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It's now been exactly a year since I arrived in northern Ethiopia with Voluntary Service Overseas to start a placement at Mekelle University. Based in the Computer Science department, I'm developing and training staff in e-learning and advising on general IT policy and strategy. Throughout the last year the university has been undergoing a period of huge change - with rapid expansion in student numbers, restructuring of the colleges and departments, and an ambitious plan to modernise and develop overall.

A computer lab in Mekelle University, Ethiopia.
[Image © copyright Terri O'Sullivan, some rights reserved]

Work and life is very different to living in Northampton and working at The Open University. It's certainly taken time to adjust to the new organisation, culture and way of working. After arriving with high expectations and a keenness to get moving with the job, work felt slow in the first few months and I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. However, everything has fallen into place recently. Now I have built up relationships and got to know the working practices, things have really started moving – and the time spent getting to know my colleagues, in particular, is really paying off. Their support and assistance has been vital; without them guiding me through, it would have been extremely difficult to achieve anything.

It also takes a while to get used to the network and power interruptions. The university is fortunate to have a 2Mb broadband connection, which, I believe, is one of the fastest connections in this part of Ethiopia – but we do have to share this between over a thousand staff. We're currently on a “power-sharing” schedule, where, during the working week, the power is off every other day. As you can imagine, this makes conducting IT training difficult. With scheduled powers cuts, you can work around this, but there are also other times when the power will go off for several hours without notice. Recently, some areas of the university have been supplied by backup generators, so this helps greatly, providing you are using the right computer labs. We're hoping this situation will improve once the rainy season is over and the hydroelectric dams are full.

The university has recently started a partnership with Alcala University in Spain to work with the Engineering and Health Sciences colleges, writing an e-learning training programme for selected tutors to attend over the coming semester. During the course, tutors will develop online activities for their students to take part in. Since student access to computers can be very limited, we're building two new computer labs - one for each college - so the students can participate in these activities. As this is pilot project, we're testing out installing thin client labs and using open source software. This is a huge contrast to the usual computer lab setup here, which consists of desktop PCs running Windows. At any given time up to three-quarters of the PCs may be out of action for a number of reasons, commonly due to virus infection, but also hardware failure. The labs then take a small army of IT technicians trying to keep as many PCs up and running as possible. We're hoping that the architecture of the thin client labs will vastly reduce the amount of support time needed, as well as being a more scalable solution, with the added bonus that it will be cheaper to increase the number of terminals.

Although most of my current work is involved in coordinating and managing these new labs and assisting with writing the training course material, I also have a few side projects to maintain. One of these involves showing staff from the Health Sciences college how to use GPSs to map the community health centres and health workers in the rural areas. The college has a number of projects in these areas measuring the impact of government schemes such as the Health Extension Programme - which gives healthcare training to local people so they can better support their communities.

Despite, or perhaps because of the problems, the sense of achievement is much greater than my work back in the UK. Knowing that you are making a real, though perhaps small, difference makes dealing with the life here all the more worthwhile. The Ethiopian people are very friendly, generous and appreciative, making it a highly rewarding and enjoyable experience.

How you can get involved

In my opinion, simply supplying more computers and hardware doesn't really help get to the core of the problem of IT development here: although more hardware will never be refused, IT training and staff development plays a greater role in development. Many staff - not only in the university but also teacher training colleges - lack the IT skills to maintain and make best use of the equipment available to them. Even computer science students arrive having hardly used a computer so a lot of time is spent developing basic skills, including how to operate word processors and spreadsheet packages. As has been reported elsewhere, viruses are a huge problem, damaging the tools that could help Ethiopia to develop. Training staff in how to install and, crucially, update their anti-virus software therefore has a significant impact.

My volunteering here is something I wish I’d done sooner. As a software developer by background, I'd often put off applying as I was unsure I had the skills needed to work in a developing country. It is a big commitment to give up a well-paid, comfortable job in the UK, but I haven't looked back. Not only have I been sharing my existing IT skills, but I have also developed new ones in terms of training, hardware and network maintenance. I'd definitely recommend other IT professionals to come and experience living and working in a developing country.

