ICT Integration Efforts in Higher Education in Developing Economies: The Case of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

A situational modified version of Tearle’s model (2004) is utilized in this study to understand the integration of ICTs in the educational process. The study evaluated self efficacy beliefs, institutional support and policy in the context of developing economies where challenges of inadequate resources and insufficient skills persist. We assess the state of affairs, and the challenges faced by teachers and management at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. The results show that educators are generally appreciative of ICTs role in the teaching/learning process

Guide to Developing Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land-Use (AFOLU) Carbon Market Projects under Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP)

This report outlines the general steps required for development of a carbon project intended for sale of carbon credits via a carbon offset program, whether compliance or voluntary. While there are differences among the numerous offset programs, the major components are generally the same and any carbon project originating in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector will follow these steps. This report was written as a guide to development of carbon projects for Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), but the same process outlined here is equally applicable to any AFOLU carbon project.This work was supported by the PSNP Climate Smart Initiative. The PSNP is implemented by the Government of Ethiopia with support from the following development partners: Canadian International Development Agency, Irish Aid, European Commission, Royal Netherlands Embassy, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, UK Department for International Development, United States Agency for International Development, World Food Program and World Bank

AICCRA Scaling Vision: Ethiopia - Scaling and Scalability: Concepts, Frameworks, and Impact Pathways

Effective scaling up is a key measure of success for these innovations. Too often, however, the decision to scale up is made with incomplete information. Given the high costs involved, decision-makers (governments, development partners, NGOs, and the private sector) must carefully decide which innovations are ready for investment. A good understanding of the scaling-up process and a conceptual framework that informs the scaling vision, analysis of the scaling readiness of innovations, and impact pathways to achieve that vision are critical for informed decision-making. AICCRA Ethiopia is promoting the broader adoption of Climate information systems (CIS) and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies through a series of pilot projects across a minimum of five major work streams

Leveraging Climate Finance for Agribusiness SMEs to Scale Up Climate Resilient Agriculture in East Africa: Recommendations for Policy and Practice

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in supporting sustainable development and increasingly towards building adaptation and resilience in Africa's food and agriculture sectors. However, most agribusiness SMEs operating in small-scale agriculture are in dire need of business finance to help them flourish and climate-proof their value chains as variable weather increasingly threatens their supply sources of raw materials, disrupts their operations, and increases costs of maintenance and materials. Climate-related risk hazards not only increase the risk and unpredictability of SMEs' revenue streams but also reduce private sector investments into the sector even further. Financial institutions such as banks may avoid the risk by not financing agribusiness SMEs or increasing the cost of financing, such as enforcing more stringent collateral requirements or higher interest rates (Csaky et al., 2017)

Pattern of surgical admissions to Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A five-year retrospective study

Background: Tikur Anbessa specialized hospital (TASH) is Ethiopia’s largest tertiary teaching and referral hospital admitting and treating surgical patients under various specialties. This study aims to analyze the magnitude and pattern of surgical admissions to this facility. Methods: A five-year Cross sectional retrospective analysis was done on all adult surgical admissions to TASH from Sept. 2010 to Sept. 2015. Results: There were a total of 8,698 surgical admissions of which, 4471 (51.4%) were male and 4227 (48.5%) were female with male to female ratio of 1.06:1. Their age ranged from 13 to 95, with mean age being 38.8 ± 16.2 years. Three thousand two hundred twenty two (46.5%) patients were from Addis Ababa. Of all admissions, 4706 (54.1%) were elective ones of which obstructive uropathy, 997(21.1%), esophageal diseases, 716(15.2%) and Urolithiasis, 573(12.2%) respectively are the top three. The rest, 3992 (44.9%), were emergency admissions, the top three ones being trauma, 1435(35.9%), appendicitis 281(7%) and Intestinal obstruction, 190(4.7%) respectively. General surgical (gastrointestinal, endocrine and vascular) cases account for 3414 (39.25%) of all admissions followed by urosurgical cases, 2114 (25.31%), cardiothoracic surgical cases, 1942 (22.33%), and neurosurgical cases, 1139 (13.1%). There were a total of 280 deaths with an overall mortality rate of 4% of which, 3.2% were from elective admissions and 5.2% from emergency ones. Mortality rate was the highest among neurosurgical patients being 6.3% followed by 4.3%, 3.8% and 3.5% in cardiothoracic, general surgical and urosurgical cases respectively. Conclusions: The admission pattern indicates quite a big number and diversity of cases though the bed capacity is limited. There are significant number of cases that could be treated at other secondary level hospitals. Trauma is the leading cause of emergency admissions and significant cause of mortality. We recommend increasing the number of beds, organizing separate trauma center and admitting only cases requiring tertiary level care. Keywords: pattern of surgical diseases; surgical admissions; Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital

Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy: Sector-wise GTP II Implementation Monitoring Checklist

