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Daniel Taye on time,situation, emotion and event

Staff Reporter
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Daniel Taye on time,situation, emotion and event

Described as an artist who inspires more puzzled expressions than praise, Daniel Taye’s flow of thoughts and perceiving things differently are his forte. His paintings might not fit any of the usual categories of Ethiopian fine art, traditional religious art, or abstract impressionism but the strokes and the enchanting color schemes over the canvas bring his work alive. He experiments with different mediums, color composition and depth. Daniel is known for his evocative landscape and figurative work.
Daniel attended the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design of Addis Ababa University. He is planning to exhibit his works on April 8 at Moa Anbessa Art Studio Gallery. Capital’s Metasebia Teshome talked to him about his works. Excerpts;

Capital: How long have you been working as a painter?
Daniel Taye: It has been more than 25 years since I start painting. I have graduated from Addis Ababa University with art degree in 1990. Since then I have been in the art industry.

Capital: How do you see the current growth of the industry?
Daniel Taye: Today, the artistic practices of the late 1970s and 1980s seem to have all disappeared. However, since the new generation of artists are influenced by the country’s tumultuous past, doubts linger as to what to do and how to define it. Themes, techniques, and subject matter repeat themselves in endless yet lively variation in an attempt to gain approval and recognition.

Capital: How was the last three decades in the art industry?
Daniel Taye: It was good, and also challenging, sometimes your work makes you happy and sometimes you could hate everything you have been doing. Through this period I have shown my works on more than 20 exhibitions, displaying more than 80 different paintings. The last time I have done an exhibition was five years ago. After that this one is going to be my first.
Most of my drawings show time, situations, emotions and events. My work has been exhibited in numerous venues throughout Ethiopia including the National Museum, Goethe-Institute and the Italian Cultural Institute. Also my drawings were showcased internationally including in Holland and the United States among others.
Also St. George Gallery has exhibited my work since 2000 and some of my paintings are part of the Gallery’s permanent collections.

Capital: How do you describe Art?
Daniel Taye: Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it’s about sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality.

Capital: How do you describe yourself as an artist?
Daniel Taye: I describe myself as an artist who inspires more puzzled expressions than praises. Most of my paintings might not fit any of the usual categories of fine art, traditional religious art, or abstract impressionism but the strokes and the enchanting color schemes over the canvas bring his work alive. He experiments with different mediums, color composition and depth. Most of them are landscape and figurative work.

Capital: What inspires you to be an artist?
Daniel Taye: I grew up closely involved with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Every corner of Churches display different paintings which has the power to explain the bible with drawings so that people can easily understand. That has been always forced me to get in the art industry.
Capital: What was the challenges you have been facing?
Daniel Taye: There were lots of challenges throughout this time, but one thing I want to select is Covid, the limitation to gathering has hindered us to show case our works, to meet people. Especially for those of us who didn’t have any other income expect selling our works.
Capital: Tell us about your exhibition, what is your plan?
Daniel Taye: My exhibition is going to the first in 5 years. I am planning to show case more than 20 drawings for 15 days starting from April 8, 2022. Most of the drawing has descriptions of time and situations, beside the show case I will also expect to sell drawings.

The political economy of liberalism

Alazar Kebede
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The political economy of liberalism

