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embassy news
Statement by Mr. Tesfaye Daba on the arrest of Dr. Merera Gudina
Statement by Mr. Tesfaye Daba at the 44th session of the ACP parliamentary, about the arrest of Dr. Merera Gudina after his trip to Brussels where he issued a joint statement with Dr Berhanu Nega, chairman of the armed group Ginbot 7 that has been identified as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian Parliament.
Mr Tesfaye Daba is Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Standing Committee of the House of People’s Representatives of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
Read further:
Statement by Mr. Tesfaye Daba on arrest of Dr Merera Gudina
Statement by Mr. Tesfaye Daba on the relations with the European Parliament
Ethiopia, EU eye a broad spectrum of cooperation
In a meeting held between Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu and Claudia Wiedey, Head of European External Action Service (EEAS) for Horn of Africa, East Africa and Indian Ocean today (Wednesday 14), the two sides affirmed the need to forge a broad spectrum of cooperation.
Recalling the strategic engagement signed between the EU and Ethiopia this year, Claudia Wiedey noted that the agreement gave further impetus to the relations the two sides cherished for many years.
The Strategic Engagement focuses on six sectoral dialogues: regional peace and security; countering terrorism and violent radicalization; migration; social and economic development, investment and trade; governance and human rights; and climate change and environmental cooperation.
Claudia said as the EU was following the case closely, it would like to welcome the reforms being made by the government regarding addressing the problems related to unrests in some parts of Oromia and Amhara Regional States.
Dr. Workneh on his part said, “We focus on the partnership that we build over the years, I think, that is the most important one.” Mentioning Ethiopia’s commitment towards establishing a continuous dialogue for enhanced cooperation on migration and mobility, Dr. Workneh noted, especially as the chair of the next EU-Horn of Africa Migration Route Initiative meeting, the country would closely work on creating a framework for policy and dialogue and also on sharing knowledge and experiences to strengthen cooperation.
The Foreign Minister noted the government’s thriving efforts in bringing about the necessary solutions to fill socio-economic gaps within the society and mentioned the positive responses garnered from the wider mass.
Source: MFA Ethiopia
Ethiopia’s Gibe III power plant ready for inauguration
The construction of Gibe III hydroelectric dam, which is located 470 km south west of Addis Ababa, has been fully completed and its inauguration is scheduled for next Saturday.
The construction of the dam consumed EUR 1.5 billion, according to Engineer Azeb Asnak, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP). About 40 percent of the total construction cost was covered by the government of Ethiopia. The remaining 60 percent was covered by a loan obtained from the China Exim Bank.
The construction of the dam was carried out by the Italian Salini Construction Private Ltd., a company which is also currently building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
With a height of 243 meters, 610 meters of length and with total storage capacity of 15 billion cubic meters, the dam has total installed capacity of 1,870 megawatts. It has 10 Francis turbines each generating 187 megawatts. The dam has already started generating 900 megawatts ahead of its inauguration, thus filling the gap created in the supply of power due to the impact of the El Niño induced drought on other power dams, according to Azeb.
Engineer Mebratu Teshome, Project Site Coordinator of the dam said that Ethiopians have acquired knowledge and experiences which will allow them to build similar projects in the future as several international contractors and designers took part in the construction of the dam.
The Gibe III is the third hydro power plant which was built on Omo River. Gibe I and II, which were built on the same river, are currently generating 184 megawatts and 420 megawatts, respectively. Upon going fully operational, Gibe III will raise the country’s installed generating capacity to 4,200 megawatts.
Source: MFA Ethiopia
Belgian tourists plan to visit Ethiopia: Interview with Luc Deckers (ICTAM)
On 15 Novembre 2016 the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels engaged with two groups of tourists planning to visit Ethiopia at Voyages ICTAM, Brussels. The diplomats briefed the participants about the current situation in Ethiopia which is calm and secure for tourists, and answered their questions. We then interviewed Luc Deckers, Guide and Accompanying Staff at the Tour Operator Voyages ICTAM.
Ethiopia, Denmark ink agreement on renewable power generation
Ethiopia and Denmark inked on Thursday (December, 08) a 28 million Danish Krone (about 4 million U.S. dollars) grant agreement that aims to assist Ethiopia’s effort in diversifying renewable energy generation. The agreement will help Ethiopia tap the potential of wind power generation as well as improve quality service in electricity distribution system.
