The El Niño phenomenon and global climate change caused the failure of two rainy seasons, negatively affecting the livelihoods of millions people in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa Region.

This drought is affecting around 5.6 million people in Ethiopia, especially the pastoral communities in Somali Regional State,  the lowlands of Borena, Bale and Gujji zones in the Oromia Regional State and South Omo zone of the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ State.

As soon as the first climatic signs were detected, Ethiopian President Dr. Mulatu Teshome and other high government officials visited the affected regions and held discussions with local communities on the possible solutions to mitigate the drought.

Moreover, a National Disaster Risk Management Commission was established. Along with the National Command Post chaired Mr. Demeke Mekonen, Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia, it is carrying out studies about the situation of the drought-affected regions of the country.

In an interview given on the 8^th of March, Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Demeke Mekonen underlined the commitment of the government to prevent the negative impact on the lives of the people and of their cattle in the pastoralist communities.

The government allocated 47 million dollars to provide food and health services to the drought affected people. These response programs are conducted without affecting the ongoing development programs currently underway in the country, the Deputy Prime Minister said.

To face the drought at a regional level, the Heads of States and Governments of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia signed the Mogadishu Declaration on Regional Cooperation on the Current Drought on 22 February 2017, and called for “international collaboration and regional partnership between governments, civil society, aid organizations, business and international donors.”

In this spirit of regional partnership, Ethiopia donated over 7,200 quintals of emergency food assistance and 26,667 cartons of milk to the Somaliland region after the Somaliland administration declared the existence of a serious drought.

In the last years, Ethiopia’s government has created dedicated institutions and gained significant experience to mitigate droughts. The country shared its experience at the Istanbul Humanitarian Conferences in 2016.

On 29 January 2017, UN Secretary-General, Mr. António Guterres called for total solidarity with the government and the people of Ethiopia. At this occasion, he commended the Ethiopian government and the humanitarian community for the successful response to the 2016 El Niño-induced drought in Ethiopia

Last year, the Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners successfully addressed the impact of the El Niño-induced drought, assisting at least 10.2 million people with food and rolling out a massive emergency response in the country, reaching 1.5 million households. Some 3.1 million children were supported through the school feeding program and 2.7 million people were assisted with clean water.

While international donors contributed close to 1 billion dollars over the course of the 2016 response, the government of Ethiopia spent at least 735 million dollars. The combined government and partners’ effort helped save countless people’s lives and averted a major humanitarian catastrophe in the country.

Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels. Contact

Byiers, B. 2017. Is the Nile Basin Initiative a ‘regional sailboat’ in choppy geopolitical waters? ECDPM Talking Points blog, 3 March 2017.

With development practitioners increasingly invoking the importance of “Thinking and Working Politically” in development processes, Rachel Klein has a very appropriate line: “Plan for sailboats, not trains”. In other words: forget linear thinking when trying to approach development issues. Adaptability, flexibility and iterative approaches are the watchwords.

Applying this at a regional level implies an even trickier form of sailing: how do you promote a “sailboat” approach among multiple countries on cross-cutting agendas, given that much of what ultimately takes place depends on the political economy dynamics within countries? Regional cooperation is essentially about flotillas of sailboats of different sizes and capabilities, all subject to very localised currents and winds, where it isn’t always 100% clear that all are heading for the same destination.

While we have previously raised these same challenges around trade facilitation, our ongoing work on the Political Economy Dynamics of Regional Organisations (PEDRO) also includes river basin organisations. There may be interesting lessons for those supporting regional organisations and processes in other river basins or indeed other topics.

One example is the NBI – the Nile Basin Initiative – a ten-country organisation set up in 1999 to facilitate cooperation around Nile River Basin policies and investments. Three aspects stand out to suggest that NBI may have some ‘sailboat’ elements for improving regional cooperation.

Firstly, institutionally, NBI is not a commission – it is “in transition”, awaiting an agreement on Nile water usage – so has no legal standing beyond a headquarters agreement with Uganda, where it has its Secretariat in Entebbe. While this might be seen as a weakness, it has also forced the organisation to take a more iterative, adaptive approach to building country interest in cooperation through the initiative.

