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The European Union (EU) will launch an EU-Coffee Action for Ethiopia (EU-CafE), a €15m project which will help Ethiopian smallholder farmers boost the yields and quality of their coffee crops through better seeds and farming techniques.

This was announced during a visit by the EU’s Ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr Johan Borgstam, and the EU Head of Cooperation, Mr Erik Habers, to Manna woreda (district) near Jimma, the heartland of Ethiopian coffee farming.

In combination with improvements in marketing, the project will allow coffee farmers and processors – many of them being rural women and youth – to improve their living conditions, according to a statement issued by European Union in Ethiopia.

Coffee is extremely important to Ethiopia, as the land of origin of Arabica. Approximately twenty million Ethiopians make a living from coffee, from farmers to roasters to baristas and exporters. Green coffee beans are Ethiopia’s main export, generating up to €750 million in hard currency each year.

Grown under forest canopies, Ethiopian Arabica is considered among the best in the world and sought after by coffee aficionados everywhere. In spite of this, Ethiopian growers could still command a higher price for their coffee.

Building on forty years of support to the sector, the European Union stands ready to help Ethiopian coffee farmers improve their fortunes in the years to come.

Addis Ababa just launched a 29 billion birr (about $1.028 billion) project aiming at making the city green by developing and rehabilitating two river streams of the city. The project aims to enhance the well-being of city dwellers by mitigating river flooding and through the creation of public spaces and parks, bicycle paths and walkways along the riversides.

This project will run along two of the largest rivers of the city, stretching a total of 51 kilometres, all the way from the mountains of Entoto through to Akaki River.

It also aims to improve the well-being of inhabitants and realise the country’s aspiration of building a green economy through the expansion of green spaces and converting solid waste dropped into the rivers to usable materials.

The public parks that will be developed through this project will have lanes dedicated for bicycle riders, pure water and solar energy supply and recreational areas.

The project is expected to be completed within three years, and create job opportunities for lots of people of the city.

The Addis Ababa River Side Project is an initiative of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia. It aims to face-lift the image of the city and properly utilise the potential of the capital.

“Creating many jobs in the project phase, it will also nurture riverside economies, increase urban tourism, and provide city residents with areas of respite,” according to twits of the Office of the Prime Minister.

Mekele, the Capital of Tigray, has agreed to provide land for investors who are set to create jobs for 22,900 youth. The 222 investors who secured land from Mekele City Administration on 23 February, will be engaged in the manufacturing and service sectors.

As the demand to invest in the region has been increasing, Mekele City Administration has been providing land after evaluating investment proposals of the investors.

The report indicated that Dr Debretision Gebremichael, Deputy Head of Tigray Region, said that when more investment comes to the region, more youth will get jobs.

In recent years youth unemployment in Ethiopia has been a major concern. For some cities, the unemployment rate is estimated to reach up to 24%.

The growing rural to urban migration and the imbalance between the number of graduates coming from schools every year and the number of jobs the country is providing have increased the unemployment rate in cities including Mekele.

In a major push to boost automotive industry, Ethiopia has commissioned the establishment of Hyundai Marathon Motor Vehicle Assembly plant, the first car assembly plant in East Africa, a month after German auto giant Volkswagen announced its entry in Ethiopia.

The plant has the capacity to assemble 10,000 cars in eight different models per year and will create employment opportunities for 200 people initially, with the possibility to create 1,000 jobs once it goes fully operational.

The Marathon Motor Engineering owned by the renowned Ethiopian athlete Haile Gebreselassie entered into a joint venture with Hyundai Motor Company to start an assembly line to manufacture vehicles.

Foreign Minister, Workneh Gebeyehu, inaugurated the vehicle assembly plant in Addis Ababa on Thursday, where South Korean Hyundai Motor Company Chief Executive Officer, Won Hee Lee, presided over the inaugural event.

On the occasion, Minister Workneh said with the view of expanding the country’s automotive industry; the government will continue to support investors who engage in the sector.

In a bid to accelerate the pace of the construction of Ethiopia’s strategic dam, the country has contracted the services of two Chinese companies.

The Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) on signed on Tuesday 19 February a contract worth $40m with China Gezhouba Group Co., Ltd (CGGC). CGCG will henceforth handle the pre-commissioning activities at the dam, that is expected to be operational by 2020.

The EEP also signed a contract worth $113m with Voith Hydro Shanghai, that includes the electrical, mechanical, and various civil/structural works required to complete the construction of the generating station and spillways of GERD.

The 6,000-megawatt Grand Renaissance Dam is the centrepiece of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.

Last year, Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed cancelled the contract of a state-run military conglomerate, Metals and Engineering Corporation (METEC), to build the dam’s turbines.

Abiy said at the time that not a single turbine was operational more than seven years after the government awarded the contract to METEC.

