<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Google has pushed back its January 10 timeline to begin a hybrid work model for employees in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to reports Thursday, amid uncertainties about how contagious the coronavirus’ new omicron variant is and as more countries report cases of the variant.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Chris Rackow — Google’s vice president of global security — told U.S. employees in an email Thursday they will not be required to start a hybrid work model on the planned date, and the company will decide next year when to end remote work,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/google-workers-in-us-wont-return-to-office-as-expected-on-jan-10.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNBC</a>&nbsp;reported.



Rackow didn’t mention the omicron variant as a reason for the delay, according to CNBC.



Matt Brittin, the president of Google&#8217;s Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, said in a memo obtained by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-postpone-office-return-emea-coronavirus-omicron-2021-12" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Insider</a>&nbsp;that offices in those regions will decide when to bring employees back to the office depending on local conditions.



Brittin reportedly said the decision stemmed from uncertainty sparked by omicron, as scientists are still trying to understand how contagious or transmittable it is and evaluate existing vaccines’ effectiveness against it.&nbsp;



A Google spokesperson told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;it will determine when to begin hybrid work based on local conditions, and it has opened 90% of offices in the United States, but did not confirm reports about changes in the EMEA region and the U.S.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



In August, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a<a href="https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/extending-our-voluntary-return-office/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;statement</a>&nbsp;it would allow local offices to decide when to end the voluntary work-from-home format beyond January 10. He said employees would receive a 30-day notice before returning to the office.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



In October, Amazon announced it would leave it up to individual teams to<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-offering-teams-more-flexibility-as-we-return-to-office" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;decide</a>&nbsp;how many days a week or which days of the week employees should be in the office, adding flexibility to the hybrid work model. Amazon employees are expected to work from home until January 3. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-offering-teams-more-flexibility-as-we-return-to-office" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>: “We’re going to be in a stage of experimenting, learning, and adjusting for a while as we emerge from this pandemic. All of this led us to change course a bit.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-postpone-office-return-emea-coronavirus-omicron-2021-12" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google is pushing back its office return in Europe, Middle East, and Africa as the Omicron coronavirus strain creates uncertainty</a>&nbsp;(Insider)



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/google-workers-in-us-wont-return-to-office-as-expected-on-jan-10.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google workers in U.S. won’t return to office as expected on Jan. 10</a>&nbsp;(CNBC)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakim/2021/12/01/omicron-discovered-in-24-countries-as-new-variant-spreads/?sh=17c7702f3433">Omicron Discovered In 24 Countries As New Variant Spreads</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2021/08/26/google-plans-to-cut-remote-workers-salaries-by-25-heres-the-impact/?sh=7a6005484fb2">Google Plans To Cut Remote Workers’ Salaries By 25%. Here’s The Impact</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/business/amazon-office-remote-work.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazon expands flexibility for some employees to work from home indefinitely.</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)

FRANCE-ECONOMY-TECHNOLOGY-VIVATECH

Google Reportedly Delays Office Return In U.S., Europe, Middle East And Africa Amid Spread Of Omicron Variant