All countries fully recognised the political tensions around sharing the Nile, which is why the riparian countries negotiated the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement – as a basis for the permanent Nile River Basin Commission. But due to differences that haven’t yet been resolved, the NBI has focused on technical, relatively apolitical projects. Training and knowledge-sharing was a way to establish formal and informal working relationships and trust between those working on water issues in riparian countries. While easy to dismiss, trust is an important aspect of regional cooperation.

Secondly, the technical capabilities of the NBI can also come to feed political discussions. By gathering and analysing technical data on water resource development plans of the riparian countries, they have been able to show, for example, that, unless the riparian countries efficiently coordinate their water use development plans, there is a risk of serious shortage of water in the Basin.

Being technically strong has helped build political relevance, now culminating in a Collaborative Water Assessment Process which helps to model different scenarios of the water resource levels and impacts of investments. NBI’s plan is to generate technically informed options for addressing the growing water demand in the Nile Basin more sustainably than would be possible through purely unilateral development by individual riparian countries.

Thirdly, sub-regional approaches and subsidiarity appear to both allow champions and sub-regional alignment around narrowed common interests. This is partly defined by the nature of the Nile Basin, with the Eastern Nile tributaries (Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt) physically distinct from the Equatorial Lakes tributaries. This is recognised in two Subsidiary Action Programmes: the first one organised around the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO) for the Eastern Nile, that is somewhat autonomous from the NBI Secretariat; and the second, Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program NELSAP.

This allows some specialisation – for example, NELSAP is increasingly engaged on issues of hydropower and connectivity, working by the logic that the willingness of a country to accept a dam upstream is affected by access to the energy created. There is no need for issues affecting only ENTRO countries to be dealt with at a wider NBI platform. This may be how the NBI manages to almost entirely finance its operational costs through membership contributions, even with some states such as Egypt, DRC and Burundi in arrears.

This is not to disregard the challenges of setting sail in these waters – the Nile also has some waterfalls.

One challenge is the common story of overlapping memberships – not only does NBI cut across several Regional Economic Communities, but also regional structures like the East Africa Power Pool (EAPP) and the Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC). This need not be a problem if organisations can agree on a division of labour.

However, the continental architecture, and push for RECs to have a water department and water policy also risks confusing rather than helping matters, while countries take different negotiation positions on different issues at different fora. Uganda for example is downstream of Lake Victoria but mid-stream with respect to the Nile, so the political calculations alter. As well as Nile countries, Ethiopia is upstream of Djibouti, Somalia and others through other rivers – should all its water use be governed by one body?

Yet the fundamental challenge for NBI is that while they have tried to keep the technical and political tracks separate, both are seen as inseparable for Egypt, to whom the colonial-era agreements provide most rights to water use. As a result, Egypt suspended its participation in most NBI activities (Egypt participates in the annual meetings of the Nile Council of Ministers(Nile-COM), the Nile Day celebrations and the Strategic Dialogue between NBI governance and donor partners – all organised by NBI).

Though there are increased statements to the effect that Egypt is “turning towards Africa” and growing recognition that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is a reality, it is nonetheless seen as a potential disrupter to Nile water cooperation.

So if indeed NBI is a “strong organisation with a weak mandate”, as some have said, what can it hope to achieve?

By being adaptive and in tune to the politics, it seems that NBI may be well suited to encourage on-going diplomatic efforts. The shifting interests created by the GERD construction – energy generation for Ethiopia can also be sold to Sudan, while storing water upstream is also good for Sudan’s agricultural irrigation and may supplement available water storage in the High Aswan Dam in Egypt – increasing the buffering capacity of the Eastern Nile system.

Depending on how that is managed, the lower evaporation loss from storing water in Ethiopia due to its high altitude with cooler climate and efficient irrigation in Sudan might yet ensure Egypt maintains sufficient water-flow. Egyptian investors might even be willing to invest in Sudanese agriculture – thus importing water through food trade.

Should NBI therefore branch out into regional agricultural trade? One of the challenges of many regional organisations has precisely been ‘agenda inflation’ and on paper COMESA has the mandate – both on agriculture through CAADP, and on trade. While COMESA may be too large to focus on specifics, the best impact may come from NBI engaging with COMESA to ensure that concerns about water use, and energy production can be made part of a wider grand-bargain – think the European Coal and Steel Community.