Despite its recent origins, liberalism has an articulated history testifying of its key role in modern Western society. The two great revolutions, in America in 1776 and France in 1789 refined some of the key ideas behind liberalism: democracy, equal rights, human rights, the separation between State and religion and freedom of religion, and the focus on the individual well-being.
Nineteenth century was a period of intense refinement of the values of liberalism, which had to face the novel economic and social conditions posed by incipient industrial revolution. Not only authors such as John Stuart Mill gave a fundamental contribution to liberalism, bringing to the philosophical attention topics such as freedom of speech, the liberties of women and of slaves; but also the birth of the socialist and communist doctrines, among others under the influence of Karl Marx and the French utopists, forced liberalists to refine their views and bond into more cohesive political groups.
In the twentieth century, liberalism was restated to adjust to the changing economic situation by authors such as Ludwig von Mises and John Maynard Keynes. The politics and lifestyle diffused by the Unites States throughout the world, then, gave a key impulse to the success of liberal lifestyle, at least in practice if not in principle. In more recent decades, liberalism has been used also to address the pressing issues of the crisis of capitalism and the globalized society. As the twenty-first century enters into its central phase, liberalism is still a driving doctrine that inspires political leaders and individual citizens.
No matter where we live, all societies carry baggage and a considerable amount of it. But, in a nutshell, what distinguishes successful societies from those that are not is that dynamic societies are the ones that know what to abandon and when. China, for example, is essentially a Confucianist culture. Confucianism is an ideological system that places education at a very high level of priority. But it is also a system which strongly discriminates against women.
Contemporary Chinese societies have continued to carry the emphasis on education. But they have smartly discarded the traditional discrimination against women baggage. Rest assured, as Jean-Pierre Lehmann, an emeritus professor of international political economy in Switzerland argued, if China were still binding its women’s feet, there would be no spectacular economic growth in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. According to him, the fact that China no longer binds women’s feet may make the Chinese feel less “Chinese”. But it lets China move ahead economically, politically and socially.
The following are the most crucial questions at this point. What has allowed the Chinese to make these choices? What allows similar changes to occur in other regions and cultures? Ultimately, what has transformed cultural legacies into dynamic engines of growth, welfare and prosperity in both the material and spiritual domains has been the liberating force of liberalism.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann stated that Confucianist scholars such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, the Hindu scholar Ram Mohun Roy and the numerous Christian liberals and humanists are all from different cultures. But also all share a common goal of sorting out their respective ideological baggage to see what works and what doesn’t.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann further noted that the potential for change is evident even in cultures which are today widely seen as almost a lost cause. Consider the Arab/Muslim world. Perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, a liberal tradition, a tradition of sorting through the cultural baggage, does exist in Arabic and Islamic thought. The Tunisian scholar, the late Albert Hourani, demonstrated this vividly in his magnificent book, “Arabic Thought” in the Liberal Age of 1968.
Albert Hourani described how, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thinkers and writers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani developed a powerful stream of Muslim thought along lines comparable to the evolution of secular and liberal thought in Europe. And, surprising as that may sound, Al-Afghani’s agenda of reform and liberalism did not prevent him from being a fervent nationalist and anti-imperialist.
Ultimately, however, as Hourani’s book shows, liberalism came to be aborted in most of the Middle East. How so? Well, opponents of liberalism in the Islamic world opted for an easy, but effective, move. They equated liberalism with “Westernism”. And that allowed them to dictate that all that old baggage whether effective or not be retained. Had the equivalent happened in China, the Chinese would still be binding women’s feet.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann argued that in fact, we would all do well to remember that the West’s ideological origins are not at all liberal even though it is correct that liberalism has emanated primarily from the West. After all, dogmatic literal interpretations of the Bible allowed the Florentine government to place Galileo under house arrest just for saying that the earth turned around the sun. Even today, fundamentalist Christians in the United States appear not prepared to give up the fight when they seek to ban the teaching of Darwinism in schools, for example.
Now it is realised that intellectual curiosity and cultural openness are not permanent features of any society. Take Japan as an example. In the 1960s, Japan was a hothouse of cultural curiosity, openness, import and experimentation. For whatever reason, in the course of the 1980s, Japan switched off. It has become far, far more inward-looking. In fact it has strangely turned into a somewhat masochistically narcissistic society, which, despite its great potential, goes a long way to explain its present social and economic decline.
All of that is why people are convinced that liberalism is a universal doctrine, the most basic premise of which is to oppose dogmatism in any form. Hence its advocacy of tolerance, openness and pluralism. And hence its attraction across many cultures. So, Jean-Pierre Lehmann kindly requested us that the next time we hear criticisms of “neo-liberalism,” keep in mind the huge value of the underlying premise in that concept on a broader scale.
Whatever is bothersome about the “neo” part, liberalism as such appears to be nothing less than the key to allowing a society to operate successfully in the modern, globalized world. I think that is indeed a blessing, not a curse.

