Key to prosperity

Connectivity is the essence of life and integral to our survival and growth. It creates synergy and develops symbiotic relationships. In this competitive age, decision making remains the key for development. Connectivity through digitization has brought in speed, accuracy and adequacy of information to decision makers. It has also enabled people to make the right decisions for creating a sustainable future through innovation.

In Ethiopia, video film production started soon after the collapse of the Dergue regime in 1991. Since then, Ethiopia witnessed the rapid growth of the local film industry when young filmmakers began to produce documentary and fiction films with the help of digital filmmaking technologies. The technological revolution resulted in the rise of audiovisual productions that accelerated quickly. In present day Ethiopia, 100 feature films, from true stories to fictions, are produced every year.

Aichetou, a 14-year-old girl, lives on the outskirts of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, in Africa’s Sahel region. Every day, she makes a difficult trek through the sand to get to a school with no drinking water or sanitation, where she barely learns, owing to a lack of textbooks and trained teachers. And she is not alone: tens of millions of schoolchildren worldwide face similar circumstances, while 262 million children and youth are not in school at all.

The world has made impressive strides in reducing extreme poverty, but that progress has slowed considerably in recent years. The problem is clear: eliminating extreme poverty requires tackling inequality.

We have shockingly witnessed Ethiopian artists seeking donations and financial support to cover emergencies such as medical or funeral expenses time and again. Most of them are either unable or unprepared to cover such costs which in turn have led many of them to untimely death, and public disgrace. If the art community could plan and negotiate affordable insurance coverage, they can avoid both ill-fated consequences. In a country of rich art collections and profound artists, underwriting suitable insurance for art and artists could indeed be in high demand.

Residents of Addis Ababa experience the hustle and bustle of their metropolis on daily basis. Its main roads are becoming a popular place for hundreds of small vendors, bravely facing dual challenges: getting hold of the ever-elusive and reluctant customer, and save themselves from the baton-wielding cops, chasing them wildly.

If there are sectors that have witnessed significant growth over the past decade, the broadcast industry is at the forefront. A country with only a few state-affiliated broadcasters for long witnessed the proliferation of dozens of radio and television broadcasters in the decade.

Despite its low purchasing power, Ethiopia, a country with more than one hundred and five million people, has one of the biggest market potentials in Africa. The consumer, however, is not very well taken care of. As the saying goes, consumption is life. When consumption and the patterns involved are affected, the intricacies of consumer protection come into the picture.

The Harvard Business Review surveyed business leaders in 2014 to know if they think employee engagement is a pre – condition for the success of an organization. About 71Pct of them said employee engagement was critical to the business success of their organizations, but only 24Pct of these same leaders said their workforces were highly engaged. This difference is called the engagement gap. The Gallup Employee Engagement Survey revealed that neither employees nor managers are engaged. Only 30Pct of employees are engaged and only 35Pct of managers are engaged at work. This means that if you put 10 people in a room, chances are seven of them are not happy to go to work in the morning. This is alarming!

“Survival of the fittest” is a phrase that is originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory and is based on biological theory which is a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection for species. However, this analogy holds good in all fields, since we are all facing unprecedented challenges in social, economic and environmental domains which needs critical & intelligent thinking. This also holds true for the tech-sector which has become highly intelligent and is aligned itself to the demand of Industry 4.0 (intelligent industry) focusing on innovations, equipped with tools such as Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI0, nano-technology, blockchain, bio-technology, the Internet of Things, Virtual reality, and 3D-printing