conference themed with “Ethiopia 2050: Grand Challenges and Opportunities” will be opened on December 19-20 at Skylight Hotel, in Addis Ababa. While briefing journalists here on Thursday, the organizers composed of five public and private institutions explained that high level government officials, more than 300 individuals including cabinet members, parliamentarians, policy makers and influencers, representatives of development partners, experienced leaders, young professionals, world-class scientists, educators, researchers, medics, agronomists, engineers and architects, environmentalists and lawyers among others will attend this conference.
Chairperson of the organizers’ committee, Tesfaye Workineh, Managing Director of United Consulting Engineers Plc, said that population growth projections for Ethiopia suggest that the country’s population will reach 140 million by 2030 and 200 million by 2050. As things currently stand, the country’s population is already projected to reach 126 million by 2025 positioning Ethiopia to be among the top 10-12 populous countries on the planet.
Among a multitude of potentially destabilizing societal threats that this population growth could bring, the issues of providing adequate food-security, energy, housing, transportation, and health-care for these additional 30-40 million Ethiopians in the next few decades stand out as sources of significant risk factors, Tesfaye explained.
By 2050, in addition to this population increase, climate change, increasing and unsustainable societal gap in income and quality of life will pose additional pressure. Moreover, supply of water to urban areas like Addis is dwindling. The competition for water access in arid areas like the Afar and Ogaden will eventually reach crisis stage as pressure from increasing population mounts.
Therefore, experts are expected to address challenges like how do large cities like Addis Ababa grow and at the same time address displacement of farmers. They may also address questions how do we increase agricultural productivity to keep pace with this increase, and how can we achieve food availability, food access and food adequacy. Fruitful solutions will be forwarded in relation to leveraging science, technology and innovation to achieve and maintain food security.
As to him, the other pressing issue is sustainability and environmental problems; how do we address pollution and climate change pressures on the Rift Valley Lakes, Lake Tana, and the major rivers. Scholars will also provide recommendations to scale-up energy generation and distribution, with particular focus on sustainability and renewable resources in mind.
In fact, over the last decade, Ethiopia has been recognized as one of the fastest growing economy in Africa by international financing institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, with the increasing population, the scale of challenges that await the country in terms of providing basic and critical infrastructure in energy, water, food, housing, transportation, and renewable resources among others are staggering.
“Unless proactive efforts in predicting these massive needs are carried out early and thoughtful plans to address these are prepared accordingly, it will be hard not only to eliminate poverty but also to avoid the threat of the accompanying highly destabilizing societal and environmental problems,” Tesfaye highlighted.
On the other hand, developing countries like Ethiopia are also exposed to other challenges of global dimension that are expected to have disproportionate adverse impact on these countries. However, as a country that is at the early stage of developing its infrastructure for economic development, Ethiopia has huge opportunities to enter a more efficient and sustainable development trajectory through appropriate policy choice and planning processes. This would require making the best and smart use of available knowledge, technology and techniques including smart utilization of the benefits from disruptive technologies.
This has provided the basis for the organization of the international conference on ‘Ethiopia 2050: Grand challenges and opportunities’. The objective of this conference is to identify the key challenges and opportunities as a starting point for national conversation amongst policy-makers, political and economic leaders, professionals and various stakeholders and provide key pointers towards formulation of concrete and actionable sets of policies that could turn these challenges into opportunities.
Above all, the conference is expected to result in a comprehensive consensus document that outlines the key challenges and opportunities together with the major action points that could serve as a basis for all major decisions to be made by policy makers, planners, private sector operators, and other stakeholders. The conference will also validate comprehensive key points that would highlight the key challenges and opportunities together with recommendations for decision-makers at all levels.
It was learnt that the conference is organized by Ethiopian Engineers in Diaspora in association with Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, Ethiopian Association of Civil Engineers, Association of Ethiopian Architects, Ethiopian Society of Mechanical Engineers, Ethiopian Society of Chemical Engineers, Ethiopian Society of Electrical Engineers, and Ethiopian Urban Planners Association.
The Ethiopian Herald December7, 2019
BY ZELALEM GIRMA