Admasu Nebebe, Ethiopia’s State Minister of Finance and Economic Cooperation, speaking at the signing ceremony, noted the political will and practical steps taken to unleash Ethiopia’s untapped potential in the sphere of renewable energy, adding that the country has set a target to reach 17,000 MW production capacity by the end of the second five-year Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP II) through the diversification of renewable energy generation sources, including hydropower, wind, solar and biogas.
Mette Thygesen, Ambassador of Denmark to Ethiopia, noted that “Maintaining high economic growth requires power, and meeting the electricity needs of a growing population requires electricity.”
Ethiopia, Italy eye further cooperation
State Minister Mrs. Hirut Zemene received the newly appointed Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Italian Republic, Ambassador Luciano Pezzotti.
The two sides discussed on issues of common interest in the Horn of Africa and briefed each other on the rapidly changing peace and security situations in the region.
Mrs. Hirut, commending Italy’s effort in helping stabilize the region said “we need your support and understanding in our effort to deter fundamentalism and terrorism in the region”.
While noting the recent incursion made by terrorist factions in Northern Ethiopia State Minister Hirut said there was a need to check the distractive effort of the Eritrean regime to distabilize the Horn and in particular Ethiopia.
“We need your close cooperation in our effort to voice Africa’s concern’s in the United Nations Security Council” Mrs, the State Minister added.
Ambassador Luciano Pezzotti on his part noted the long standing relation and cooperation the two countries, adding: “we should deepen our relation and consider broader area of cooperation beyond the Horn of Africa”.
Commending Ethiopia’s hospitality in accommodating huge number of refugees and noting the fact that migration from the Horn of Africa accounts 25% (only to Italy) where 70% of them are Eritreans, the Ambassador said “we also should strengthen our cooperation in areas of mitigating the challenge of migration.”
The Netherlands eased their Ethiopia travel advice
The Netherlands recently eased their Ethiopia travel advice.
While it was advising against all unnecessary travelling in the country in the wake of unrests in the country, the website of the Foreign Ministry has now eased its travel advice when travelling in Ethiopia and only advises against all but essential travel in very targeted border regions.
In the previous weeks, UK, German and Belgian foreign ministries also lifted their warning for tourists planning to visit the main touristic areas of Ethiopia.
As a result of the unrest that occurred recently in some parts of the country, some European countries had issued travel warnings for visitors. These countries are now cancelling the warnings since the Ethiopian government has managed to restore peace and bring back business as usual.
Ethiopia declared a six-month nationwide state of emergency early October following unrests that occurred in some areas of the country.
One month ago, Ethiopia lifted the directive which required diplomats to inform the Command post if they wanted to travel beyond a 40-kilometer radius out of Addis Ababa; last restrictions on mobile data service were fully liftet. More than 2500 individuals arrested in relation to the violent protests have been released after brief detention.
Dutch investments in Ethiopia: A successful “Aid for Trade” model
This article was originally published in the 4th issue (October 2016) of The Ethiopian Messenger, the quarterly magazine of the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels.
In order to improve the efficiency of their development policy, some EU countries now link aid with trade. In Ethiopia, the Netherlands have found a particularly receptive partner for this innovating policy. The results of this partnership show that this new development paradigm can actually bear fruits and assure the prosperity of both partners.
A new paradigm
Pushed by economic constraints and the will to improve the efficiency of their development policy, most EU donor countries have started linking aid with trade over the past few years. In parallel, poorer countries like Vietnam, Ghana or Ethiopia developed faster than expected and began promoting inward investments as strategies to achieve sustainable development and create jobs.
It is in this context that the Netherlands launched in April 2013 “A world to gain”, a new agenda aiming at benefiting from the economic growth in Asia, Africa and Latin America through its longstanding aid relationship with developing countries. In Ethiopia, the Netherlands have found a particularly receptive partner for this innovating policy. The business and development relationship between the two partners has considerably grown for the past three years and the Netherlands is now the European country next to Turkey with the largest number of companies in Ethiopia, with 130 compared to 80 three years ago. The country played a substantial role in supporting Ethiopia’s success, proving that this new development paradigm can actually bear fruits and assure the prosperity of both sides of the relationship.