While there is a tendency to think that overlapping memberships is a constraint to effectiveness, de Waal and Ibreck (2016) recently cited the need in the Horn of Africa for “not only a multilateral approach, but also an approach of multiple and overlapping multilateralisms.”

Multiple flotillas of sailboats may sound messy but perhaps that is the way to ensure that at least some can set sail while others founder or sink.

http://ecdpm.org/talking-points/nile-basin-initiative-regional-sailboat-choppy-geopolitical-waters/

How to accelerate development through successful partnerships in higher education

This article was originally published in the second issue (April 2016) of the The Ethiopian Messenger, the quarterly magazine of the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels.

Ethiopia and Belgium have enjoyed a long-standing diplomatic relation dating back to 1906. Belgium mostly imports coffee, cut flowers, grains and horticultural products from Ethiopia, while Ethiopia imports agricultural chemicals and machinery. Despite the more than century old diplomatic relations, the Belgian investment in Ethiopia falls short when compared with flow of investment from countries like the Netherlands, China or the Great Britain. Recently however, Belgian investors have shown a greater interest to invest in Ethiopia, among others because of the economic growth of Ethiopia, which is one of the fastest in the world.

The bilateral development relation of the two countries tells a different and lively story. Ethiopia was on the Belgian list of bilateral partner countries until 2003 when Belgium reformulated its cooperation policy after the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Belgium’s primary focus in Ethiopia shifted to higher education and to a lesser extent to food security and agriculture. Though this has resulted in the reduction of the total amount of the financial support, the policy change accelerated a successful academic collaboration and networking between Ethiopian and Belgian Universities and has since become one of the most valuable, effective, sustainable and visible development cooperation instrument of the two countries’ age-old relation.

Belgium implemented the Interuniversity cooperation (IUC) in an institutionalized framework and is pursuing its North‐South programs through its Flemish and French speaking Universities. The substantial amount of the institutionalized academic collaboration between Ethiopia and Belgium is expedited through the Flemish Interuniversity umbrella organization for development cooperation, VLIR-UOS, a public institution founded by the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR).

The VLIR-UOS cooperation framework includes the provision of a generous scholarship scheme and implementation of inter-university projects that are formulated to develop the teaching, research, institutional management and community service of partner country universities. The projects supports the development of a high‐level scientific knowledge and skills through the collaboration between Belgian and Ethiopian universities. This unique arrangement has enabled Universities like U Ghent and KU Leuven to share and transfer their expertise, experience and know-how in fields like agricultural technology, public health, water and sanitation sciences, natural resource conservation with the two Ethiopian Universities, Jimma and Mekelle, selected under the first cooperation framework in 2003.

Other universities such as Addis Abeba school of Veterinary Medicine, Bahir Dar, Arba Minch, Ambo, Gondar, Diredawa and Addis Ababa Science and Technology have partnered with the Belgian universities and colleges on a single project basis. The other Belgian universities involved are Hasselt, VUB and institutes such as Institute of Tropical Medicine and the Antwerp Institute of Development Policy and Management. In addition, KU Leuven Campus Group T has a special agreement with the Ministry of Education of Ethiopia to train a selected number of Ethiopian university lecturers in various engineering fields under its own distinct budget.

VLIR-UOS made a significant amount of investment in Ethiopia over the last decade through several capacity building programs. To date, it has channelled 16 million Euros for about 50 academic cooperation projects, and more than 12.5 million in scholarships for the training of 900 masters and PhD students, which amounts to 29 million Euros in academic cooperation with Ethiopia since 2003. This makes Ethiopia the first beneficiary country of the VLIR-UOS program and apart from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia is the only country to host a VLIR-UOS country office. Furthermore, both Ethiopian and Belgian universities assign coordinators facilitating the collaboration from both ends.

Furthermore, the partnership resulted in many high-level researches that directly benefited the Ethiopian society in general and Ethiopia’s development endeavors in particular. These include research to eliminate the negative impact of the Gilgel Gibe dam on malaria that was spread because of mosquitos breeding as a consequence of the dam, identifying ways to helps cattle breeders protect their cattle from the sleeping sickness disease, and increasing soil and water conservation in the northern and southern part of Ethiopia and Lake Tana basin.