11r the past few years, Kenya has witnessed considerable growth in Shariah-compliant products, a sign of the vast potential of Islamic finance in Kenya. The country now boasts two fully fledged Islamic banks, one fully fledged insurance provider (Takaful), one Islamic fund manager and one approved Collective Investment Scheme (CIS). For all this, as at December 2014, the Global Islamic Finance Report (GIFR), the developers and publishers of the Islamic Finance Country Index (IFCI), an indicator of developments in Islamic financial services, ranked Kenya 22nd globally and third in Africa behind Sudan and Egypt, but ahead of South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and the Gambia.
According to the IMF’s Islamic Finance: Opportunities, Challenges and Policy Options, Kenya is poised to see further contributions in at least three dimensions: greater financial inclusion, especially of large underserved Muslim populations; greater support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), due to its risk-sharing features; and the lowering of systemic risk, owing to its prohibition of speculation – a major risk for conventional finance. Clearly, the decision to amend the Central Bank Act, allowing the monetary authority to recognize the payment of profits based on income from underlying assets rather than interest on government securities, thereby opening up the spectrum of Sharia-compliant investments, was a sound one.
Kenya is now gearing up to issue its eagerly-awaited Sukuk (Islamic bond) in the 2016/2017 fiscal year, hoping to limit domestic borrowing and increase funding for mega infrastructure projects. The government appears to be following in the footsteps of Senegal and South Africa, both of which managed to raise $200 million and $500 million respectively through Sukuks. Countries and companies raise $100 billion globally every year through Sukuks, with African countries accounting for just 1% of the issues. The planned sovereign issue is also set to pave the way for the private sector and further development of Kenya’s capital markets.
From a sovereign perspective, through Islamic bonds, the Kenyan government will able to access a new investor base. According to a report by Standard &amp; Poor’s (S&amp;P), the Islamic Sukuk investor base is estimated to be over $500 billion, excluding sovereign wealth funds, official investors (central banks and multilateral organizations), and other conventional investors. Essentially, the move will tap into a vast pool of Persian wealth.
Sukuk bonds are known to offer more favorable repayment terms than conventional bonds and therefore attract infrastructure financing. It’s also worth noting that investors from the Middle East accounted for only 2% of Kenya’s debut Eurobond. The planned Shariah-compliant bond should see a ramp up in participation.
Individual investors in the country are also set to benefit immensely as Shariah-compliant products are not restricted to Muslims. What is also vital, perhaps due to its unique qualities, is that Islamic finance has become a good vehicle to diversify risk away from traditional asset classes. It is noted that Sukuk bonds and other financial instruments avoided many of the most severe consequences of the recent financial crisis because they were underpinned by equity, as opposed to debt. For instance, while the S&amp;P 500 dropped 64%, Shariah-compliant indices lost no more than 53% and showed lower volatility, according to KPMG’s report, Islamic finance: From niche to mainstream.
Although Islamic finance has already taken off, there are some challenges facing the niche market. In January, the first International Islamic Finance Conference of Africa was held in Nairobi. It highlighted issues around regulations, investor education, compliance, and the limited range of available products and services. Kenya needs to deal with these challenges to see a smooth increase in Islamic financial products in its financial markets.
As the country positions itself as a financial and investment hub to tap into the growing capital inflows into Africa, it is important to celebrate the milestones achieved so far while working to improve further. With Islamic finance set to grow to $3 trillion within the next decade, according to S&amp;P’s report: Islamic Finance To Still Grow In 2016 But With A Sag, rising popularity of Shariah-compliant products in Kenya will surely contribute to the country’s growth story.

