Who are we?
Initiative Africa (IA) has been working with national and international partners across Ethiopia on various development, peace, and civic projects. In line with the priorities of the government, IA has increasingly been trying to use capacity development approaches that foster resilience in government and society – resilience to crises in livelihood, good governance, gender, and peace.
Let us make the Horn a peaceful & prosperous common home!
Kebour Gena
Executive Director, PACCIWhat We Do
To mobilize the business community to engage in peacebuilding and conflict resolution actions and activities.
Through corporate social responsibility to maintain support for effective peacebuilding and inclusive coordination amongst Government, private sector, media actors, and civil society.
To respond to concrete challenges and opportunities to build a peaceful and just Ethiopia through civic education, training, internship, and apprenticeship activities.
Peace building & good governance
Objectives provide the parameters within which IA may use the funding from this project to build on priority initiatives for peacebuilding and good governance. The project is to be implemented over 24 months, using the project delivery and management structures of IA.
The main goal of this project is:
To enhance the peacebuilding potential of businesses, including, medium, small, and micro-enterprise (MSMEs)
To help promote the role local businessmen and women can play in reducing violence, building peace, and rebuilding countries and communities.
To help promote a better understanding with other peacebuilding organizations and collaborate to work for peace
Women in Business
The role of business women in peace building
IA has secured a grant from SIDA (Swedish Embassy) to support peacebuilding and good governance initiatives in various sites. The overall goal of the project is to persuade businesses to participate in peacebuilding and good governance in Ethiopia. In addition, the project aims to bridge the gap between civics and peace-building activities especially involving the private sector.
Through the support from SIDA Initiative Africa(IA) is working on a project called “Business for Peace” to make the private sector aware of its role in the peace-building process and enable it to fulfill its role in an appropriate way. Believing that the work of one institution alone is useless to achieve this kind of national issue, IA is working in cooperation with business sector associations, and other governmental and non-governmental organizations in the country and abroad. It is usually considered that only the role of the government and some civil society organizations is given special attention in the process of peace-building in Ethiopia. This habit does not show the role of the business sector and the majority of the business community is not able to fulfill its social responsibilities. This challenge is more stands out for female private-sector actors.
In light of that Initiative Africa (IA) is working towards mobilizing the business community to actively participate in the process of peacebuilding and conflict resolution, using corporate social responsibility to enable effective peacebuilding and participatory collaboration among government, private sector, media actors and civil society as well as creating opportunities to see a peaceful and just Ethiopia by responding appropriately to real challenges and using civic lessons, training and work practices.
Meet Our Team
For the private sector
As part of contributing to the new launched National dialogue initiative in Ethiopia, IA is partnering with Oxfam International and Consortium of Ethiopian Human Rights Organizations (CEHRO) to build a consortium that will create awareness about national dialogue to key stakeholders. | Page5 On Dec 7th, 2021, IA Executive Director and Project Manager met with Oxfam International Director and Program Director to discuss the idea of forming a consortium that can actively work on national dialogue. The outcome of that meeting led to a technical group meeting that took place on end of December that designed and submitted a project proposal to the Government of Canada (GAC) that clearly outlines the role of IA and other members, the budget required to execute the project and the capacity needed for effective delivery.
This consortium is under way and it is a new one that is forming to work exclusively on national dialogue. Each organizations brings in their strength to the partnership and create a holistic approach for implementation, information exchange and resource mobilization to work in national dialogue.
IA is taking the lead to engage the private sector including business member organizations to do workshops and training that focus on concept clarification, discussion on best practice of national dialogue differentiating national dialogue from other ongoing peace building efforts such as negotiation and mediation. Seeing that the private sector is an important participant, the long terms result of this awareness and capacity building effort will lead to a better and effective private sector engagement in national duologue.
Following this commitment, IA will be hosting an executive’s workshop to begin to engage the private sector in National dialogue. This workshop will serve as prelude for larger conference where business operators will be gathering to talk about national dialogue in Ethiopia. This is a platform that will be co-hosted with ISS. ISS has been hosting conferences on national dialogue for the past year making it a reliable partner to mobilize key actors and generate quality content.
IA has also made initial contacts with the National Dialogue Commission to express interest and position itself as key partner to build capacity in relation to national dialogue and peace building for the private sector. As such, the commission is yet institutionalizing its work and has not begun outreach work yet.