The cooperation between Belgian academic institutes and its southern partners in Ethiopia has proven to be effective and exemplar for a successful North-South partnership. The programme is unique in so far it is based on a partnership, convergence in the field of interest and expertise between Belgian and Ethiopian universities. The VLIR‐UOS programme was conceived at a time when the main modality of international aid was channelled through stand‐alone projects, which still accounts for the delivery of the majority of worldwide development projects. Through this unique arrangement, a substantial amount of VLIR‐UOS funding is used directly by partner institutions in Ethiopia. Moreover, it focus on capacity building programs at the highest academic levels; MSc and sandwich PhD programs amongst others. These sandwich PhDs programs are designed to be undertaken both in Belgium and in Ethiopia. This approach will have a long term positive impact on Ethiopia’s development endeavour by allowing the country to retain its highly trained personnel while providing research and internship opportunities for Belgian universities as well as enriching the diversity and competiveness of Belgian universities via the highly valued Ethiopian students.

Despite the 2008 financial crisis and a policy change aligned towards its bilateral partner countries, Belgium has shown its consistent and continuous commitment to support a sustainable development in Ethiopia. In a conference entitled ‘Making a Difference in Ethiopia. The Impact of University Cooperation for Development’ held on 5th November 2014 and organized by VLIR-UOS, the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and Minister of Development Cooperation, H.E. Mr De Croo reaffirmed the support of his government to the academic cooperation since it has proven its effectiveness. Overall, Ethio-Belgian collaboration in higher education is a good example of how inter-university cooperation for development makes a real and tangible difference. There is a consensus between academics and policy-makers that this should remain a key component of the Belgian development policy. Likewise, Ethiopian stakeholders regard the partnership as an effective investment with high value for money and the government of Ethiopia attaches great value to this partnership. Henceforth, it is clear that the partnership between Ethiopian and Belgian universities will continue to flourish for some time to come.

On 2nd July 2015, VLIR-UOS launched a call for its inter-university Cooperation and network components for universities amongst its twenty partner countries. Six institutions including the Ethiopian Arba Mich and Bahir Dar universities were selected. A third, Jimma University was included for networking in the second round of VLIR-UOS program. Under this arrangement, the networking component allows Jimma university to consolidate the achievements gained during the first round of the collaboration and maximize the impact and sustainability of the cooperation by keeping it in the network of its Belgian partner universities.

The Ethiopian government would like to further strengthen and deepen the cooperation to enhance the results achieved so far and raise the level of collaboration to a long-term partnership backed by a Memorandum of Understanding in a way that can ensure the realization of mutual benefits. This envisions including other Ethiopian Universities into the partnership through a cluster approach and by expanding home grown PhD programs to standardize the delivery quality of higher education across the country.

The European Commission (EU) put funds for in the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative, in line with its wider efforts in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

According to a presser Walta Information Center has received from EU Country Office in Addis Ababa, EU’s Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, Neven Mimica, has announced the preparation of 19 new renewable energy projects, with a total potential investment of 4.8 billion euros on the 4th of March in Conakry, Guinea.

This was done during the second Board of Directors meeting of the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative.

These sustainable energy projects have an indicative EU contribution of 300 million euros which is expected to leverage total investments amounting to 4.8 billion euros.

The new move will add 1.8 gigawatts of new renewable energy generation in Africa. The European Union is a key counterpart for Africa on sustainable energy cooperation.

“With these 19 new projects, potentially worth 4.8 billion euros, the EU is delivering on its promises. We are turning our pledges into real projects with true impact on the ground. The EU hereby reaffirms its leading role in supporting the African continent in the promotion of renewable energies for the improvement of energy access for African citizens,” said Commissioner Mimica.

According to the presser, this will contribute to the European Commission’s aim for 2020: to give 30 million more people access to sustainable energy, to save 11 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and to help generate five gigawatts of new renewable energy in Africa.

According to the same source, that represents half of the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative’s overall target, as one of AREI’s key objectives is to generate 10 gigawatts of new renewable energy in Africa by 2020, and to unlock Africa’s potential to generate as much as 300 gigawatts from renewable energy by 2030.

The EU’s development funding towards sustainable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2014-2020 amounts to approximately 2.7 billion euros.

The European Commission, the EU Member States and the EU Financial Institutions have committed to support AREI through existing financial instruments and mechanisms.

