A group art exhibition depicting works of Ethiopia and Moroccan artists is being showcased at the St George Golla Art Gallery. The art gallery that was open for the public from November 1 will be open until November 11.
The event is organized by the Embassy of Morocco in Ethiopia to boost the cultural relations of the two countries.
The event was also opened in the presence of a large foreign community by Ambassador Nezha Alaoui M’hamdi, Ambassador of Morocco to Ethiopia.
By Akinwumi A. Adesina, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Vera Songwe, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki
As world leaders head to Glasgow for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Africa needs decisive collective action rather than more encouraging words. In particular, rich countries should support a four-part financial and trade package that can ensure a transformative shift of resources to the region.
Almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the unequal nature of the global response to the crisis is glaringly obvious. Whereas very few African countries have managed to spend the equivalent of even 1% of their GDP to combat this virtually unprecedented health emergency, Western economies have mustered over $10 trillion, or 30% of their combined GDP, to tackle it. Europe and the United States have fully vaccinated, respectively, 75% and 70% of their adult populations against COVID-19, but fewer than 6% of Africans have been vaccinated. And while some Western countries are already administering booster shots, Africa cannot get initial doses.
This systemic inequity is equally evident in efforts to address the climate crisis. Climate disasters, like viruses, know no boundaries. But whereas governments in the Global North respond to such events by borrowing on capital markets at negligible cost in order to finance stimulus and investment packages, African countries must rely on either a trickle of liquidity through debt-suspension initiatives, aid pledges, or exorbitantly expensive capital-market funding. None of these options currently provide these economies with the upfront capital investment they need to improve their long-term prospects.
As world leaders head to Glasgow for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Africa needs decisive collective action rather than more encouraging words. We therefore propose a strategic financial and trade package that can transform climate inequality into inclusiveness by ensuring a transformative shift of resources from historic greenhouse-gas (GHG) emitters to Africa.
Our plan rests on four pillars. First, developed economies must keep the promise they made in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to deliver $100 billion per year to help cover developing countries’ adaptation and transition costs. After all, the commitments that developing countries made in Paris were conditional on this pledge. Failure to fulfill this overdue commitment now, with half of the $100 billion earmarked for adaptation costs, will undermine the very principle of multilateral action. It is a provision in an international agreement, and it must be honored.
The fact that the developed world mobilized $10 trillion to counter the pandemic in 2020 alone demonstrates just how small an amount $100 billion per year really is. Yet, in that same period, official development assistance increased by only 3.5% in real terms.
The second pillar is to align financial markets with the Paris agreement’s goals. Mainstreaming the impact of climate change in investment decisions is critical, and judicious deployment of private capital in green sectors will transform African countries and developing economies in general. To that end, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, chaired by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, has brought together firms with a combined $90 trillion in assets.
There must now be an urgent and determined effort to channel this private finance into growing climate-friendly sectors in Africa and other developing countries. With that in mind, the UN Economic Commission for Africa earlier this year proposed a liquidity and sustainability facility that aims to reduce borrowing costs linked to green investments by developing a repurchasing (“repo”) market for the continent. The initiative, which ideally will be financed through seed funding of $3 billion in special drawing rights (the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset), is intended to de-risk private investments in Africa and help the region increase its share – currently less than 1% – of the global green bond market.
The Republic of South Africa recently issued a R3 billion ($196 million) green bond to refinance its energy sector. Such issuances are an example of the type of investment that is possible by unlocking bond markets for Africa. We need to make such investments the rule rather than the exception.
In addition, the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group has proposed establishing an African Financial Stability Mechanism. Such a scheme will help prevent future financial shocks in Africa – the only continent without a Regional Financing Arrangement – from having spillover effects.
The third pillar is to provide the significant resources Africa needs to enable its economies to adapt to global warming. Climate change is costing the continent $7-15 billion annually and threatens both food security and the use of hydropower. But Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for less than 4% of global GHG emissions, receives just 5% of total climate finance outside the OECD.
Instead of simply waiting for such financing to materialize, Africa is tackling climate adaptation head-on with homegrown solutions. The AfDB currently devotes 63% of its climate finance to adaptation, the highest share of any multilateral financial institution, and has committed to double such funding to $25 billion by 2025. The AfDB and the Global Center on Adaptation have also created the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) to help scale up bankable adaptation investments in the region. The mobilization of $25 billion via the AAAP will be a first step toward investing in a green recovery for Africa.
Lastly, any solution to climate change must address trade, the lifeblood of the global economy. The key to ending our current economic malaise is to ensure continued openness and predictability, including by committing to global trade rules that are aligned with the Paris agreement’s goals.
Regional blocs such as the newly formed African Continental Free Trade Area can provide an impetus for hardwiring our commitment to low-carbon development. We must recognize Africa’s specific needs, acknowledge the continent’s vulnerability to climate change, and identify the regions and communities where its consequences have caused the most harm.
