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Edget Betremariam

Staff Reporter
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Edget Betremariam

Name: Edget Betremariam

Education: Diploma certificate in Mosaic Art

Company name: Ab Edget restaurant

Title: owner

Founded in: 2006

What it does: Restaurant services

HQ: Near Lideta Federal High Court

Number of employees: 23

Startup Capital: 1,000 birr

Current capital: 50,000 birr

Reasons for starting the business: It was started as a family business

Biggest perk of ownership: Ability to support myself and my family

Biggest strength: Ability to work in a harsh environment and time management

Biggest challenging: Government system and Covid-19

Plan: Building an International Hotel

First career: DJ

Most interested in meeting: PM Abiy Ahmed

Most admired person: My parents

Stress reducer: Praying and music

Favorite past time: Sporting activities

Favorite book: Bible

Favorite destination: Dubai

Favorite automobile: Toyota Corolla

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE

Staff Reporter
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DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE

Official Development Assistance is a term coined in 1969 by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to measure foreign aid. Japan throughout this period has been a top tier contributor to development assistance across developing countries, through its governmental agency, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). JICA for decades has played an integral part to the success of various projects for developing nations and is devoted to lead the world with trust. JICA, with its partners envisions on taking the lead in forging bonds of trust across the world, aspiring for a free, peaceful and prosperous world where people can hope for a better future and explore their diverse potentials.
Katsuki Morihara currently is the Chief Representative of JICA Ethiopia Office and has been spearheading the agency’s vision through various levels of capacity for over two decades. Capital linked up with Katsuki for an inside view of JICA and its progress. Excerpts;

Capital: Can you tell us about JICA’s activity in Ethiopia?
Katsuki Morihara: JICA opened offices in Ethiopia in 1972. The office at the time had a very limited function and it mainly handled the dispatch of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers. We then upgraded the office in 1993. That is when we started expanding our operations. Ethiopia is an important partner in Africa. The Japanese government puts a great emphasis on Africa and it started a process called TICAD, Tokyo International Conference on African Development, in 1993 to address various development opportunities. The development and stability of the Horn of Africa are very important and Ethiopia plays a significant role within the region. The development of Ethiopia contributes to the development of Africa as a whole. The amount of our cooperation has been on the rise in the last 5 years. On average, it has been about 50 million USD a year, ranging from 30-70 million USD. Among sub-Saharan African countries, Ethiopia was the 5th largest recipient of JICA’s development cooperation in 2019. We have tried to support so-called “Quality Growth” in Ethiopia. Quality Growth is defined as growth which is inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. In order to realize such a growth, we focus on 5 main areas: agriculture and rural development, industrial promotion, infrastructure, education and health. Ethiopia has many development partners; however, we are trying to focus on areas where Japan has strength. Within agricultural, for example, we provide assistance in rice production because Japan is well-known for rice cultivation and JICA has a long history of cooperation in this field in many African countries. We also have on-going high-level industrial policy dialogues with the Ethiopian government. The Japanese development model is unique in the sense that our government played a very strategic role in developing our industries. We support small and medium sized enterprise development because in Japan we have a proven track record of supporting similar sectors. Our flagship project has been KAIZEN. KAIZEN, a Japanese word that literally means ‘change for good’ or ‘improvement’, is a Japanese management philosophy based on continuous improvement and it paves a path towards achieving efficiency, productivity and quality. Ethiopia has been a champion in implementing and introducing the concept. More than 700 companies are adopting KAIZEN. There is lots of tangible evidence coming out in terms of increasing profits and productivity gains. Within infrastructure, we cover power, road and water. Among these, Japan has a comparative advantage within geothermal development in particular. In terms of education, we are focusing on the improvement of math and science education.

Capital: What are your projects in the water sector in Addis Ababa?
Katsuki Morihara: Broadly speaking we are trying to address the issue of urbanization in this country. Ethiopia’s urbanization rate is currently around 20% but it is expected to increase up to 35 to 40% in approximately 20 years’ time. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure the welfare of people living in the city. The Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority (AAWSA) is facing the challenging task of reducing or eliminating non-revenue water, which happens when water is lost on the way to the pipe or it is not properly metered at the household level. In addition, non-revenue water reduces revenue that could be accrued and put towards the sustainability of AAWSA, thereby affecting the water that can be delivered to existing and new households. We will work with AAWSA to come up with mechanisms to detect the cause of non-revenue water as well as solutions for the problem.