This includes the Africa Investment Facility (AfIF), the Electrification Financing Initiative and the new opportunities that will be made available under the future External Investment Plan, to leverage the sustainable energy investments that will unlock Africa’s potential and improve the lives of millions.

The Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) is an Africa-owned and Africa-led initiative of the African Union. It aims at harnessing Africa’s abundant renewable energy resources to help African countries to support their development strategies and leapfrog towards low-carbon economic development. In so doing the Initiative will increase access to sustainable and affordable energy while addressing climate change.

AREI was launched at COP21 in Paris in December 2015 and is receiving strong international support from development partners.

Walta/ Mon, Mar 06, 2017

Program

8.45- 9.15 Registration

9.15-9.20 Welcoming the delegation by H.E. Teshome Toga, Ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the Benelux, Baltic Countries and the EU.

9.15-10.00 Status update Ethiopia:

– H.E. Teshome Toga, Ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the Benelux, Baltic Countries and the EU.

– H.E. Dr. Arkebe Oqubay Metiku, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia

– Ethiopian Investment Commission

10.00-10.30 Q&A

10.30-11.00 Testimonies from the Dutch Private Sector in Ethiopia.

11.00-12.00 One on one meetings with the delegation members.

More information & Registration

The 121st anniversary of the victory of Adwa was colorfully celebrated at the historic town of Adwa, Tigray regional state, the very spot where Ethiopians defeated the Italian invading army on March 1, 1896.

Speaking at the celebration, President Mulatu Teshome said Adwa is a great victory which resonates the spirit of cooperation and mutual respect as well as the value of determination for success, adding “it is a victory for all black people.”

The President said “Our ancestors have made huge sacrifices to safeguard the sovereignty of the country and pass it down to the existing generation.”

The current generation, and the youth in particular, Dr. Mulatu added need to step up its engagement towards building the national image, further calling the nation to support the country’s ongoing development projects, and notably the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

At the event, Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen handed over a torch for President Mulatu Teshome and Speaker of the House of Federation, Yaelw Abate, dedicated for the proposed campaign to raise fund for GERD, which will unfold on March 26, 2017 in Addis Ababa, and ran across all the regional states and city administrations for 11 months.

In connection, Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen called on all Ethiopians to sustain the unity and participation evident during the battle of Adwa onto the construction of the renaissance dam.

The Ethiopian Investment Commission announced that the country’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) jumped up by 35 percent on average over last six months compared to same period last year.

During the current fiscal year, which has started last June, the country is able to attract FDI valued to 1.2 billion dollar hugely surpassing the record gained during the beginning of the first Growth and Transformation Plan (GTPI) and that of same period the previous year.

Commission Public Relation Head Mekonnen Hailu told Walta Infromation Center that the rise in the flow FDI is owing to the expansion of multi-million dollar industrial parks in different parts of the country.

According to him, giant companies from Europe, America and Asia coming into the country over the last six months.

He said that three Chinse manufacturing industries and two Indian companies, which took shades at Hawassa Industrial Park, are few of the foreign companies coming in six months period and boosted volume of FDI. Among three Chinese companies, according to him, Giangsu Sunshine Group is decided to invest 945 million dollars in the country.

He also said that infrastructure and power supply, peace and cheap labor help the country increase the flow of FDI.

The rise in the investment flow in the country is also meant absorbing significant number of unemployed segment of the population, which is one of the top priorities of the government.

Source: http://www.waltainfo.com/news/business/detail?cid=27824

On 20-21 February, Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh visited Brussels and held meetings with the Belgian Foreign Minister, Didier Reynders, and various EU officials. The Minister met with Mr. Reynders on Tuesday and discussed bilateral relations. They agreed on the need to further strengthen cooperation as their capitals were seats of their respective regional organizations, the African Union and the European Union.

Ethiopia is one of the EU’s most important partners on the African continent, active in regional peace and security as well as in thematic international debates such as climate change. Against this background, Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu held talks with Mr. Stefano Manservisi, Director-General DEVCO, on further supporting the efforts of Ethiopia to eradicate poverty, and foster inclusive and sustainable economic, social and environmental development through programmable development aid from the European Development Fund,  as well as non-programmable development aid, projects funded by the EU Trust Fund, humanitarian assistance and concessional loans from the European Investment Bank. EU support to Ethiopia for the period 2015-2020 will exceed € 2 billion and rests on these five pillars. The two sides also looked at ways of maximizing the social and economic impact of development cooperation while ensuring sustainability, including improved alignment of EU donors with the Growth and Transformation Plan II and Ethiopia’s Climate-Resilient Green Economy Strategy.