Islamic Finance On  The Rise In Africa

Paula Slier, Middle East Bureau Chief for Russia Today and CEO and founder of Newshoundmedia, has worked in broadcasting for over 20 years as a foreign correspondent, anchor and news editor, and received numerous awards for her work. Her work has included reporting live under fire in Tripoli while Muammar Gadaffi’s forces were on the offensive, and crawling through a tunnel with Hamas smugglers in Gaza.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29783 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/PS-Ukraine2-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PS-Ukraine2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PS-Ukraine2-600x337.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PS-Ukraine2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PS-Ukraine2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PS-Ukraine2.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
A TEFI-nominated (Russia’s highest television award) journalist for her reporting on Libya, she also reports from the frontline in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Gaza and Lebanon. Prior to reporting for Russia Today, she was senior assignment news editor and anchored breaking news and special events for SABC.
Q.Where are you now
[in November]?
<ol>
<li>I am currently in Eastern Ukraine covering the battle between pro-Russian fighters and the Ukrainian military. [In October], I was on the Turkey-Syria border, 500 meters from the city of Kobane where Syrian Kurds are fighting with ISIS. Before that, I spent two weeks in Iraq embedded with the Peshmerga soldiers (Iraqi Kurds) on the frontline. I slept alongside them, outside behind their sandbags, to be woken up by US warplanes at three in the morning bombing ISIS positions nearby and the Peshmerga fighters’ firing shells a few kilometers into the distance. A highlight was spending time with the YPJ women fighters – some as young as 17 years old – who had given up school to fight ISIS.</li>
<li>What plans for the new year? Where will you be?</li>
<li>It’s impossible to say because I can get a call at any moment, even in the middle of the night, and be asked by my news editor to get on the next available flight to …and here the dots can be anywhere from Syria to Afghanistan to Egypt. The last time I took a holiday was a few months back. I’d gone to Thailand and was on the massage bed when the SMS came. Major fighting had broken out in Ukraine and I was asked if I could cut my holiday short and fly there immediately. As you can imagine I had the wrong clothing with me. I arrived in Ukraine with summer dresses, swimming costumes and sandals to cover a war. I had organized with the cameraman who met me in Ukraine to go past my home and pack warm, appropriate clothes for me, but he was stopped at airport security – not because he had bullet-proof jackets and helmets, but because he was traveling with women’s clothing!</li>
</ol>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29781 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Iraq-2-300x168.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="168" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Iraq-2-300x168.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Iraq-2-600x336.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Iraq-2-768x430.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Iraq-2-1024x574.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Iraq-2.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
<ol>
<li>Are holidays not in the diaries of war correspondents?</li>
<li>We like to pencil them in, but realistically we probably change the dates on average about four to five times for each trip. I’m supposed to take the rest of my Thailand holiday at the end of this month but I’m delaying booking the flights until the absolute last minute.</li>
<li>As a female war reporter, are there any specific challenges?</li>
<li>I’m often asked if I think being a woman aids or makes my job more difficult. I think it’s a mixture of both. On the one hand being female has helped me gain access to sources who might be more difficult to reach if I was a man. Especially in the Middle East, where many societies are quite patriarchal, women reporters often are seen as a third androgynous sex if you like – I get to sit with Taliban fighters and sip tea while their wives and daughters are in the other room. It feels like they don’t know what to do with me. But I’ve also interviewed Hamas leaders who don’t look directly at me when answering questions because I’m female. It was difficult covering the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square as a woman. A few women journalists were raped and not-so-few were sexually assaulted and harassed, prompting ‘Reporters Without Borders’ to urge news organizations not to send women there. The association later amended their statement, warning rather that “security should be paramount”. Certainly some of the physical risks we face are greater than our male colleagues – although threats like kidnappings and intimidation are the same.</li>
<li>What are the highs of war reporting?</li>
<li>It’s a high to be on the cutting edge of news, to be at that spot on earth where all the world’s TV cameras are pointing, to be in the thick of history. I get to have experiences most people can only dream of – in the morning I could be interviewing street children, in the afternoon, I could be flying in a military helicopter and by evening, dining with a president. One of my favorite stories is when I was on foot patrol with US forces in Afghanistan and a group of children kept running after us. Much later, when we paused at a school for a few minutes, I took off my bullet-proof jacket and helmet and one of the boys, slightly aghast, came up to me and asked: “Ma’am, does your husband know you’ve left the house?”</li>
</ol>

grad5

‘I Arrived With Swimming Costumes To Cover A War’

