Browsing by Author "Negash, Biruk"

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    The Effectiveness of Anticorruption Institutions in Implementing International Anticorruption Instruments: The Case of the Federal Ethics and Anticorruption Commission of Ethiopia
    (Addis Ababa University, 2016-07) Negash, Biruk; Terefe, Fekade(PhD)
    The global response to corruption, after passing through several dynamics, culminated in the adoption in 2003 of a broad and binding international anticorruption instrument, the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). Prior to this, the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (AUCPCC) and the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) were also adopted. The implementation of these international anticorruption instruments by states parties requires the involvement of various actors. Chief among these actors are domestic anticorruption institutions like the Federal Ethics and Anticorruption Commission of Ethiopia (FEACC). The main purpose of this study is to examine, find gaps and look for possible explanations for why the gaps exist in the effectiveness of anticorruption institutions in the implementation of these international anticorruption instruments by taking the activity of the FEACC as a case in point. Since an assessment of the effectiveness of FEACC based on the standards set by the above-mentioned international anticorruption instruments ratified by Ethiopia is almost nonexistent, researching from this angle could be beneficial and may ease the constraints of scanty literature in this regard. Although the instruments encompass several broad aspects, for the sake of relevance and conciseness the study has bounded to base itself on the instruments’ corruption prevention, criminalization and law enforcement measures. As the research mainly intends to explore the possible explanations for why gaps exist in the implementation of these measures, it has employed qualitative research methodology and to this effect key informant interviews and document analysis were conducted. On the area of corruption prevention, gaps such as absence of comprehensive and inclusive national anticorruption policy; lacuna in the implementation of system and working procedure reviews made by the FEACC which aim at promoting transparency, accountability and integrity in various government offices and public enterprises; inadequate efforts by the FEACC in reviewing the justice sector and human resource management area and weak follow-up of the implementation of codes of conduct and failure to verify and disclose the registered assets of public officials have been identified. Limitation in delivering in-depth ethics education and in engaging the private sector particularly civil society organizations in the fight against corruption has also been observed. On the areas of criminalization and law enforcement measures, gaps were identified with respect to criminalizing, investigating and prosecuting foreign bribery and some offences in relation to the private sector. Although the FEACC investigated and prosecuted most other offences specified in the international instruments, a large number of the cases it handled in relation to these offences were petty type involving lawranking officials. The gaps in corruption prevention, criminalization and law enforcement activities of the FEACC are largely caused by capacity constraints on part of the staffers of the FEACC, inability to employ intelligence and surveillance that match with the intricate and hidden nature of several offences of corruption, lack of cooperation by heads of various institutions and absence of sanctioning mechanism for failure to act together, inadequate support by the government in availing the necessary resource, remuneration and staff for the FEACC as well as in maintaining the autonomy of the Commission, poor protection to whistleblowers and witnesses, limitation with respect to access to information and media freedom in the country and the prevailing
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    The Importance of Standardization of Aggregate in Ethiopian Construction Industry
    (2014-02) Negash, Biruk; Dinku, Abebe(Professor)
    Concrete is one of the versatile and widely used building materials in the world Construction industry. Fine and coarse aggregates make about 70% by volume of concrete production. It goes without saying that the quality of concrete is thus strongly influenced by aggregate’s physical and mechanical properties as well as chemical composition of the parent aggregate making material. Since most of these materials are from natural sources in Ethiopian case like from rivers and from natural quarry site, their quality and composition vary from time to time. Each truck of sand from the same place at different time may not be the same and it is difficult to design mix proportion for each truck of sand and this call for a standardization of materials in Ethiopia. In my research I made concrete C-25, C-30 and C-40 as control mix by standardizing the aggregate to the Ethiopian standard and other recommendation. By using the property of this standardized aggregate mix design was made for control mixes, keeping the mix proportion constant, aggregates from different sources were used to make concrete of the same classes as control mix. Compressive strength test were made at 3rd, 7th and 28th days for control mixes and for mixes with nonstandard aggregates. Target mean strengths were achieved for control mix by using Derba Cement 260kg/m3, 280kg/m3 and 380kg/m3 for C-25, C-30 and C-40 respectively. On the other hand concrete with non standard aggregate didn’t achieve target mean strength rather up to 48% reduction in strength was observed.