Capital: What are the projects you are involved in with ERA and AACRA?
Katsuki Morihara: The Jimma-Chida Road Project is an extensive project with financing of about 100 million USD. We had the launching ceremony in late February in a town near Chida. The Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet were there, as was the Ambassador of Japan. The existing 80km road will be upgraded to asphalt. It is a very rich agricultural area so the road is going to facilitate the flow of agricultural products and will increase the quality and quantity of the goods like coffee and honey delivered to the domestic market as well as for export. As for the AACRA, we are providing Grant Aid and Technical Cooperation in the field of road maintenance. The construction of roads is important but the maintenance is equally as important. We have taken on other projects as well, including the Grant Aid worth 250 million USD for upgrading the Trunk Road Route 3 connecting Addis Ababa to Debre-Markos, which spans about 300 kilometers.

Capital: Japan used to be the biggest importer of Ethiopian coffee; do you have any projects connected to the coffee sector, or any plans to revive the import by Japan?
Katsuki Morihara: We have had a series of projects on coffee production. It’s combined with natural resource management and agroforestry coffee production. We believe that it is not enough to simply produce and harvest coffee but that we also have to maintain the natural environment so that the coffee production can be sustained for a long time. We have supported sustainable coffee production for many years and other Japanese companies have participated in that project in Belete-Gera Forest and surrounding areas. This project ended quite recently but we have a new project called Agriculture and Rural Development Climate Resilience. It focuses on climate-smart agriculture, forestry and natural resources management, which includes training stakeholders on sustainable coffee production. On the export-side, we provide assistance to the industrial sector through an export-promotion project. In the first phase of the project, we focused on the export of highland sheepskin leather and now in the second phase we started with the re-branding of Ethiopian coffee. We are not necessarily targeting the Japanese market but we are assisting in the branding and marketing of Ethiopian coffee so that it can compete in the global market.

Capital: As this is the fourth phase of KAIZEN implementation in Ethiopia, what are you planning to improve from past phases?
Katsuki Morihara: In the fourth phase, we are trying to expand our activities. We are expecting more companies to join. We are trying to apply KAIZEN methodologies to the management system of companies. KAIZEN in management is something new; it has been mainly applied to manufacturing processes. We are also trying to address IT issues in this phase. We are also trying to strengthen the linkage with ongoing cooperation in other industrial developments, such as SME development. We support business development services where business consultants advice SMEs on how to improve their business and management. We are also currently financing the construction of the TICAD Human Resource Development Center, which will be a training center under the Ethiopian Kaizen Institute, charged with disseminating KAIZEN in Ethiopia as well as to neighboring countries and eventually throughout Africa.

Capital: How are you involved with geothermal projects in the country?
Katsuki Morihara: We are providing Grant Aid worth about 18 million USD to introduce a portable geothermal power plant with the capacity of 5 megawatts. Its generation capacity is rather small but it is easy to install. We are also exploring the possibility of projects in the Afar area, as well as carrying out preparatory surveys for a large-scale geothermal power plant at Aluto-Langano. In addition, a JICA expert has been working in government institutions in the energy sector including the Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy to provide policy advice as well as coordinate JICA’s cooperation in the field.

Capital: Any last comments?
Katsuki Morihara: We have traditionally embraced the concept of self-help and ownership of partner countries. We have three major instruments in our systems. One is Concessional Loans; the other is a Grant Aid and lastly Technical Cooperation. Out of these three instruments, Technical Cooperation is the smallest, while Loans are biggest and Grant comes next. Despite its limited size, JICA particularly embraces the importance of Technical Cooperation for the capacity development of Ethiopian counterparts. That philosophy comes from Japan’s own experience of development because Japan developed by investing heavily in human capital. We are a tiny island country in the Far East and we do not have any natural resources – the only asset we have is human resources so we invested heavily in that. Japan is the first country of non-Western origin that has successfully become a developed country from a developing one while preserving most of its traditional values and cultures. We learned a lot from the Western countries like the US and Europe but we never simply copied and pasted their systems because we knew they would not work as they were in our culture. We always modified what worked in other countries to fit the context of our own society. This process of adaptation based on the country’s ownership is very important for development. Technical cooperation allows us to engage deeply with our Ethiopian counterparts rather than just giving out money. We can think and work together to figure out what worked in other countries, and how it can be adjusted to fit this country. We hope to impact Ethiopia’s human resources so that our experience-sharing will be sustained by the people of Ethiopia. Since last April, because of the COVID-19 situation, we needed to send many of our staff back to Japan, but I am glad to announce that everyone in our office is already back while many experts are starting to return. We are now ready to fully resume our operations and we will have 46 projects within the year, an increase from 23 projects we have now.