IA has launched fellowship program called “Business for Peace Fellowship”. This is part of building the capacity of the Business Sector and a strategy to engage in peace building activities. It offers candidates at the mid-stage of their career the opportunity to conduct business but also engage and learn the skills and techniques of peace building. Fellows take part in the core work of the IA, developing their skills through the leadership program, and furthering their professional network in the field of Business and Peace. These fellows embed both the knowledge of peace and business. They will advocate and inspire the business community to engage in peace building activities. The terms of reference outlines clearly show the expectations from fellows to engage actively in the program and provide the deliverables upon completion of the fellowship. IA has also contacted and submitted a request to the Rwandan Peace Academy located in Kigali, Rwanda to facilitate the offsite visit for fellows during their fellowship.
IA is working with the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) and the Institute for Economics for Peace (IEP) to design a short course on “The role of the private sector in Conflict Transformation and Peace building”. This short course targets Business Executive Leaders that are influential in their sector who can inspire and influence other businesses to | Page6 engage in peace building. Business executives have the influential power to change policies and encourage business operators and public officials to advocate for peace. IA project manager has met with Frank Djan Owusu, team lead, Educational Professional Development Unit at IPSS in order to discuss on how best to design the platform and design the Course. Both IPSS and IA agreed to bring Institute for Economics of Peace on board and met with Charles Allen at, Director of Partnerships at IEP. The three partners have met twice to deliberate what major aspects of conflict transformation will be included in the short course, the nature and major responsibilities of each partner and the possibility of organizing a scoping and validation workshop with other stakeholders
The role of the Business sector in peace building is a relatively new topic and there is little or no empirical knowledge on the nexus between the two. There is also little organized knowledge on the contextual situation of Ethiopia. IA is working with the Institute for Security Studies to commission research on core topics that need in-depth understanding. In early December 2021 and early January 2022 IA project manager met with ISS Senior researcher to discuss the modalities of the research and what topics would contribute to our understanding of Business and Peace relationship. So far the suggested topics include “Assessing the role of the private sector in security, peace building, and economic development; violent conflict and the private sector in Ethiopia (more focus on assessment of businesses that have been directly affected by violent conflict by looking at selected regions that have being affected by conflict in the past 5 years); and Business for Peace: opportunities and challenges for women in business to engage in peace building in Ethiopia. These core topics can increase our understanding and empower policy advocacy when it comes to building a conducive environment for businesses to engage in peace.
Ethiopia is a booming investment and business hub. And peace is indispensable to conduct any type of business transaction. There is clear importance to track and measure the peace context from a business perspective. The National Business Peace Index (NBPI) is an attempt to rank the various regions in Ethiopia into ranks based on the enabling environment of their region to conduct business. This information will be collected across the country under defined categories to be defined by a group of experts. Indexes should be accurate and trustworthy developed through a rigorous research process that involves diverse actors ranging from experts to practitioners. The legitimacy of the process of producing a national business index is as equally important as what the index will communicate to its audience. The process of producing the standard measurement the National Peace Index will be carried out through a strong team composed of peace, security, business, public policy, gender etc…experts. The NBPI will inform investors and business owner’s decision making in terms of mapping relatively peaceful areas suitable for business investment. IA reached out to diverse organizations to get recommendations on individuals who can best design a road map to institutionalize this process. Two individuals, one with a strong background on peace and security studies and the other with a strong business have begun the work. The key deliverables include designing a roadmap study that details the working of the index and the institutionalization of the index determination, and partnership identification.
IA is partnering with local businesses that are active in their communities to implement its peace projects through designating priority areas and priority intervention sectors. Proposals | Page7 are identified through various mechanisms including inviting active organizations to submit a proposal. Businesses or other actors such as civil society who will receive the peace building assistance fund will implement the sub-projects in selected areas with selected themes from IA.
National Dialogue – Resource Center (NDRC) [Pilot] The NDRC advances peace related analysis of the National Dialogue to further the public’s understanding of factors that influence citizens’ views and general discussions. Its main objective is to collect, disseminate, and analyze information regarding the National Dialogue deliberations.
The Pilot center is designed to support a variety of activities including research, media analysis, study papers, and a quarterly symposium to showcase new research and analysis.
IA has presented a concept note to a working group composed of government, private sector, academia, and business associations’ members to assess the draft Pilot Centre Specific Plan and required related actions. In addition, IA is the process of bringing resource center designer and content development officer to begin to collect all the necessary data and design the resource center platform.