The latest economic update  for Madagascar suggests that the economy is facing new headwinds following bouts of COVID-19, a series of extreme weather events and the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine at the start of 2022. An economic recovery had started in Madagascar in 2021 but was interrupted in 2022 by a sequence of domestic and international shocks which are expected to result in growth slowing to 2.6 percent in 2022 (from 4.4 percent in 2021), with the poverty rate now expected to remain close to 81 percent.

According to the Madagascar Economic Update: Navigating Through the Storm, the crisis is Ukraine is expected to affect Madagascar mainly through slowing demand from key trading partners and rising oil prices, which are projected to lead to growing fiscal pressures due to a lack of adjustment of regulated fuel prices and growing losses of the national utilities company JIRAMA. Beyond conjunctural factors, the decline in private investment and job creation since the outset of the crisis are expected to constraint in the growth potential of the economy moving forward. In this context, growth is expected to pick up to a slower than expected 4.2 percent in 2023 and 4.6 percent in 2024.  

“Faced with new shocks and uncertainties, Madagascar need more than ever to undertake bold reforms to accelerate growth and reinforce its resilience,” said Idah Z. Pswarayi-Riddihough, Country Director, Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius, Comoros and Seychelles. “This is the only chance to reduce poverty significantly in coming years and to start catching up with aspirational peers.”

Several policy priorities are highlighted as particularly urgent in this Economic Update, including (i) a clear strategy to speed up vaccination for vulnerable groups as well as in urban and tourist areas; (ii) the restoration of essential public services and connectivity infrastructure following recent climate shocks; (iii) forceful actions to address food insecurity and boost domestic food production; (iv) fuel and electricity price reforms that protect the poor while preventing ballooning fiscal deficits and socially regressive subsidies; ; (v) a new momentum to boost access and affordability of broadband and digital services; and (vi) more public sector transparency and accountability.

This report also highlights the importance of boosting public school performance following a continued deterioration in learning outcomes in recent years. Findings presented in the economic update suggest the need for new approach to performance enhancement that includes measures reinforcing teachers’ selection and evaluation, salary and school grant management, redress mechanism and local community participation.

Common Yet Serious Challenges For eLearning Courses

Ukraine: ‘Perfect storm’ threatens economic devastation in developing world

Madagascar: ‘World cannot look away’ as 1.3 million face severe hunger

Madagascar: Severe drought could spur world’s first climate change famine

Humanitarian crisis looms in Madagascar amid drought and pandemic

Madagascar Needs Bold Reforms to Reopen the Country

World Bank Supports Madagascar’s Digital Transformation

Rosewood conservation: A success story from Madagascar

Upon the water industry becoming deregulated, businesses were able to choose the retailer that they buy their water supply from. Local monopoly companies still continue to source, treat and pipe water to your business premises and to carry away your wastewater for treatment and disposal. However, local water companies no longer bill business customers directly.

The “wholesaler” provides the “engineering” elements of business water services: sourcing, treating and piping water, and collecting, treating and disposing of wastewater. Wholesalers are obliged to treat all retailers equally so they can compete fairly.

The “retailer” is the company that sells water, wastewater, and drainage services to your business. They provide billing, are responsible for any leakages on your business premises, and will be the first point of contact for any customer service issues. Deregulation has effectively opened up the water market and retailers are open to competition. New retailers are permitted to enter the water sector and provide new sources of water or sewage treatment services.

Deregulation applies to all non-household water customers in England, that is, a business, charity, public sector, or not-for-profitt organization of any size or type. Business water deals and tariffs can be viewed online at the link.

N.B. Water deregulation does not apply to Northern Ireland and Wales, therefore, sites or businesses in these locations are not eligible for new market opportunities. The Scottish water market was deregulated back in 2008.

There are several options available to you:

Every eLearning course is designed with the primary objective of engaging the learner for better understanding, and implementation of the skills in achieving their eLearning objectives and business goals.

To create a detailed and effective eLearning course, the course creator digs deeper into the subject to explain and elaborate on the topic in detail. Such scenarios are bound to bring along some of the common yet serious challenges for your eLearning course.

By identifying and understanding these challenges, it becomes possible and easier to mitigate them or eliminate them completely. Let us understand some of the common yet serious challenges that are mentioned below.

Deeper you dwell on the eLearning topic, the longer the eLearning module/chapter becomes. This also becomes a challenge for the creator to curate the eLearning course within the defined timeline. Thus, it is important to involve all the stakeholder’s inputs and consider practical timelines at the planning stage itself so that it becomes possible to adhere to the decided timelines.

While considering and deciding on the timelines, one must keep in consideration the fixed resources you have in hand. Keeping some buffer time in planning will help in ensuring that the quality is not compromised and the end result is as desired not only by you but also does not fall short of the client’s expectations. Wherever possible, it is best to keep the client involved at every step of course creation.

Irrelevant/generalized eLearning courses are non-engaging for a very obvious reason. The eLearning content should be created keeping the learning objective and practical knowledge that the learner can apply in their day-to-day work scenario.

Off-the-shelf courses are only taken up by the corporate learners to tick mark the compliance requirements. It is a good practice to give choice to the learner. The work-relevant topics or topics of individual interest keep the online learners engaged, thus increasing the success ratio of the online course. Hence, providing multiple options to choose the course of learner’s interest and choice is more meaningful.

With the shift from classroom learning to hybrid learning to self-learning with the help of an effective LMS software, the most common yet the biggest challenge is and has always been keeping the online learners engaged. While the engagement largely depends on the interactivity of the learning management software, the course content plays an equally important part.