Health Innovation

Staff Reporter
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Health Innovation

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death.
Across the globe, AMR has been recognized as one of the greatest threats to human and animal health. When this trickles down to Ethiopia, studies have reported that AMR prevalence in Ethiopia is increasing at an alarming rate. In order to mitigate this issue, various actions are being taken by researchers and innovators alike, with mHealth innovation on the rise in order to build a stronger health system through the design and implementation of data-driven solutions that respond to local needs whilst also underserving communities with tools to lead healthier lives.
One such innovator and researcher is Minyahil Tadesse, an evidence to policy translation research specialist who works at the Armauer Hansen Research Institute. Minyahil, who is currently a Ph.D. student at Jimma University pursuing a doctorate in Evidence-based Health Care, recently received intellectual property rights for a user-friendly and easily accessible mobile health app (mHealth app) which targets to promote antibiotic stewardship for the Ethiopian treatment guideline. Capital reached out to Minyahil for insights on the innovation. Excerpts;

Capital: What led you to delve into this particular health innovation (mobile health app)?
Minyahil Tadesse: Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a major threat to the long-term security of public health and has the potential to negatively impact our society. It is a serious and growing global health security risk, which needs to be prioritized at local and international levels. In response to the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, countries have introduced numerous prescribing tools in order to improve rates of appropriate antibiotic prescribing, among which is the provision of national treatment guidelines. It is a known fact that high levels of adherence to antibiotic guidelines result in improved patient safety, improved treatment outcomes, and reduced antibiotic resistance.
The main problem in Ethiopia is that adherence to national treatment guidelines among health care providers often remains very low. Several factors are thought to contribute to the lower adherence of prescribers to the treatment guideline such as difficulties with accessing the guidelines; prescribers’ lack of confidence in the processes used for guideline development and their perceptions that their own expertise results in better treatment decisions than those suggested by the guidelines. The Ethiopian national treatment guideline is available to prescribers in the form of a print book, and on the website of the Ethiopian Food and Drug Administration-EFDA. However, these approaches to providing treatment guidelines faced several challenges, such as ensuring doctors carry the bulky 1700 pages of the print guide, and the need to issue new physical copies of the guidelines when they are updated.
Thus, this concept materialized with the objective of developing user friendly and easily accessible mobile health app (ET-STGapp) for the Ethiopian treatment guideline to promote antibiotic stewardship. This innovation is smoothly integrable due to the recent upturn in smartphone use in the general population which has been matched by the increased development of smartphone apps geared toward use in the healthcare system. At the point of care, physicians are likely to be in constant contact with their phones, in contrast to print guidelines, desktop computers, and reference handbooks. Besides, information found on a smartphone might be accessed more frequently at the patient’s bedside, and be easier to update remotely without needing to issue new physical copies. Therefore, the essence of this project is to present the national treatment guideline as a mobile app in order to facilitate access to the resources for point of care decision-making. I strongly believe and know that the app will be very important to significantly improve the inconsistency in antibiotic prescription and decrease antimicrobial resistance; with the ultimate goal to improve the quality of patient care.

Capital: What makes this innovation a significant improvement upon standard practice?
Minyahil Tadesse: Countries usually have standard antimicrobial or antibiotic guidelines which are prepared to help as a reference to health professionals to follow a certain standard. The EFDA leads the preparation of national treatment guidelines. Even though there is a national standard treatment guideline, it is a big document with pages and is not user-friendly. This may be evidenced by a usual practice by physicians to use international references such as Medscape and Up-to-Date which are easy to use because they can be downloaded on smartphones and can be accessed offline with easy searching mechanisms. Our innovation enables the national treatment guidelines to be uploaded and accessed offline. The app will have a search box where users can type in the words and have immediate access to complete information. This would significantly improve the inconsistent antibiotic prescription which in the end will help to decrease antimicrobial resistance.

