviour. The effect of religious practice on fertility is obvious from statistics. Indeed, the effects of religion on fertility can be so powerful that even if people are not the churchgoing type themselves, they will be affected if their parents are.
The dire economic and social effect of plummeting birth-rates reminds that marriage and childbirth are not just private lifestyle choices. A country with fewer children becomes, on average, increasingly older. Cities and towns begin to empty, while the cost of caring for retirees and elderly sick people skyrockets. Old people spend less and invest less, shrinking capital pools for the new businesses that create new jobs. Entrepreneurs do not come from among the aged. Countries with a higher median age have a lower percentage of entrepreneurs.
Most important, a shrinking labour force means fewer workers contributing the payroll taxes that finance old-age care. According to the latest ILO data, the Social Security program is already beginning to be impacted by the decline in the worker-to-retiree ratio.
Finally, foreign policy will increasingly be impacted by the global decline in fertility. Those who fear China as a future superpower threat to their interests should remember that by 2050, China’s population will be declining by 20 million every five years, and one out of four people will be over the age of 65. China’s public pension system covers only 365 million people and is unfunded by 150 percent of GDP. Jonathan Last in his book argues that what we need to prepare for is not a shooting war with an expansionist China, but a declining superpower with a rapidly contracting economic base and an unstable political structure. It’s not clear which scenario is more worrisome.
Solving such a complex problem as declining fertility is not going to be easy. As with many social problems, government intervention isn’t very successful. Bonus payments to expectant mothers, paid paternity leave, public holidays, “Motherhood Medals,” and tax incentives and subsidies have barely moved the needle in Russia, Japan, and Singapore. People cannot be bribed into making babies.
The best governments can do is help people have the children they do want. A college degree doesn’t prepare people for specific jobs, but rather gives employers an idea of their intelligence and work habits, something that can be done more cheaply and efficiently. Making child-friendly housing more affordable, letting workers telecommute to lessen the career-costs of having children, welcoming more fecund immigrants, and ending the hostility to religion and the faithful, “if for no other reason than they’re the ones who create most of the future taxpayers,” are some of Jonathan Last’s solutions. Unfortunately, they are as unlikely as they are sensible.

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