Planting Seeds of Love

Dr. Desta Meghoo
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As we continue commemorating Women this month, a song by world renown soul singer Aretha Franklin comes to mind. The song is Young, Gifted and Black and is fitting for an incredible experience I had here in Addis. I had the pleasure and sheer honor of being a guest at The School of St. Yared, celebrating their 10th Anniversary with an incredible display of talented future poets, painters, actors, singers, inventors and more…all under the age of 13. My dear daughter (from another mother) Sorit Mahde, compelled me to skip my Friday morning ritual of writing and join her up the mountain around the Bella area of Eyesus Orthodox Church. We were also joined by fashion designer Furdo DawiDesign, Artist Merid Tafesse, and the Australian Ambassador Jenny DaRin. The morning began with a telling of the history of The School of St. Yared. Narratives of teachers and store keepers who began with the founder – poor daily laborers, uneducated and vulnerable women – now teachers, administrators and the backbone of the school which serves almost 300 children.
The students are provided everything from books to uniforms, meals to medicine and everything in between with support from various individuals, organizations and countries including Australia, Israel, UK, USA. Some have given formally others informally through valuable volunteer efforts. The children are bright, clean, confident, hopeful, talented, proud and inspiring. They sang songs to assert their aspirations and potential. They delivered painful poems – one of a girl raped and having a baby while herself a baby, yet she declared herself victorious and filled with hope. They performed a play depicting an evil character cooking up hatred and divisiveness between the ethnic groups who were peacefully eating together, very graphic. The sound and other effects were bone chilling but by the end of the skit, Mama Ethiopia, portrayed by a young girl clothed in the Ethiopian flag, brought love and unity and life back into all the tribes. Words do this no justice, sadly. Wow… I said to myself, if the children can express such observation, why do we stay quiet? But that’s another story.
Suffice it to say the star of the day was the youth co-founder of The School of St. Yared who is simply outspoken, defiant and let’s just say a young man on a mission. He thanked all the guests after recognizing and awarding his tried and true team and unapologetically spoke to the non-support of the public sector and internationals alike. His name is Yared Wolde and he has travelled the world seeking support for his passion, the least fortunate children of Ethiopia. He can neither be bought nor sold, on this mission to care for children – some afflicted with AIDS, some horribly abused and discarded by society, homeless, hungry, hopeless with numerous psychological issues. Yared is an advocate and voice for these children and the perfect one. You see, Yared too was homeless as a child and he ran the streets, much like most we see on the streets of Addis today. But he made a choice to change, not only his life, but the lives of others. Yared challenges us to think about the children. He insists that “it is my responsibility to care for Ethiopia’s most needy children…”. Yared stands firm that if everybody does something positive, we can end this nightmarish poverty which is the greatest enemy of Ethiopia. His mantra for the school is “Fighting poverty through education” with a commitment to “empowering the future leaders and change makers of Ethiopia.”
Yared’s vision is great and coming to fruition every day right here in a holistic, nurturing and safe environment where the children have agency and ownership of their future. I want the world to know about Yared and about the great things going on in Ethiopia where young people ARE the ones we are waiting for. They are not waiting for us, sadly as we have let them down. But it is not too late. We can support the school which also has a robust art section already yielding some serious budding scientists and artists, based on the exhibition displayed for visitors and parents alike. The images of PM Abiyi Ahmed, Ghandi, Bob Marley and a host of international leaders spoke to the sheer local pride and global knowledge possessed by these babies. I am sold on the School of St. Yared and the notion of planting a seed and helping it grow. Why? In a twist of fate, Yared was actually one of my lijyuch at the Children’s Village Project which I established with Merid from 2005 to 2010 in the Arat Kilo Piassa area. No, it was not an NGO; simply a safe space for the most vulnerable children especially the homeless. But that is another story. The take away here is when you make time to touch someone’s life, you never know what will occur in the future. Further, you don’t need a million dollars to do good, just letting a child know how much they are worth and that you love them CAN make a difference. Yared is my child and I am filled with joy, pride and tears with the surprise I received at his school. Yared Wolde is an Ethiopian Change Maker.

Dr. Desta Meghoo is a Jamaican born
Creative Consultant, Curator and cultural promoter based in Ethiopia since 2005. She also serves as Liaison to the AU for the Ghana based, Diaspora African Forum.