Ethiopia, one of the countries most affected by the El Niño phenomenon, is experiencing its worst drought in 50 years following three failed rainy seasons. More than 5 million people are in need of emergency assistance and millions more across the continent are affected by the extreme weather conditions. Dr. Workneh thanked the EU Director General for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Ms. Monique Pariat, for earmarking 27.5 million Euros for emergency assistance in 2017. He called on the agency to support the region as the drought is intensifying.

Dr. Workneh met with Mr. Jean-Christoph Belliard, Political Affairs Director at EEAS and Ambassadors of the 28 EU member states. He briefed them on the current political situation and reform measures taken by the government to enhance its peace, development and democratization agenda. Ethiopia and the EU, he noted, share a vision for a peaceful, safe and stable Horn of Africa, a precondition for the political, economic and social development of the region as a whole. Given Ethiopia’s crucial stabilizing role in the Horn of Africa, the EU and Ethiopia share information, perspectives and lessons learned, and consult each other on issues of common interest. These include conflict prevention and resolution in the Horn of Africa and the broader region, the role of IGAD, the African Peace and Security Architecture and the African Peace Facility. They intend to enhance their cooperation to maintain the dynamic economic growth and ambition of Ethiopia to join middle income countries on the basis of its green and inclusive economic growth.

Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu met with Dr. Patrick I. Gomes, Secretary-General of the ACP during his stay in Brussels and discussed the evolving role of the secretariat in regard to its relationship with the EU and also the global dynamic situation. The Minister assured the Secretary-General of Ethiopia’s readiness to assist the continued efforts of the secretariat to sustain the development of member states from Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific regions.

Dr. Workneh also met with the Ethiopian Ambassadors accredited to European states and discussed current issues in Ethiopia and the region. He briefed the Ambassadors on the reforms being undertaken in the country to strengthen good governance and institutional capacity issues and measures taken to enhance the business and investment climate. The discussion also focused on ways to transform the Foreign Ministry to effectively address the regional and global challenges that it faces and to meet the strategic goals put forward to achieve a middle income economy by the end of the next decade. The meeting agreed on the need to actively use all instruments of diplomacy and reform to help meet the expectations of the government and people of Ethiopia.

The relations between the EU and Ethiopia are founded on the Cotonou Agreement and have 40 years of constructive bilateral relations in areas as diverse as development cooperation, trade and economic development, consolidation of democratic institutions, regional peace and security and migration.

Source: A Week in the Horn

Boortmalt, a subsidiary of the French group Axéréal, said it will extend its malt factory in Antwerp, Belgium, and invest in a new malt factory in Ethiopia.

The factory in Antwerp will become the world’s largest malt production facility, with a yearly capacity of 470,000 tons.

According to the press release, the new malt factory in Ethiopia will have a total production capacity of 60,000 tons.

It is expected to start operations in 2018.

Boortmalt is currently producing 1.1 million tons of malt in Europe.

Finland Ambassador to Ethiopia Helena Airaksinen said that Ethiopia has made good progress in terms of economic development.”Finland is also keen on expanding economic cooperation with Ethiopia.”

In an exclusive interview with The Ethiopian Herald, Amb. Helena Airaksinen said Finland and Ethiopia have been working together in rural economic development particularly in Amhara state focusing on inland administration, agricultural value chain production improvement programs and the like.

According to her, the rural economic development programs are aimed at improving rural farmers’ productivity and income.

Remarking on various cooperative programs in Ethiopia including the education cooperation, Airaksinen said : “The clean water program benefits millions of people in the country as it has enabled them to access clean water easily and so we are glad for such success story.”

Moreover, she lauded the Ethiopian government and the local authorities for their commitment towards the cooperative programs.

Regarding the ongoing efforts to reduce poverty rate in Ethiopia, she said Finnish government is pleased to the so far remarkable achievements gained in this regard.

Source: The Ethiopian Herald