In 2008, food prices in the developed and developing world are soaring. Global inflation in food, as measured by the international food price index, increased by 40 per cent in 2007, and has soared further this year.

Levels of world cereal crops are at an all time low. As food-aid programmes run out of money, world leaders meet in frenzied anxiety about diminishing food stocks; they are beginning to acknowledge, at last, the severity of this ‘man-made’ global food crisis.

Forecasters, such as the international think-tank Chatham House, have predicted that demand for food will rise by 50 per cent by 2030. The UN have reported that to simply keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced in the world in the next 50 years than there has been produced during the previous 10,000 years. About 40 per cent of the world’s agricultural land is already degraded. In 1980 the world’s population was 4.4 billion. By 2050 it is expected to reach 9 billion.

Famine.
[image © copyright BBC]

In Italy, women have marched in protest as wheat prices more than doubled. In the UK, families are feeling the pinch, especially in the price of food commodities. From Haiti to Uzbekistan, the poor are bearing the brunt of the problem. Hundreds of people have died in protests across the world. In India, rice has been rationed. In April the World Bank predicted that at least 100 million people across the globe could face starvation. EU estimates suggest that 25,000 people are dying daily from hunger as food prices reach their highest level since 1945. In June the oil price keeps rising to an unprecedented 135 dollars a barrel.

The causes of this international food crisis are very complex. A variety of factors have been identified, ranging from climate change, poor farming practices, deforestation and soil erosion to global overpopulation. Speculation on commodity futures in the world’s stock markets, following the collapse in confidence in conventional financial markets and the fall of the dollar, has exacerbated the problem. Following the credit crunch the search for profits has resulted in enormous fluctuations in market prices that do not appear to be related to shifts in supply and demand.

As the world’s oil reserves decline, the switch by governments, including our own, to force increasing acreages of farmland to convert from food production to the production of crops for bio-fuels, has distorted the system of production to the extent that an attempt, if it was, to satisfy environmental priorities has created increased food scarcity and pushed up prices.

By 2010, across Europe it will be mandatory, for example, for petrol retailers to mix 5.75 per cent of bio-fuels into fuel sold to motorists. However, it is not just in the EU that we are being asked to burn crops to fuel our cars – the USA, India, Brazil and China have similar prospective schemes. India, for example, has pledged to meet 10 per cent of its vehicle fuel needs with bio-fuels. In America, bio-fuel consumption for motor vehicles is now enough to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classified by the UN as ‘low-income food deficit countries’. It is probably too simplistic to suggest that our transport systems can lead to starvation in the developing world, but the connection is unavoidable.

In seven of the past eight years, the world has consumed more grain than it has supplied. The growth in bio-fuel consumption has not only benefited the rich countries and denuded the poorest, but it has depleted global grain stockpiles, pushing millions more of the world’s poor deeper into poverty. The International Monetary Fund reported in April that corn-based ethanol production in the USA accounted for half the increase in the global demand for corn. Jean Zeigler, a UN expert on the right to food has called this new phenomenon a ‘crime against humanity’.

We may be on the cusp of the biggest structural change in the world food market for over a century. In the next few years, relief and aid programmes in the developing world may be undermined, while the tensions of international politics may further impinge on the life chances of humanity. Increased competition over depleted resources could lead to conflict and war.

The world’s population is growing at around 80 million people a year. In the rising powers of India, Brazil and China, a huge growth in middle-class populations has led to a revolution in demand for those consumer goods we in the West have taken for granted for so long. These countries have also seen a substantial shift in food consumption towards the dairy and meat-based diets of the western world. As the environmentalists remind us, they also have quadrupled their own use of oil to fuel their vehicles.

Unfortunately, as the world seeks a sustainable future and struggles with ways to limit the damage done by humanity to our environment, it is likely that there will be millions of losers. In 2008 the British Government predicted that by 2050 half the arable land in the world might no longer be suitable for production because of water shortages and climate change.

Today The UN’s World Food Programme is unable to cover the increased cost of food aid to the poorest nations in the world.  While we in Britain are feeling the pinch the impact on the world's poorest countries is huge. If you are one of the 2.8 billion people in the world who live on under $2 a day, you may pay for the recent surge in growing grain for petrol with your life. And it looks like getting worse.

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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