Next year’s UN climate summit, COP27, will take place in Africa, and we look forward to welcoming the world. But developed countries must fulfill their longstanding climate promises to the region well before then – starting in Glasgow.
Vera Songwe is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
Akinwumi A. Adesina is President of the African Development Bank.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, is a former managing director at the World Bank, finance minister of Nigeria, board chair of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and African Union special envoy on COVID-19. She is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Global Public Leader at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, former Prime Minister of Niger, is CEO of the African Union Development Agency’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD).
The Czech Republic Embassy in Addis Ababa organized an event titled “Ethiopia in Czech colours III” held on October 30, 2021, at the premises of the Czech Embassy in Addis Ababa. The third round of this Exhibition is set in order to commemorate the Czech National Day and as a tradition, where artists are invited to use paints manufactured in the Czech Republic to tie the two countries in the journey of art and creativity.
The Ethiopian Visual Artists Association and the Ethiopian Women Artists Association handpicked the participants. There are 9 men and 1 woman artists that displayed their oil paintings. There was also a sculpture artist Amen Badeg, with a distinct test that has exquisite pieces made from scrap metal. There were different items being sold such as coffee, honey which designate the Ethiopian traditional flavor. There were stands by the leather products “Undkǝn”- handcrafted by the musician, Kenny Allen.
Awash Winery is catering the Bazaar and Exhibition with a coffee stand that was enjoyed by over 100 guests from different Embassies, international organizations, and art fanatics.
Tectonic demographic shifts are happening to the foundations of the world economy. Consider that about 85% of world GDP is generated in countries that face an unprecedented reversal of the population ageing pyramid. As it happens, this rapid process of population ageing is affecting developed and developing countries alike. Among developing countries, China’s leaders were early to focus on ageing-related challenges. Their country’s long-run joint approach to demographic change and development offers a useful case study for today’s poor and young countries.
Lauren Johnston, a Research Associate in School of Oriental and African Studies, at the London University stated that in 1979, leaders of then poor and demographically youthful China initiated an economic modernization agenda commonly known as “reform and opening.” The aim was for those reforms to facilitate economic development and poverty alleviation. At that time in China, poverty was endemic and hunger a major concern. The parallel implementation of a complementary population policy, which would become known as the One Child Policy, was considered a step in the direction of supporting that modernization and poverty alleviation journey.
Lauren Johnston noted that Chinese leaders foresaw, however, that a low total fertility rate and falling mortality rates, including via rising life expectancy, would also mean that China’s population structure would age more rapidly. China’s median age in 1980 was 21.9 years and had risen to 37.0 years by 2015.
Worse, there was basically no feasible rate of economic development that would mean China realise high per capita income living standards for its people – before the population itself was “old.” China, that is, would be old, and not yet rich. Worse, China’s policy makers worried that facing such aging-related challenges as a “poor” country would weigh upon China’s prospects of ever becoming a “rich” country.
What is the Economic Demography Transition?
Implicit in China being “poor-old and old” are three parallel economic demography categories: “Poor-old and young,” “rich and old” and “rich and young.” Put together, these form the Economic Demography Matrix (EDM). The Economic Demography Matrix is a simple and useful framework for categorizing countries and regions via their economic and demographic profile. By extrapolation, it also forms the basis for study of the interaction of demographic and economic transition within and across countries over time, or study of the economic demography transition.
According to Lauren Johnston, whether, for example, a country first moves from “young” to “old” or “poor” to “rich,” may be essential to understanding how demography and the economy are interacting. Japan, which got rich before it got old, and China, which is old but not yet per capita income rich, make for an interesting comparison on that point. As the world’s largest economies almost all move rapidly out of their respective demographic dividends window, understanding the particular national dynamics of economic demography over time is increasingly essential to shaping effective fiscal and monetary policies, as well as for determining needed microeconomic reforms.
Similarly, at the other extreme, today’s poor and young countries, most of which are concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, can also learn from China’s very explicit utilization of its demographic dividend for development. Hence, they can shape a long-run economic demography transition strategy, a development strategy that takes demographic change as integral.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, emeritus Professor of international political economy at Lausanne University in, Switzerland explained that all countries, whether rich-old, rich-young, poor-old or poor-young, would best consider how to adjust fiscal and monetary policies over time accordingly, before time and opportunity are lost and change becomes even harder to make.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann argued that rapid population ageing across most of the world’s major economies is the new normal. This may serve to stagnate global growth. Whether ageing populations effectively also “age” their economies or whether economic and social structures are able to be sustainably and continuously adjust to this new structural reality will determine how late-stage demographic transition affects the future of the global economy.
And hence, whether poor-old countries (e.g., Brazil, China, Russia and Turkey), rich-old countries (most OECD economies) or poor-young countries hoping to embark on a sustained process of development, it seems timely that every country’s policymakers might best learn from China by advancing an economic demography strategy. Understanding the economic demography transition, a process that appears to have been implicit to China’s long-run development since the 1980s, is the first step in that process.
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