Capital: What is the specific problem you are addressing through the App? Who are the primary beneficiaries of this App?
Minyahil Tadesse: In Ethiopia, the unregulated over-the-counter sale of antimicrobials, mainly for self-treatment of suspected infection in humans and animals without prescription would inevitably lead to the emergence and rapid dissemination of resistance. Particularly, the appropriate antimicrobial utilization in the case of hospitalized patients is crucial not only in ensuring an optimal outcome but also in curtailing the emergence of resistance and containing costs. A survey done by FMHACA in 2009 revealed that most bacteria that are involved in causing infections in human beings and animals showed a significant degree of resistance to commonly used first-line antimicrobials with a progressive increase over the years 1996-2000 E.C. (FMHACA, 2011). These pieces of evidence are alarming and unless significant interventions are applied, it is likely that most of our locally available antimicrobials will lose their efficacy and we will run out of options. In addition, it is difficult to make newer generations of antimicrobials accessible due to the high cost.
Even though there are diverse strategies that need to be implemented in order to curb the problem, rational use of antimicrobials is the cornerstone. This can be assured by making sure that prescribers use the national treatment guideline among other interventions. Making the guideline easily accessible and user-friendly is likely to have a significant impact on the probability of prescribers making use of it. So, our innovation help prescribers access the latest national antimicrobial guideline at their tap which will definitely improve their compliance with the guideline and practice rational use of antimicrobials. Likewise, if we use our available antimicrobials at hand wisely, it is likely that we will prolong the life of antimicrobials with adequate efficacy and avert the disaster of multidrug-resistant microorganisms. The primary target of this innovation is physicians, clinical pharmacists, and druggists who are the main players in the choice, prescription, and advice on the use of antimicrobials. And the ET-STGapp will be accessed by end-users by downloading the App on an Android device which later can be accessed offline.

Capital: How is this innovation substantially different from other approaches to address the stated problem and how does it improve upon the best existing alternatives?
Minyahil Tadesse: The spread of antimicrobial resistance in developing countries is associated with complex and interconnected factors, such as excessive and unnecessary prescribing of antimicrobials, increased self-prescribing by the people and poor quality of available antimicrobials. Moreover, the failure to implement infection control practices and the dearth of routine susceptibility testing and surveillance magnify the problems. This may spread the inappropriateness of prescribing, ending up with the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
Using a standardized approach to antimicrobial prescription is one of the most important interventions which help to tackle this problem. Even though a national standard treatment guideline is available in Ethiopia, its accessibility is questionable. In addition, in this era of technology, end users are likely to incline to other references which are at their disposal.
So, our innovation of a national antimicrobial usage App, will help health access information related to antimicrobial prescription with significant ease. Besides, this generation has a propensity to use technology which helps to make sure health professionals follow local guidelines which are likely to be based on local evidence.

Capital: How does your solution demonstrate its potential to scale and sustain health and development impacts?
Minyahil Tadesse: The African region has developed an eHealth strategy. The report emphasizes that the use of e-Health solutions can enhance service delivery; develop the health workforce and improve performance by eliminating distance and time barriers; and improve the availability, quality, and use of information and evidence.
Health care professionals use mHealth apps for point of care clinical decision-making. According to research in Saudi Arabia in 2018, medical apps most commonly used by medical practitioners are: Medscape, Oxford medical dictionary, Skyscape, UpToDate. In this study, some of the most common use of Installed smartphone medical apps was for revision of medical knowledge, during ward rounds, viewing of medication, and drug guides.
Similarly, in a study conducted among physicians working at referral hospitals in the Amhara region in Ethiopia in 2019, showed that the most commonly used medical application by the respondents were: Up to date, Medscape, Medcalc and Doximity. The drawback of these apps is that they are not easily accessible and that they are not based on local evidence and local treatment guidelines. The print-based and soft copies of the national treatment guidelines are not easy to access and use. Availing this document with the mhealth app will facilitate access to the resources for point of care decision making and hence improve the quality of care. At the point of care, physicians can check information with the ET-STGapp for possible differential diagnoses, treatment options, and drug information using the search words for drug or disease. Designing and applying this app using the local evidence will have a greater and long-term impact on health care, both on antimicrobial stewardship and quality of care.
Moreover, this app can be scaled up to a larger health professional community as it only needs smartphones and it will be used similarly to the existing apps. For scale-up and sustained use of the ET-STGapp, the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia has started to mobilize funding.

Capital: In the long run, how will you measure the success of this innovation? Are there any plans for measuring results and indicators of success?
Minyahil Tadesse: To measure the impact of the ET-STGapp for the antibiotic treatment guideline, the monkey survey will be carried out every time an update in the application has been made. In addition, a computer-based self-reporting performance measure will be developed, which shows the amount of time the health care workers have used the application.
The specific indicators for ET-STGapp Implementation program success are: Significant improvement in compliance to the antibiotic treatment guideline, improved health system information flow performance promoting antibiotic stewardship, single-window tracking system for antibiotic resistance in Ethiopia and increased uptake of the produced evidence by the policy decision making body.