The night Private Johan Botha died was actually meant to be his last on active service in Afghanistan’s turbulent Helmand province. His battalion, A (Grenadier) Company, was making its way out of the province on orders to push Taliban insurgent forces towards Pakistan. In the morning, another unit, the Grenadier Guards, would take over, allowing Botha and his company to head north to Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, where they would catch the next flight home.
But a midnight ambush changed all that. It was like World War One; A Company was dug into a trench, and a few meters away, on the other side of no man’s land, was the Taliban.
In the darkness, machine gun fire shattered the silence as Taliban fighters launched their attack firing rocket-propelled grenades. The bursts of sand and smoke blinded and trapped the British. Seven men bore the brunt. Botha was one of them. He was wounded but no one could find him. His last words came across another soldier’s radio. He was shouting through the chaos in his heavy Afrikaans accent: “Boss, please don’t leave me.”
Botha was 25 and left a wife and young daughter.
Botha, of the Mercian Regiment (Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters), was a South African, one of thousands of Africans fighting for the British. He enlisted in Pretoria, as a Commonwealth soldier, in 2005; his tour of duty in Helmand was his first and he carried it out while a South African citizen.
British soldiers from Africa are not new. Infantrymen like Botha have been fighting under the Union Flag for hundreds of years. The two World Wars saw British dominions, like South Africa and Canada, raising their own armies, under British command, fully integrated into the British fighting forces. In World War One, more than 74,000 South Africans fought for the Queen and someone else&#8217;s country.
They are fewer today; about 660 British soldiers are South African – among the African majority of 6,400 Commonwealth fighters, according to Ministry of Defence (MOD) figures. African soldiers from Swaziland to Kenya have taken the Queen’s shilling with large enlistments from Ghana, Gambia and Zimbabwe.
In July last year, the British government suspended direct recruitment from the Commonwealth as part of a bid to cut the Armed Forces by a fifth. That year, it axed more than 5,000 soldiers from the ranks.
Yet, this year, young African men are still knocking at the gates of the British Defence Attache in Pretoria. They are trying to follow in the footsteps of men like Kieran Burke, a South African who joined the colors in 2005 and served with Botha. He says it was a career move.
“I wanted to eventually, once I got military experience, join the UN.”
Burke insists most Africans join for more than a red passport.
“With young guys coming in from Africa, it was a means to an end.”
The men he served with, from the continent, just wanted to be professional soldiers, he says. The British Army was organized, well-equipped and moneyed.
“The South Africans, Ghanaians and Fijians were the cream of the crop [and] we [lose] these guys to a foreign army. In some ways, it’s misplaced,” he says.
Burke tried to join the South African army. He had a Humanities degree but the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) wouldn’t let him enlist.
“I was informed by my own army [that] I was too old, I was 24,” he says.
So, he enlisted with the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire regiment instead and did six months of basic training. He excelled as a private and was in line to train as an officer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. But when he was asked to wait, in his rank, for two and half years he felt it was time to leave. He wanted to go into combat as a lieutenant, not a private.
After three months with a regiment, soldiers have to decide whether to leave or to stay. After this window, a four-year contract is signed and leaving the British Army is not an option.
“It was very difficult to get out,” remembers Burke.
But he talked his way out and is now a journalist in South Africa.
Despite his clean escape, Burke and other South Africans who have served, or are serving, in foreign armies may be skirting mercenary law back home. A piece of legislation known as the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act (FMA), passed in 1998, prohibits any South African citizen from engaging in ‘mercenary activity’ both within and outside the Republic. This means South Africans offering services as direct combatants in an international conflict for pay are committing an offense.
There is a way around this. The law can be subverted by placing a request for exemption with the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), based at the Department of Defence. But Burke says this was not considered by him or his countrymen who joined the British Army.
“There was no notion that you had to let the South African government know that you were in the British Army. If there was an issue, I was not aware of it,” he says.
Foreign fighters are a huge threat to South Africa’s international interests and obligations. Part of the reason the 1998 Act was drafted was because South Africa had been implicated in major, often scandalous, diplomatic embarrassments with its citizens aiding the overthrow of governments or selling arms to rebel groups across Africa.
The first FMA conviction was Richard Rouget – popularly known as Colonel Sanders – in 2005. He pled guilty to assisting the government of Ivory Coast suppress dissidents three years earlier. Rouget wasn’t born South African; he was a French military veteran who earned his citizenship through naturalization. He admitted to supplying the Ivorian government with military equipment, training and a contingent of South African pilots. The State proved that Rouget and his men were also active combatants during the Ivory Coast conflict. The men were paid €6,000 ($7,500) monthly. In addition, Rouget was paid €340,000 ($430,000) by the Ivorian authorities for military equipment.
Rouget was found guilty and slapped with a R100,000 ($9,000) fine and a suspended sentence of five years. He made an appeal for leniency and was granted a reprieve of R25,000 ($2,200) on his fine. The same year, Mark Thatcher was sentenced, under the same legislation, for his part in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. He walked away with a R3 million ($270,000) fine and a four-year suspended sentence.
Since the FMA became law in South Africa, only a handful of cases have gone to trial. However, it does raise concerns of the legitimacy of soldiers like Botha and Burke doing battle for another nation and fighting wars as proxies.
In many ways, the story of the African foreign legion, stripped bare, is the story of the African migrant, with stars and stripes on.