Poverty eradication through broad-based accelerated and sustained growth is outlined in the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). Through Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization (ADLI), the country aims to build an economy with a modern and productive agricultural sector and a strong industrial sector, ultimately increasing per capita income to the level of middle-income countries by 2025. Achieving these ambitious objectives is challenging, but vital for the future of Ethiopia and its citizens. Climate change is one of the major current challenges and adds considerable stress to the societies and environment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Ethiopia has historically suffered from climatic variability. Repeated rain failures, famines and chronic food crisis resulting from frequent droughts, environmental degradation, and decline in food production have rocked the country many times and remain a major challenge. The country’s economic output growth is closely linked to fluctuations in precipitation levels, as its agriculture is highly rain-fed, with only 2% of total arable land covered by irrigated and permanent crops. This strong association between rainfall and the economy is largely due to the nature of the country’s most dominant sector, agriculture and weak capacity of the rural population to adapt to climate variations

Actor roles and networks in agricultural climate services in Ethiopia: a social network analysis

This paper aims to better understand actors involved in the generation, translation, communication and governance of agricultural climate services and their networks in Ethiopia. To achieve these objectives, about 65 actor organizations were selected across seven regions and two city administrations in Ethiopia through a scoping study, extensive literature review, and snowball sampling. Structured questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions were designed to gather relevant information. Results were used to compute network size, density and centrality measures. Our findings show that climate services are regularly communicated to only 10% of the total districts (woredas) on average, with only a third of the actors involved in communicating these services. No single organization or institution plays a dominant role in production, translation, communication or governance of climate services, but a network of organizations and institutions are involved. Major challenges faced by the actors involved in production, translation and delivery of climate services included lack of human and financial resources and weak monitoring and evaluation systems. The paper highlights the importance of strengthening partnerships and networking among actors including monitoring and evaluation systems at all levels to facilitate effective production, translation and dissemination of climate services to farmers

Understanding climate and land surface changes impact on water resources using Budyko framework and remote sensing data in Ethiopia

Climate change and land degradation are the two drivers playing a significant role in changing freshwater availability. Targeted intervention requires understanding the role of each driver and their spatial dominance. However, detangling the effects of these factors and identifying where each plays the most important role is still unclear. In this study, we used Budyko-like framework and remote sensing data to evaluate the spatial effects of climate and land surface changes on water availability in Ethiopia. At national level, the mean long-term annual runoff change after 20 years is positive (about 80 mm/year), and is equally accountable to climate change (50%) and landscape surface changes (50%). However, both the change and contribution of the two factors vary spatially. In northern (Tigray region) and southeastern (Somali region) Ethiopia, the contribution of climate change is larger than the land surface changes on water resources. Particularly in the southeastern part of the country (Somali region), 70% of the changes in water resources is attributed to climate change. In most areas of the country, the change in water resources due to land surface change is positive. The detail percentage contribution of the two factors on the water resource change for each administrative zone is provided

Spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture over Ethiopia and its teleconnections with remote and local drivers

Soil moisture is one of the essential climate variables with a potential impact on local climate variability. Despite the importance of soil moisture, studies on soil moisture characteristics in Ethiopia are less documented. In this study, the spatiotemporal variability of Ethiopian soil moisture (SM) has been characterized, and its local and remote influential driving factors are investigated. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and KMeans clustering algorithm have been employed to classify the large domain into homogeneous zones. Complex maximum covariance analysis (CMCA) is applied to evaluate the covariability between SM and selected local and remote variables such as rainfall (RF), evapotranspiration (ET), and sea surface temperature (SST). Inter-comparison among SM datasets highlight that the FLDAS dataset better depicts the country’s SM spatial and temporal distribution (i.e., a correlation coefficient r=0.95 , rmsd=0.04m3m−3 with observations). Results also indicate that regions located in northeastern Ethiopia are drier irrespective of the season (JJAS, MAM, and OND) considered. In contrast, the western part of the country consistently depicted a wetter condition in all seasons. During summer (JJAS), the soil moisture variability is characterized by a strong east–west spatial contrast. The highest and lowest soil moisture values were observed across the country’s central western and eastern parts, respectively. Furthermore, analyses indicate that interannual variability of SM is dictated substantially by RF, though the impact on some regions is weaker. It is also found that ET likely drives the SM in the eastern part of Ethiopia due to a higher atmospheric moisture demand that ultimately invokes changes in surface humidity and rainfall. A composite analysis based on the extreme five wettest and driest SM years revealed a similar spatial distribution of wet SM with positive anomalies of RF across the country and ET over the southern regions. Remote SSTs are also found to have a significant influence on SM distribution. In particular, equatorial central Pacific and western Indian oceans SST anomalies are predominant factors for spatiotemporal SM variations over the country. Major global oceanic indices: Oceanic Nino Index (ONI), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), Pacific warm pool (PACWARMPOOL), and Pacific Decadal Oscillations (PDO) are found to be closely associated with the SM anomalies in various parts of the country. The associationship between these remote SST anomalies and local soil moisture is via large-scale atmospheric circulations that are linked to regional factors such as precipitation and temperature anomalies.publishedVersio