Ethiopia’s attractiveness
It is no coincidence that the Netherlands’ agenda was successfully implemented in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s path to development rests on boosting manufacturing and exports to industrialize, and a central aim of Ethiopia’s two Growth and Transformation Plans (2010-2015 and 2016-2020) is to pull in international investment. The country is energetically working on this, as shown with industrial park construction, and it finds some attention from international investors: each month, the country hosts business delegations. Foreign investors are being offered tax breaks and other types of preferential treatment to help develop Ethiopia’s manufacturing, textiles and agricultural sectors. Ethiopia offers a comprehensive set of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to encourage investment into priority areas, such as an exemption of customs duty or income tax exemptions for a period ranging between 1 and 9 years, depending on the specific activity and the location of the investor.
Besides preferential trade policies, international companies have also flocked to Ethiopia to take advantage of the country’s promising demographics and market potential – an increasingly educated population of almost 100 million people with an average age of 18, and a low cost labor pool which undercuts that of China by more than two-thirds. In addition, Economic growth has jumped to heights never known before in the country over the last ten years, with a 10.6 percent average annual rate of growth, and the country is known for making an efficient use of its financial resources, whether they come from the national budget, international aid or diaspora remittances. As a result, Ethiopia has attracted millions of dollars in investment and the business-friendly investment environment has convinced several companies to invest in Ethiopia.
The Dutch example
In Europe, the Dutch development cooperation policy is one of the most effective in adding value by combining aid and trade. The Netherlands’s Dutch Good Grow Fund (DGGF) finances Dutch SMEs willing to engage in emerging markets and provides funds to local SMEs in developing countries, focusing on young entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs and companies in fragile countries. All selected projects are expected to have a direct impact on the development of the financial sector in low- and middle-income countries.
The “A world to gain” strategy divides the Netherlands’s partners into three groups: post-conflict and fragile countries that need assistance to reduce poverty (aid relationship), low and middle-countries with burgeoning economies (transitional relationships) and advanced economies, where the Netherlands’s main aim is to promote trade and investments (trade relationships). The Netherlands share a transitional relationship with Ethiopia, which means that they are linked by a combination of aid and trade. Apart from poverty reduction programs, the Netherlands also support Ethiopia in increasing its market access and improving its business climate. In other words, thanks to this strategy, Ethiopia – which remains one of the Netherlands’ 15 partner countries in development cooperation – has also become a substantial business partner for Dutch businesses.
Another interesting feature of Dutch companies is that they put a lot of efforts in order to create a sustainable work environment, as the Netherlands pays particular attention to corporate social responsibility, sustainable growth and partnership with local entrepreneurs. Companies that get financial support from the Dutch government need to comply to standards of international corporate social responsibility. This is monitored by the responsible government officers in the Netherlands. Dutch entrepreneurs are therefore taking into account issues of environmental protection in their activities, opting for higher investments and higher scale technologies (such as irrigation systems that collect the water and reusing it in the horticulture sector) and investing in environmental-friendly products (bio-fungicides, etc).
Criticism
However, this new trend has also attracted criticism. Some NGOs are worried that Dutch interests might take precedence in development policy and that the Netherlands could end up subsidizing their private sector in the name of development. They also raised concern about the wages of the local employees, arguing that the low wages of some companies could not get them out of the poverty cycle. Questions about the impact of the Aid for Trade strategy emerged: can the needs of donor countries really meet the needs of developing countries? Will European companies not supplant local businesses? Does this approach have a real impact on development?
In practice, the majority of Dutch companies operating in the country are bringing benefits to their employees. Many Dutch companies give priority to members of the local communities, in particular in the labor-intensive agricultural sector, about 99% of their employees are Ethiopian nationals. So far, more than 60,000 jobs have been created as a result of Dutch investments in Ethiopia and salaries are 40% higher than average wages in the same sectors. Companies like Holland dairy produces milk and cheese by collaborating with small Ethiopian farmers, helping them to increase their revenue. Another company, Moyee Coffee, is producing fairer coffee to increase the revenue of local producers (up to 300% more income), most notably by roasting the coffee on the ground and by sharing the company’s shares equally with the local producers.