One must ensure to keep the content short, crisp, informative, and clutter-free. While navigating through, the learner must feel the ease of using the eLearning content with minimal navigation. With technological advancements, an effective LMS provides multiple options for keeping the learners engaged in the form of FAQs, quizzes, games, polls, etc. One does not need to be technologically skilled to manage an eLearning platform.

With a plethora of options available, it becomes the toughest job to choose the perfect eLearning tool, especially when the word “perfect” means differently in different scenarios. Based on the eLearning course, one must segregate the features into different categories like “must-have”, and “good to have”.

Based on a few trials on the demo logins, check all the features and functions that the LMS provides you with. Perform a thorough comparison of these features, especially the ones that you intend to use. Shortlist the best-suited features for the eLearning course design.

Comparison based on support, pricing, and relevant features will also ease your job of choosing the right eLearning tools for your online course. With this kind of research and analysis, you are sure to find the most interactive features. A combination of the right eLearning tools and great eLearning content will lead to better engagement of the learner making your eLearning course a sure success.

Once you have decided on the learning objectives and have created an outline of the course content that is well-aligned with business goals, it is important to ensure that the information is shared in a practical way with proper navigation.

Balancing the textual content with infographics, videos, games, etc in the right order will lead to continuity of the learning. However, overloading information in a cluttered manner will disengage the learner even if the course content has all the required information.

Similarly, the navigation should be simple and intuitive. Online learners spending too much time figuring out how to move to the next module will make him leave the course incomplete.

To create an impactful and engaging eLearning program, the basic required resources are people, budget, and time. Unfortunately, every course is expected to complete with limited resources, time, and budget. Thus, planning the eLearning project carefully and accurately is very important. Compromising with limited resources may leave in a purge.

You may start the project with full enthusiasm and rigor keeping the team motivated. But by the time you reach the middle of the project, the team realizes that it is nearly impossible to complete the project with the given resources. Getting additional resources or a budget in the middle of the project becomes almost impossible.

Create a detailed budget at the beginning of the project keeping every aspect and associated budget into consideration. With limited resources and budget, the best option is to choose a flexible development tool that can help you create the eLearning project with minimum possible resources and budget. With the use of in-built features, you can save on time as well.

There are challenges in anything we do, and creating a successful and engaging eLearning course is no different. These challenges are very common and are faced every time you create a new eLearning course. To overcome these challenges, it is important, firstly, to be cognizant of the common challenges. Secondly, taking a common approach for the basics of the eLearning course creation methodology and tweaking it based on the learning objectives and business goals makes it different, successful, and engaging from other similar courses.

Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine is causing immense suffering and devastation there, but also creating a “perfect storm” which could devastate the economies of “many developing countries”, the UN chief warned on Wednesday.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres was speaking in Sweden alongside Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, where he is attending the Stockholm+50 conference, which he described as “a crucial opportunity to bolster our response to the triple planetary emergency of climate disruption, pollution and biodiversity loss.”

Mr. Guterres said the UN remained “intensely focused on practical steps to save lives and reduce human suffering” inside Ukraine, including maintaining humanitarian corridors, but for many developing countries, the climate crisis, growing debt and economic insecurity, were now compounded by “ballooning energy costs and growing hunger”, due to the war that is crippling Ukraine’s food exports.

A perfect storm is threatening to devastate the economies of many developing countries, he said.

He called for “quick and decisive action to ensure a steady flow of food and energy in open markets, by lifting export restrictions, allocating surpluses and reserves to vulnerable populations, and addressing food price increases to calm market volatility.”

But there would be no solution, without bringing Ukraine’s food production back into the global market, alongside food and fertilizer from Russia.

The UN chief told reporters he was continuing to “exert every possible effort and use my good offices to promote a dialogue” between Moscow and Kyiv, to end the war, and the UN now has two teams led by Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, and UN trade and development chief, Rebeca Grynspan, working on a deal to alleviate the food crisis.

The two agency heads are working on an agreement for the “safe and secure export of Ukrainian-produced food through the Black Sea”, Mr. Guterres said, “along with unimpeded access of Russian food and fertilizers to global markets, especially developing countries.”

According to the UN Spokesperson, Ms. Grynspan had “constructive discussions” in Moscow on Tuesday with Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister, and is now in Washington, for talks on the same issue of facilitating Russian grain and fertilizer exports.

The Secretary-General said he and the Swedish Prime Minister had discussed the Ukraine crisis, it’s implications for wider European security, “and possible pathways towards de-escalation and a negotiated settlement in line with international law and the UN Charter.”

He expressed gratitude for Sweden’s “remarkable solidarity” in welcoming Ukrainian refugees and for providing vital support to our humanitarian operations.

Mr. Guterres also welcomed Sweden’s leadership on climate action, showing how setting and striving towards climate targets, could create jobs, generate green growth, and strengthen the social fabric overall.

“I welcome Sweden’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045 at the latest, and negative emissions shortly thereafter”, he said, adding that he was counting on the European Union, “to match this ambition and review its renewable energy and energy efficiency targets this year.”

“Adaptation and mitigation must be pursued with equal urgency”, he said, with developing countries receiving necessary support at speed and at scale.

“I count on all developed nations including Sweden to reassure developing countries with a clear and credible roadmap on how they will double finance for adaptation – as agreed in Glasgow (at COP26) last year.

“But most importantly, we must uphold the Paris Agreement, keep the 1.5 degree goal alive, and rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

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