 

Out of Ukraine war a plan for Africa’s food security

admin
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Out of Ukraine war a plan for Africa’s food security

By Patrick Verkooijen, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim & Akinwumi Adesina

A foreign conflict has exposed Africa’s dependence on imports and is galvanising action to boost local food production and tackle climate threats
The victims of war are sometimes found far away from the battlefield—and so it is with Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. For while the fighting there is causing immeasurable suffering and destruction, it is also threatening a silent catastrophe in Africa.
The conflict has sent food prices soaring. This is hard for the 283 million people who are already going hungry on the continent. War in Ukraine has also exposed Africa’s chronic dependence on food imports.
Wheat imports account for about 90% of Africa’s $4 billion trade with Russia and nearly half of the continent’s $4.5 billion trade with Ukraine. Sanctions against Russia have disrupted grain shipments at a time when global stockpiles were already tight. This is now raising the spectre of mass starvation on a continent that depends on food imports to feed itself.
If ever there was a time to drastically raise food production in Africa, it is now.
In truth, Africa’s food crisis has been building for some time. Climate change is disrupting weather patterns and damaging agriculture, not only in Africa but in many parts of the world. This has also been a factor behind rocketing food prices, now at their highest in almost 50 years.
Excepting war, climate change is perhaps the biggest threat to global food security. We urgently need long-term, sustainable solutions that allow agriculture to adapt to our warming planet.
GROWN IN AFRICA
In response, the African Development Bank and partners aim to mobilise $1 billion to boost the production of wheat and other crops in Africa. The bank’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) programme is already helping the continent fulfil its enormous potential in the agriculture sector by employing high-impact technologies to boost output. The goal is to help 40 million farmers increase their harvests of heat-tolerant wheat varieties, rice, soybean and other crops to feed about 200 million people.
Central to these efforts is the need to train farmers in new techniques that increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change. To feed a hungry and rapidly growing continent, farmers need to produce more food, with fewer resources, while confronting erratic weather patterns, floods, droughts, the spread of pathogens and the loss of biodiversity.
Thanks to the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program, an Africa-led initiative launched last year to reverse the continent’s vulnerability to climate change, the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and other development partners are already working to bring climate-resilient techniques to small-scale producers who grow most of Africa’s food.
The GCA estimates that investing to climate-proof African farms costs less than one-tenth of the damage inflicted by climate disasters, including crop losses, disaster relief, rebuilding roads and getting farmers back on their feet. For sub-Saharan Africa, these sunk costs are estimated at $201 billion a year, compared to the investments needed for climate adaptation in agriculture, which is estimated at $15 billion, again according to the GCA.
Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face the combined challenges of a rapidly changing climate, malnutrition and a growing population. They will need more resilient, productive and nutritious crops if they are to meet this challenge. Such change must happen quickly and at scale. In Africa, climate change could wipe out 15% of gross domestic product by 2030. This means an additional 100 million people forced into poverty by the end of the decade.
Protecting the continent’s rich biodiversity is a route to boosting agricultural yields and finding new crop varieties that are better suited to drier and hotter climates. Genebanks conserve thousands of important plant samples which scientists can use to develop better varieties, but for years they have suffered from insufficient funding and inadequate staffing, putting plant collections and future food security at risk.
The BOLD Project, run by the Crop Trust and funded by Norway and the European Union, provides financial and technical support for genebanks in Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Ghana to reach international standards of operation, ensuring collections are safe and available for use over the long term.
With food prices climbing and supplies disrupted by conflict, Africa needs to harness as many climate-resilient solutions as it can, quickly and at scale, to stave off the threat of a catastrophic food crisis. Investing in climate adaptation for agriculture is the smartest, most cost-efficient way to guarantee the continent’s food security. There is no time to waste.

Patrick Verkooijen is CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim is Norway’s Minister of International Development and Akinwumi Adesina is President of the African Development Bank.

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