Africa

Rumors of military coup in Asmara as state TV went off air

Ambassador Dina Mufti, Spokesperson at the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Shimelis Kemal, state minister at the government communication affairs bureau, said they can’t confirm the rumors yet, and our calls to Ambassador Girma Asmerom, Eritrea’s Ambassador to the AU hasn’t been returned.

Reports are emerging from Asmara, Eritrea, that some 200 army mutineers have taken control of the country’s ministry of information building in central Asmara.

Amidst confusing reports what is clear that the state TV, Eri-TV, is off air.  Eritrea’s ruling party People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), website http://www.shabait.com is also inaccessible. 

Africa

Kaizen and revolutionary principle: A marriage of opposing world views?

The government in Ethiopia is keenly introducing a concept that has little to no resemblance with its revolutionary principles

By Taye Negussie (PhD), Tsedale Lemma and Emnet Assefa

Since Oct. 2009, shortly after the introduction of a nationwide Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), an idea introduced to bring radical changes among state institutions but, in the process, virtually stalled them for months and now widely deemed to be a failure, the Ethiopian government started advocating the idea of kaizen–a Japanese management philosophy–among private and state owned companies; the idea was first brought to the attention of Ethiopia’s late PM Meles Zenawi in 2008.

Africa

Ethiopia to commence one window electric billing system for multiple services

Emnet Assefa

Addis Ababa- Ministry of communications and Information Technology announced here today it will commence a one-window electronic billing system as of Feb. 2013. The service called ‘Lehulu’ (loosely translated ‘for all’) will enable customers to make their electric, water and landline telephone bill payments at a single paying centre.