Going To War For  Money And A Passport

When her father first glimpsed her, he said, ‘Bogaletch’, meaning ‘flash of light’. And so it would be. In her relentless fight against female genital mutilation and gender-based violence, Ethiopian physician and human rights activist Bogaletch Gebre carries the torch for women around the world.
She was born in rural Ethiopia in the 1950s. It was a time when Ethiopian women had limited aspirations and their experiences were restricted to their villages. Like 125 million girls across 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East, Gebre went under the knife, not for medical reasons, but for the ancient practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Thirty million girls worldwide are at risk of being cut in the next decade. Gebre wants that number to be zero.
FGM is the cutting away of part or all of the external female genitalia. The procedure is usually performed on girls from infancy to the age of 15. The painful practice has no health benefits and can cause fatal infections. Gebre points out that FGM may also have long-term consequences, such as infertility, damage to adjacent organs and birth complications.
“Women should not be mutilated alive for the pleasure of men. Basically, there is no other reason [for FGM] but to control women’s sexuality. The FGM practice is to cut female genitalia; the inner labia, the outer labia, and then sew it together … And then you reopen that which you have sewn when she marries. And after she gives birth, let’s say she has multiple births, you sew her up like she is some kind of object, to reduce the size of her vaginal hole, because it is widened through her giving birth,” says Gebre.
When Gebre became the first girl from her village to attend school further than the fourth grade, later receiving a scholarship to study in Israel and the United States, she promised she would be back, and that she would make a difference.
During her studies, Gebre realized FGM had no cultural or religious roots.
“Culture, according to the United Nations, is man-made. It is not ethnic, it is tangible, nobody belongs to one culture… Whenever we talk about human rights issues in Africa, it’s always about culture, so culture is being used as a scapegoat. If it is not in our religion, if it is not in the Bible, if it is not in the Koran, why are we using this culture as our culture?”
When she returned to Ethiopia in 1997, Gebre co-founded KMG—Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma-Tope, which means ‘women of Kembatta working together’—with her younger sister, Fikirte. The non-profit organization promotes communication and dialogue between communities and their leaders.
“We brought together representatives of the community: the young, the old, the educated, religious leaders, even government officials and police. They sit and discuss together, learn about each other and analyze the problems in the community together. And find a way to solve it, to reach a consensus and create their own social contract to abide by,” she explains.
With funding from USAID, international organizations and embassies, KMG promotes women’s education and increased economic opportunities for women. The organization also focuses on demystifying taboos about HIV/Aids and other cultural practices, such as widow inheritance and bridal abduction. Seventy percent of KMG’s three million beneficiaries are women. A measure of the organization’s achievements is the change in mindset on FGM. In 1998, every single woman in Ethiopia’s Kembatta Tembaro region had undergone FGM. A decade later, 97% of people living in the area opposed the practice. But Gebre is not satisfied yet; at 74%, Ethiopia’s national prevalence remains high.
In May 2013, Gebre accepted the King Baudouin African Development Prize on behalf of KMG. The award, which is worth $200,000, provides recipients with a platform to address international aid agencies.
Despite everything she has achieved, Gebre remains humble, describing herself as an ordinary person who works for the betterment of humanity.
And her efforts appear to be bearing fruit. In December, the UN General Assembly called for the complete elimination of FGM. Around 1,775 African communities heeded the call and publicly declared their commitment to end the practice.  ,
When her father first glimpsed her, he said, ‘Bogaletch’, meaning ‘flash of light’. And so it would be. In her relentless fight against female genital mutilation and gender-based violence, Ethiopian physician and human rights activist Bogaletch Gebre carries the torch for women around the world.