The fighter’s spirit: Commemorating the Adwa Victory 125 years on Victory Day as opposed to Independence Day

Staff Reporter
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The fighter’s spirit: Commemorating the Adwa Victory 125 years on Victory Day as opposed to Independence Day

By Yohana Kassahun

There is an unusually tense atmosphere at Menelik Square. The nation has gone through an unfortunate series of events the previous year, with the misfortune trickling into 2013EC. The unrest in the north had left the country slightly divided. The recovery from that seemed like it would be a bit more speedy on Tuesday when hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians were seen in cultural clothes and T-shirts with prints commemorating the Adwa Victory. Tuesday’s celebration commenced in the attendance of Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde, the Minister for Culture and Tourism, Hirut Kassahun, senior government officials and members of the Ancient Ethiopian Patriots’ Association, and thousands of city residents who gathered around a bronze statue of Emperor Menelik II on horseback. Security forces stated that the victory day was celebrated peacefully with no security incident.
The victory of Adwa took place on March 1, 1896, at Adwa, in north-central Ethiopia, between the Ethiopian army of Emperor Menelik II and Italian forces. The victory had major significance for being the first crushing defeat of a European power by African forces during the colonial era. The Ethiopian army’s victory checked Italy’s attempt to build an empire in Africa.
The war declaration was widely heeded and welcomed throughout the country, a clear affirmation of his popularity. Menelik’s declaration is an important literary document in the context of preparation, the will to fight and become victorious at the Battle of Adwa. Menelik appealed to the love of family, religion, and country. He reminded Ethiopians that the enemy intends to take away the core values and traditions cherished by the people. Menelik declared:
“Up until now, through the grace of God, who permitted me to live by destroying my enemies and expanding the territorial boundaries of our country. It is also through the grace of God that I am ruling. Therefore, I have no fear of death. More importantly, God has never let me down and I am confident that he will let me be victorious again.”
“At this time, another enemy has entered our territory by crossing our God-given sea. His objective is to destroy the country and to change religion. As a result of a major cattle disease that devastated a large number of our livestock and brought great sufferings to our farmers and pastoralists in the last few years, I remained quiet and patient to numerous hostile provocations. And yet the enemy continued to dig deeper in the ground like a hog.”
“Now God willing or with God’s help, I will not surrender my country. My fellow country folks, I do not believe that I disappointed you in the past. You have not also disappointed me. If you are strong, then help me with your strength to fight the enemy. If you are not strong, I seek your moral support for the sake of your children, wife, and religion. If, on the other hand, you seek a lame excuse not to join the national campaign against our enemy, I will be upset and I will have no mercy on you, I will punish you. My campaign begins in October, and I expect volunteers from Shewa to gather in Woreilu by mid-October.”
The call came as such and the patriots obliged.
Menelik’s forces were well armed with modern weaponry. They numbered more than 100,000. Menelik, however, shrewdly downplayed this military strength by leaking false reports indicating a much smaller number of troops under his command and by spreading rumors that there was widespread discord among his forces.
The number of those in the Italian army who were killed is estimated to have been more than 6,000, of whom slightly more than half were Italian; the remainder were askari forces (African troops hired and trained by the Europeans). Additionally, between 3,000 and 4,000 of those fighting under Italian command were taken prisoner by the Ethiopians. Perhaps as many as 70 percent of Italy’s soldiers were thus killed or captured. More than 5,000 Ethiopian troops were killed and 8,000 wounded in the battle—a number greater than Italy’s losses, but a small percentage of all Ethiopian forces.
The Treaty of Addis Ababa, signed in October 1896, abrogated the Treaty of Wichale and reestablished peace. The Italian claim to a protectorate over all of Ethiopia was thereafter abandoned, and the Italian colony of Eritrea, finally delimited by a treaty of peace (September 1900), was reduced to a territory of about 200,000 square km (80,000 square miles).
Menelik’s victory over the Italians gave him significant credibility with the European powers, bolstered his mandate at home, and provided the Ethiopian kingdom with a period of peace in which it was able to expand and flourish, in contrast to most of the rest of the African continent at that time, which was embroiled in colonial conflicts.
Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde stated in her speech “We have to understand the problems we are facing now and find a solution. We must strive to move forward for a better future by embracing the spirit of Adwa,” the president emphasized, adding, “We must work in harmony to secure a developed country for the coming generation, accepting the fact that nothing comes above our beloved country,” she said.
Muferiat Kamil, Ethiopia’s Minister of Peace, stressed that the Adwa victory is an important milestone, and Ethiopians should tap into the sense of unity that resulted from the memorable victory towards building national resilience that would help withstand current misunderstandings among the Ethiopian society. “The victory of Adwa is a symbol of unity, togetherness, and strength not only for Ethiopians and the rest of African but also for the global community,” she said.
Getachew Birhanu, a 23-years-old university student from Ethiopia’s northwestern Bahir Dar city who is presently attending the Addis Ababa University, said the day signifies a profound achievement not only for Ethiopians but also for all Africans and other freedom fighters across the globe.
“As the name depicts, it signifies a momentous victory by a less-equipped Ethiopian force against a well-equipped colonizing Italian force. Because of them (Ethiopians who fought against the colonizer force), we now celebrate a Victory Day as opposed to Independence Day,” added Birhanu.

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