Praxis Ethiopia

Last updated May 21, 2019

Praxis Ethiopia is an international organisation whose goal is to apply professional expertise to the problems of extreme poverty in Ethiopia. The word "Praxis" comes from the Greek language, and meaning the application of knowledge to solve problems. The organization is composed of educators, scientists, entrepreneurs, and technical advisors.

Poverty is the scarcity or the lack of a certain (variant) amount of material possessions or money. Poverty is a multifaceted concept, which may include social, economic, and political elements. Absolute poverty, extreme poverty, or destitution refers to the complete lack of the means necessary to meet basic personal needs such as food, clothing and shelter.

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country in the northeastern part of Africa, popularly known as the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, and Somalia to the east, Sudan to the northwest, South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With over 102 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world and the second-most populous nation on the African continent that covers a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi). Its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa, which lies a few miles west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate.

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning more than 3000 years of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.

Structure

The organization has a Foundation that works to inform the world about Ethiopia, raises funds to support poverty reduction in Ethiopia and sub-Sahara Africa, and serves as the world headquarters for the Praxis Ethiopia Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development.

The Foundation's Board of Directors is chaired by His Excellency Dr. Aseffa Abreha (Ethiopia's representative to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and is composed of internationally recognized pioneers in poverty reduction and sustainable development. Ethiopia's former Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi was the Honorary Chairperson of the Board of Directors.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. Serving both developed and developing countries, FAO acts as a neutral forum where all nations meet as equals to negotiate arguments and debate policy.

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international co-operation, and being a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. It was established after World War II, with the aim of preventing future wars, and succeeded the ineffective League of Nations. Its headquarters, which are subject to extraterritoriality, are in Manhattan, New York City, and it has other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and the Hague. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law. The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193.

Meles Zenawi Asres was an Ethiopian politician who was the 13th Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 1995 to his death in 2012. From 1989, he was the chairman of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the head of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) since its formation in 1991. Before becoming Prime Minister in 1995, he served as President of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia from 1991 to 1995.

Founding

In January 2002, the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa hosted Ethio-Forum 2002, a conference examining the progress and needs of poverty reduction in Ethiopia. Conference attendees presented overviews of their work in strengthening food security, improving healthcare, promoting education, and the role of simple technology transfer in helping people rise above the devastating effects of extreme poverty.

Addis Ababa is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. According to the 2019 census, the city has a population of 9,432,580(estimated) inhabitants.

Food security is a measure of the availability of food and individuals' accessibility to it, where accessibility includes affordability. There is evidence of food security being a concern over 10,000 years ago, with central authorities in ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply. Food security, they said, is the "availability at all times of adequate, nourishing, diverse, balanced and moderate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The final report of the 1996 World Food Summit states that food security "exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".

Health in Ethiopia has improved markedly since the early 2000s, with government leadership playing a key role in mobilizing resources and ensuring that they are used effectively. A central feature of the sector is the priority given to the Health Extension Programme, which delivers cost-effective basic services that enhance equity and provide care to millions of women, men and children. The development and delivery of the Health Extension Program, and its lasting success, is an example of how a low-income country can still improve access to health services with creativity and dedication.

Throughout the conference, an overarching theme emerged: Ethiopia's greatest single need is to have access to professional guidance in identifying good solutions to the problems of extreme poverty. This "technical backstopping" is vital for Ethiopia's recovery from decades of drought, famine, disease, and war. Dr. David A. Blankinship, Dr. Getachew Tikubet, and Dr. Donald C. Johnson developed an overall model for an organization that would mobilize international expertise to assist Ethiopians in their struggle to overcome extreme poverty. "Praxis Ethiopia" became the guiding principle for this organization.

The famines in Ethiopia occurred periodically through the history of Ethiopia due to a number of reasons. The economy of Ethiopia was based on subsistence agriculture, with an aristocracy that consumed the surplus. Due to a number of causes, the peasants lacked incentives to either improve production or to store their excess harvest; as a result, they lived from harvest to harvest.

The military history of Ethiopia dates back to the foundation of early Ethiopian Kingdoms in 980 BC. Ethiopia has been involved many of the major conflicts in the horn of Africa, and was the only native African nation which remained independent after the Scramble for Africa, managing to create a modern army. 19th and 20th century Ethiopian Military history is characterized by conflicts between Ethiopia and Italy, which repeatedly attempted to annex the mineral rich nation, and unite its East African holdings.

On 25 January 2002, they met with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and outlined the concept of creating an international resource in service to poverty reduction in Ethiopia. During that meeting, Dr. Blankinship asked the Prime Minister to serve as the Patron to Praxis Ethiopia.

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Extreme poverty condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs

Extreme poverty, abject poverty, absolute poverty, destitution, or penury, was originally defined by the United Nations (UN) in 1995 as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services." In 2018, extreme poverty widely refers to an income below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day, set by the World Bank. This is the equivalent of $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression "living on less than a dollar a day". The vast majority of those in extreme poverty — 96 percent — reside in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the West Indies, East Asia, and the Pacific; nearly half live in India and China alone. As of 2018, it is estimated that the country with the most people living in extreme poverty is Nigeria, at 86 million.

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The following lists events that happened during 2007 in Ethiopia.

The following lists events that happened during 2003 in Ethiopia.

References

External links

Official website

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