She was born in rural Ethiopia in the 1950s. It was a time when Ethiopian women had limited aspirations and their experiences were restricted to their villages. Like 125 million girls across 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East, Gebre went under the knife, not for medical reasons, but for the ancient practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Thirty million girls worldwide are at risk of being cut in the next decade. Gebre wants that number to be zero.
FGM is the cutting away of part or all of the external female genitalia. The procedure is usually performed on girls from infancy to the age of 15. The painful practice has no health benefits and can cause fatal infections. Gebre points out that FGM may also have long-term consequences, such as infertility, damage to adjacent organs and birth complications.
“Women should not be mutilated alive for the pleasure of men. Basically, there is no other reason [for FGM] but to control women’s sexuality. The FGM practice is to cut female genitalia; the inner labia, the outer labia, and then sew it together … And then you reopen that which you have sewn when she marries. And after she gives birth, let’s say she has multiple births, you sew her up like she is some kind of object, to reduce the size of her vaginal hole, because it is widened through her giving birth,” says Gebre.
When Gebre became the first girl from her village to attend school further than the fourth grade, later receiving a scholarship to study in Israel and the United States, she promised she would be back, and that she would make a difference.
During her studies, Gebre realized FGM had no cultural or religious roots.
“Culture, according to the United Nations, is man-made. It is not ethnic, it is tangible, nobody belongs to one culture… Whenever we talk about human rights issues in Africa, it’s always about culture, so culture is being used as a scapegoat. If it is not in our religion, if it is not in the Bible, if it is not in the Koran, why are we using this culture as our culture?”
When she returned to Ethiopia in 1997, Gebre co-founded KMG—Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma-Tope, which means ‘women of Kembatta working together’—with her younger sister, Fikirte. The non-profit organization promotes communication and dialogue between communities and their leaders.
“We brought together representatives of the community: the young, the old, the educated, religious leaders, even government officials and police. They sit and discuss together, learn about each other and analyze the problems in the community together. And find a way to solve it, to reach a consensus and create their own social contract to abide by,” she explains.
With funding from USAID, international organizations and embassies, KMG promotes women’s education and increased economic opportunities for women. The organization also focuses on demystifying taboos about HIV/Aids and other cultural practices, such as widow inheritance and bridal abduction. Seventy percent of KMG’s three million beneficiaries are women. A measure of the organization’s achievements is the change in mindset on FGM. In 1998, every single woman in Ethiopia’s Kembatta Tembaro region had undergone FGM. A decade later, 97% of people living in the area opposed the practice. But Gebre is not satisfied yet; at 74%, Ethiopia’s national prevalence remains high.
In May 2013, Gebre accepted the King Baudouin African Development Prize on behalf of KMG. The award, which is worth $200,000, provides recipients with a platform to address international aid agencies.
Despite everything she has achieved, Gebre remains humble, describing herself as an ordinary person who works for the betterment of humanity.
And her efforts appear to be bearing fruit. In December, the UN General Assembly called for the complete elimination of FGM. Around 1,775 African communities heeded the call and publicly declared their commitment to end the practice.

Tag: Middle East

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Google Reportedly Delays Office Return In U.S., Europe, Middle East And Africa Amid Spread Of Omicron Variant

Islamic Finance On The Rise In Africa

‘I Arrived With Swimming Costumes To Cover A War’

Going To War For Money And A Passport

Bogaletch Gebre: The Light Bearer