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Brooms out in Addis
Bereket Gebru
It is to be remembered that a small group of representatives of African countries hired by the late Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi raised the issue of moving the seat of the AU from Addis Ababa to Sirte, Libya some years ago. One of the countless reasons raised by these people was the untidy conditions in Addis Ababa. Their efforts prompted one of the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s historic responses. He pointed out that it is Ethiopia’s role in representing African freedom and its support to African freedom fighters that led to the patriotic African leaders of the time to pick Addis Ababa as the seat of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). He then reminded the representatives that it is not the social amenities and its infrastructure that appealed to the founding leaders of the OAU, sarcastically suggesting that they could take it to Honolulu if they thought that the facilities were at the cornerstone of the decision.
The late Ethiopian Prime Minister won the agenda that day with that historic response and Addis Ababa has taken some significant measures towards averting the situation since those days. The late Prime Minister used the capital of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is located 3,000kkm off the coast of the U.S. mainland, to make his point about the significant relevance of historic reasons over better facilities. It is also worth noting that he picked Honolulu because it is one of the cleanest cities in the world.
Despite the attempt by the late Libyan President Gaddafi to make the most out of Addis Ababa’s lack of cleanliness, the problem is still one that needs to be tackled. Overflowing garbage containers, ditches emitting the most pungent of odors, open defecation sites, horrible sewerage and waste management system, littered streets and polluted rivers are part of Addis Ababa’s daily life.
For a city that shoulders the daunting task of serving as the capital of Africa and the third biggest seat of UN agencies, the image it sends are not exactly up to par. Although there have been significant improvements over the last decade, it is evident that the city needs to go a lot more before it is cited along clean cities like Honolulu.
Addis Ababa seems to be aware of the efforts needed as it launched a city-wide campaign to make the city clean and beautiful on December 09, 2017. The campaign featured big names including Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, city mayor Diriba Kuma, Haile Gebresellasie and Derartu Tulu. It’s nice to see Ethiopian politicians sweeping the streets with broom in their hands. It’s even more interesting to watch the Prime Minister clean the streets of Aware every last Saturday of the month.
The message such gestures send out is clear and powerful. Residents of Addis Ababa need to take it upon themselves to clean their houses and environs. There should be no by-standers when it comes to making our city clean and beautiful. It is through these routine acts that we can ensure a better living for us and our children.
The integrated cleaning campaign reportedly aims to realize active public and private sector involvement in creating clean and beautiful Addis Ababa. We have seen many a roundabout in Addis Ababa cleaned and landscaped by private companies in the vicinity. There are also private waste disposal companies that collect and dispose garbage from businesses. The Addis Ababa City Administration also ventured with the Addis Ababa University to clean rivers and riversides. The cleaning and beautification office in the city administration has also carried out considerable feats to alleviate the problem. The administration also needs to work on mobilizing the public by appealing to the social sense of cleaning campaigns and traditional events of cleaning.
It is probably the individual residents of the city that have the most power in radically changing the state of sanitation and cleanliness. Residents can organize themselves in their surroundings to prepare areas for waste disposal, undertake waste collection and ensure effectiveness in disposing waste. As much as the state of tidiness in their homes determines their health, the cleanliness of their surroundings has a strong bearing on the lives of their families and neighbors. However, there need to be people actively pushing communities to start such schemes and the city administration needs to work through local government offices to set off such a trend.
It is also important to note that the campaign’s goal of repeating the feat every last Saturday of the month makes Addis Ababa’s campaign a bit similar with the much renowned successful undertaking by Kigali, Rwanda a.k.a ‘Africa’s cleanest city’. Sources indicate that on the last Saturday of every month, people across Rwanda commit time to projects aimed at improving the country’s public spaces, in a mandatory practice called Umuganda. A note on the website of the Rwandan Governance Board describes Umuganda as “a practice that takes root from Rwandan culture of self-help and cooperation, in traditional Rwandan culture, members of the community would call upon their family, friends and neighbors to help them complete a difficult task. The activities of the then umuganda included, for instance, farming for those who were unable to do so due to either physical handicap or old age, building houses for the poor and providing transportation to medical facilities to those who were in need.”
Unlike the Rwandan decision to make the cleaning activity mandatory, the Addis Ababa Administration has gone for a mild mobilization approach spearheaded by notable personalities. Although we are yet to see the impact of such a method, the introduction of binding rules might just contribute to the success of the campaign in the long term.
Another major decision by Rwanda was the ban on non-biodegradable polythene bags in 2008. Plastic bags are banned throughout the country, contributing heavily to the cleanliness of Kigali and the whole country. The Rwandan government encouraged companies that used to manufacture plastic bags to start recycling them instead by providing tax incentives. An article on the policy states that it also created a market for environmentally friendly bags, which were virtually non-existent in the country before the ban.
Such acts that vividly show the determination of the government to the cause push the whole country into the ‘clean’ mode. Economically, they also present new spheres of investment into the play by banning industries that harm the environment. Ethiopia needs to look into such measures taken by other countries and device its own directives.
In general, the campaign to clean Addis Ababa is probably long overdue and one that deserves the full commitment of the city administration and the Federal government alike. Therefore, the media, the private sector and government apparatus need to work their level best to mobilize all stakeholders towards making the campaign a success.
