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GERD: Reducing Indoor Air Pollution

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Energy is a crucial component of health systems. Clean energy is essential for human health and wellbeing, and it minimises air pollution. In so doing, the number of people admitted to hospitals due to respiratory infection will reduce sharply decongesting our already saturated health systems. The process of diagnosis and treatment also demand a reliable source of energy, preferably clean energy. Simply, vaccines and medicines need to be refrigerated; equipment needs sterilisation and light are needed for operations and emergencies at night . Therefore, clean energy can be regarded as a crucial tool for both prevention and cure. Sustainable access to basic electricity and transition to environmentally harmful energy sources reduce air pollution, making people less vulnerable to disease. About   4.2 million   deaths every year are linked to air pollution and exposure, while a   recent Harvard analysis   showed that people living in contaminated cities were more likely to die of COVI
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GERD: Ending Child Undernourishment and Hunger

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The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Sustainable Development Goals On the 25 th September 2015 at the United Nations summit on sustainable development, the world adopted a historical document titled “ Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development .” The agenda is a plan of action for people , planet and prosperity and consists of 17 sustainable development goals of most urgent priority to the international community. Amongst the SDGs, Goal 7 on Energy has been recognised as an enabler for achieving almost all of the Sustainable Development Goals, “ from the eradication of poverty through advancements in health, education, water supply and industrialisation, to combating climate change .” Thus, failure to avail reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy supply means that sustainable development grinds to a halt - and subsistence itself becomes uncertain. This part of GERD-SDG series attempts to show how the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam enables Ethi
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GERD: Powering Up Poverty Eradication

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Sustainable Development Goals On the 25 th September 2015 at the United Nations summit on sustainable development, the world adopted a historical document titled “ Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development .” The agenda is a plan of action for people , planet and prosperity and consists of 17 sustainable development goals of most urgent priority to the international community. Goal 1: End Poverty in all its Forms, the Energy Factor Amongst the SDGs, Goal 7 on Energy has been recognised as an enabler for achieving almost all of the Sustainable Development Goals, “ from the eradication of poverty through advancements in health, education, water supply and industrialisation, to combating climate change . ” Thus, failure to avail reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy supply means that sustainable development grinds to a halt - and subsistence itself becomes uncertain. The note attempts to show how the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam enables countries i
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Opinion – Multilateralism as Panacea for COVID-19

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Three months after the first case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, the world registered (at the time of writing) more than 2.6 million cases, more than 180,000 deaths, and no fewer than 700,000 recoveries. The  World Health Organization  (WHO), leading and coordinating the global effort, supporting countries to prevent, detect, and respond to the pandemic, is heavily criticized in its handling of the pandemic at the beginning of the outbreak. There is no clear end in sight. Multilateralism is needed more than ever to avert the global health crisis. Many express concerns that contemporary multilateralism is too weak to tackle the global pandemic. The geopolitical context within which contemporary multilateralism operates makes global cooperation daunting, and the COVID-19 pandemic makes it more difficult. At first glance, it appears that states themselves are self-isolating and further damaging the remaining fabric of multilateralism. However, the crisis might play a constructive role in
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The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Democratizing the Nile River

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The Nile River is a lifeline to close to three hundred million inhabitants from which half of them lives under the poverty line. Underdevelopment hinders the Nile River from playing a leading role in poverty eradication attempts across the Basin. Riparian states seem resolute to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals by democratizing the Nile River, and it seems inevitable. Colonizing the Nile Ensuring the continuous flow of the Nile River has been the guiding national security objective of successive administrations in Egypt, be it the Ottoman, the British, or successive Egyptian presidents, often at all but ill-advised costs. Whoever ruled Egypt followed a legal, political, or diplomatic endeavours to pursue the national security objective. Waters of the Nile should reach the land of the pharaohs disregarding the needs of millions of people living in the entire river basin. Countries beyond the Lake Nasser, most of them under the British colonial rule, were forced to
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Ethiopia: Better to Stay Suspicious On Egypt-Nile Nexus (Published in 2014, Still Relevant)

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Blue Nile Fall Dynamics revolving the Nile River is always exciting. Especially with new leaders, new processes, and new plays - phrases like "new beginnings" dominate the Ethio-Egypt relations. It is one thing to be optimistic, but I think we need to take this narrative rather suspiciously. As one newspaper puts it, the change in Egyptian policy towards the Nile River is the result of social, economic, diplomatic and psychological crisis in Egypt. Here, there are two points worth scrutiny; whether Egyptian policy towards the Nile River has changed and whether the overall turmoil in Egypt induces this policy change. To dissect these points and their alleged relation, one has to check their truth value. Accordingly, there is an overall crisis, but it is difficult to prove the change in Egypt's policy on the Nile River, let alone establishing a causal relationship between the utter turmoil in Egypt and the change in Egypt's policy on the Nile. Therefore, an
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Egypt’s Foreign Policy Paradox on the River Nile (First Published in 2014, still relevant)

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#Itsmydam One can boldly argue that Egypt’s foreign policy orientation towards the Nile has always been proactive. Given the determinants of foreign policy – ranging from the composition of foreign policy decision-making units to the contemporary balance of power configuration at the global or regional level – one can easily find as many variables as one wishes to justify or defend the vigorous foreign policy orientation of the Republic. Accordingly, Egypt has intensified diplomatic warfare against the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), aiming at neutralising many of Ethiopia’s perceived allies and resurrecting the age-old fault lines to direct considerable pressure on Ethiopia. Egyptian foreign policy orientation emanates from the perception that the Nile River stretches beyond their geographic boundary. Considering that 85pc of their population resides across the basin, the Nile River constitutes the cognitive behaviour of Egyptian foreign policymakers. Generally
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