In several instances, Ethiopian employees working for Dutch companies launched small agricultural businesses of their own with a technical support from the Dutch Embassy in Addis Ababa. The success of the Dutch example is not just about the numbers, but also about the way of doing business, the quality and durability of the relation. Dutch investments helped creating tens of thousands of jobs in a country where 2 to 2.5 million young people arrive each year on the labor market and contribute to increase the exports of Ethiopia, whose balance of trade is still negative.
But Dutch businesses have been benefiting from Ethiopia’s booming economy. The profit of Bavaria reached the record sum of 531 million EUR in 2015, in a large part due to the investment in Ethiopia with the brand Habesha and Bavaria’s collaboration with 8000 local partners. Its distribution network that has expanded throughout the country and the capacity of the brewery has doubled to 600,000 hectoliters this year. The Dutch brewer, Heineken, bought out two of Ethiopia’s state-owned beer labels for $163m in 2011 and is hoping for similar success.
A long-lasting impact
Beyond its valuable contribution in terms of employment and economic growth, it is also worth asking if the Aid to trade approach bring long-term results. It appears to be the case, as Dutch investments have evolved, both quantitatively and qualitatively, over the past years. If the majority of Dutch companies in Ethiopia (about 70 companies) are investing in the horticulture sector, their areas of interests have been expanding, and they are now investing in seeds, dairy, poultries or spices. More recently, they have started investing in more complex activities such as food-processing, manufacturing, packaging. The focus is now on technology transfer and capacity building. Some companies do import substitution, which produces finished products locally so the country does not have to rely as much on imports, fulfilling a growing demand for materials. Moreover, when Dutch companies establish themselves in Ethiopia, they often remain for many years. That continuity is of great value and often brings a more lasting contribution to the renaissance of the country than more classic forms of development. This is not to say that Ethiopia does not need aid anymore. But as the country remains part of the world’s least developed countries, the current high volume of development aid given to Ethiopia allow the government to channel its own resources into other areas and has been instrumental in supporting the government’s efforts. The Ethiopian government hopes that trade and investment will replace aid in the coming years and that the country will become self-sufficient in the near future.
The success encountered by Dutch investments in Ethiopia should inspire other EU governments, who tend to perceive investment in African countries as riskier, to follow the Netherlands’s example. On this matter, Jean-Claude Juncker’s announcement of the creation of a € 3.35 billion European External Investment Fund (EEIF), focused on the EU’s neighborhood countries and Africa to address the root causes of migration and to promote sustainable investments in these regions, is a most-welcomed development. If successful, this ambitious fund could significantly increase the ability of the EU to crowd-in private finance and stimulate reforms towards more decent and sustainable jobs and economic activities. This development would mark a new chapter for successful European investments in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia and Romania celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties
Romania and Ethiopia celebrated the 50th anniversary of the starting of the two countries’ diplomatic relations on Wednesday (December 07). In his opening remark, Marius Nocolaescu, Charge d’affaires for Romanian Embassy to Ethiopia noted that the celebration marked the socio-economical and political commitment between the two countries which lasted for half a century. He noted, “I take this opportunity to underline the excellent relationship between Ethiopia and Romania in the fields of technology, trade, higher education scholarships and vocational trainings.” He added, the productive 50 years of diplomatic ties are signposts that the future is prolific.
State Minister Mrs. Hirut Zemene extended her sincere congratulations to the people and the government of the two countries on the historic day. The State Minister said, Ethiopia and Romania have enjoyed a historic relation dating back to the last decades of the 19th century, and hence the relation is at the backdrop of remarkable historical reminiscences. She recalled, during the fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the former Romanian Foreign Minister, Nicolae Titulescu’s support to Ethiopia in the League of Nations was unforgettable. State Minister Hirut mentioned the historical visit of Emperor Haileselassie to Romania in 1964 as a milestone in diplomatic history of the two countries. Currently, she added, it is important to note the great deal of commitment on both sides to further strengthen the historic ties through investment and trade. She also noted that, after some years of let-up, the two countries have witnessed an extraordinary increase in bilateral trade exchange in just ten months which exceeded USD180 million.
The occasion was ornamented with Romanian and Ethiopian cultural and musical events.
Source: MFA Ethiopia