Open Letter to the Prime Minister and Government

On August 3, 2022, the Ethiopian government held its annual meeting to review the macroeconomic performance of the country. The session led by the Prime Minster assessed the country’s economic journey and performance in terms of GDP growth and other macro-economic variables such as inflation, employment creation, export, and investment promotion.

Despite higher inflation, incessant conflicts unfavorable to business, the practice of corruption, global recessions, and rapid population growth—which all have a negative relationship with economic growth—the Prime Minster declared that the country’s economy grew by 6.6Pct. That was considered a miracle and gave credit to the government’s plan and effort.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations are playing an increasingly prominent role in business. ESG is now central to how firms in a wide range of sectors, including finance and asset management, define their purpose, mission, and strategy, and it is increasingly shaping hiring practices and regulatory activity. But whether the apparent embrace of ESG will deliver real progress remains to be seen.

The promise of ESG stems from an important proposition. The key challenges we face today – from achieving reasonable levels of equity and equality of opportunity to ensuring environmental sustainability – cannot be overcome by any single actor, not even the government. On the contrary, effective solutions will require all hands on deck, including business, government, finance, education, the courts, and the nonprofit sphere.

From March 1967 to July 1972, the United States military carried out Operation Popeye during the Vietnam war. The operation used a type of geoengineering which “seeded” clouds that rained on the Laotian Panhandle. No, this is not a fictitious or dramatic scene from Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Rather an actual action that married the agile technology of its time to a government operation for just over 5 years.

New evidence from two Kenyan counties shows that cash transfers and other income supplements reduce hunger, illness, and risk exposure during crises. Countries should consider building transfer systems that can be activated at short notice to help people weather unanticipated shocks.

When the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting recession pushed 120 million people worldwide into extreme poverty in 2020, many countries relied on social-protection measures to cushion the blow. By May 2021, a total of 3,333 such schemes had been planned or implemented in 222 countries or territories.