Ethiopia did not supply clean water for half of the total population up to the end of 2011.This study had tried to assess sources and determinants of organic water pollutant (BOD) emissions in Ethiopia by considering 22 years data from 1990-2011. The study employed both descriptive and inferential analysis in which autoregressive distributed lag model was used to analyze the data. As of descriptive analysis industrial wastes are the main actor in polluting the water, in which textile and food industries are the first and second pollutants respectively. The pollution level from the second source shows increment in recent times. The regression result revealed that gross capital formation, expansion of the manufacturing sector, inflation and huge dependent population are variables that would aggravate the water pollution level of the country where as agriculture value addition and foreign direct investment have contributed more in reducing the pollution level.

Ethiopian agriculture is a vulnerable sector from effects of climate variability. This study identified how strong is the effect of climate variability on smallholders’ crop income in Central highlands and Arssi grain plough farming systems of the country. The unbalanced panel data (1994-2014) of the study collected for eight rounds analysed through fixed effect regression. The model result shows that successive increment of crop season rainfall keeping the temperature constant has negative and significant effect on households’ crop income in the study area. The crop income responds similarly for temperature increment if the rainfall remains constant. Given this, simultaneous increment of the two climate related inputs has positive and significant effect on crop income. Other variables like flood, frost, storm, and rainfall inconsistency in the onset and cessation time affected households’ crop income negatively and significantly. Similarly, draught power and human labour, which are critical inputs in the crop production of Ethiopian smallholders, have positive and significant effect on crop income as to the model result. Thus, this study recommended that there should be supplementing the rainfall through irrigation, check dam and other activities to have consistent water supply for the crop production that enable smallholders to collect better income. Additionally, negative effect of temperature increment should be curved through adopting long lasting strategies like afforestation.

Policy makers recognize the role of small businesses in bringing about economic growth and reducing or eliminating poverty, and training can contribute significantly to this process. The present study adds to the small firm literature by examining whether training encourages small firms to be more creative and innovative. It does so by investigating the extent of creative and innovative activities in small enterprises (SEs) that have undertaken training with support from the Ethiopian technical and vocational education and training system. SEs for the purpose of the study are businesses with fewer than 30 employees. The term includes micro‐enterprises, which are defined in Ethiopia as having fewer than six employees. Quantitative methodology was used to compare and contrast these enterprises with similar enterprises which had not had training support. Data were collected from 146 randomly selected small firms by means of interviews with owners and employees. Interviews were also conducted with technical, vocational education and training experts. The study examined five predictors of creativity and innovation activities that training support would be expected to encourage and found significant differences in two of them: creative thinking and motivational attributes. Differences in other creativity and innovation variables, however, were not significant. The researchers conclude that education and training for creativity and innovation should be prioritized to enhance the performance of small firms, in particular by increasing their expertise, improving their motivation and ability to surmount challenges and developing their creative thinking in the search for new business ideas.

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