The dam has also been a source of friction between Egypt and Ethiopia, as Egypt fears the project will reduce waters that run to its fields and reservoirs from the Nile river in Ethiopia’s highlands and via Sudan.

The country is determined to build GERD because fighting poverty is a matter of survival to its people while respecting the principles of posing no-significant harm and equitable use of transboundary resources.
Studies conducted for half a century have found out that the dam has many blessings to offer to both Sudan and Egypt – be it in reducing sedimentation at Roseries Dam and protecting frequent flooding in Sudan, increasing the water levels at Aswan High Dam, not to mention its impacts in ensuring regulated flow of water in the Nile course.

A Tripartite Infrastructure Fund that to deal with issues relating to the GERD was established in May last year, in addition to a resolution to regularise the summit of the leaders, to be held every six months alternately in the capitals of the three countries.

During an official visit to Ethiopia, Anton Caragea, President of the European Council on Tourism and Trade, signed the official decision naming Addis Ababa as World Capital of Culture and Tourism.

The Government of Ethiopia and the Government of Addis Ababa are currently implementing many strategic measures to further develop the country’s tourism sector, including investment in infrastructure and capacity building on destination management and product development, through the recently established Tourism Transformation Council.

These measures reflect that tourism is firmly established among the development drivers of the country. European Council on Tourism and Trade President Dr Anton Caragea commended Ethiopia for the political support awarded to the tourism sector and in particular for integrating tourism as part of its development policy.

In 2015, after the decision of the European Council on Tourism and Trade to select Ethiopia as the World Best Tourist Destination, the country registered an influx of over 1 million tourists and earned more than 2 billion dollars in the 2015/2016 tourism year, numbers never achieved before in Ethiopia’s tourism history.

The decision to inscribe Addis Ababa as a World Capital of Culture and Tourism will undoubtedly give a new impetus to tourism in the country.

The European Parliament is planning a bigger footprint around the world.

Senior members of the assembly agreed at a closed-door meeting this week to approve plans to send permanent staff to Indonesia, Ethiopia and New York.

The Parliament staffers will work at the EU delegation in Jakarta, the headquarters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (also in Jakarta), the headquarters of the African Union, in Addis Ababa, as well as the EU delegation to the United Nations in New York.

The Parliament also discussed sending staff to Brazil and India, and recently appointed an official to head the Parliament’s office in London ahead of its scheduled departure from the EU on March 29.

The move “would entail limited additional costs,” the note said, and the “number of permanent staff would vary from 2 to 4.”

The decision to send staff beyond EU borders is part of a plan by Klaus Welle, the assembly’s secretary-general, to “strengthen Parliament’s activity and diplomatic presence in the world”.

The European Union is already represented in some 140 delegations and offices around the world, thanks to the European External Action Service.

Staffers from the Parliament have “broad knowledge of parliamentary procedures and parliamentary diplomacy,” the note said, and could “complement the activities of the Commission and the EEAS in engaging the parliamentary dimension of regional bodies.”

“The composition of the EEAS reflects staff expertise exclusively coming from the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and Member States’ diplomatic services,” according to the note.

The Parliament has prioritized Indonesia, Ethiopia and New York because they are the seats of “multilateral parliamentary assemblies and international organisations.”

But “enlarging the initiative to other continental democracies, such as for example Brazil and India, could be considered at a later stage.”

Source: Politico

Ethiopia and Djibouti signed an agreement on Friday for the installation of 765 kilometres gas pipelines between the two countries. When completed in 2020, the pipeline will enable Ethiopia to sell its gas resource from Calub and Hilala fields in the Ogaden area of Somali Region via Djibouti Port.

Calub and Hilala fields have deposits of 4.7 trillion cubic feet of gas and 13.6 million barrels of associated liquids, both discovered in the 1970s but not yet exploited.

The agreement between Djibouti and Ethiopia comes more than a year after POLY-GCL signed a memorandum of understanding with Djibouti to invest $4 billion to build the natural gas pipeline, a liquefaction plant and an export terminal to be located in Damerjog, near the country’s border with Somalia.

Ethiopia and Djibouti are already connected via railway, electricity and water supply.

Ethiopia expects over one billion dollars annual income by selling gas to the global market.

Africa’s eastern seaboard could soon become a major global producer of liquefied natural gas, with other planned projects based on big gas finds made in Tanzania and Mozambique.

Ethiopia, Africa’s biggest coffee producer, is introducing production and marketing reforms that could triple its output in five years.

The country is replacing old trees and cutting existing ones to allow new stems to sprout as ageing trees become less productive.

That could help boost output to between 1.2 million tons and 1.8 million tons by 2024, up from an estimated 600,000 tons in the recent harvest, Bloomberg quoted the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority as saying.

Old trees account for about 60 percent of the 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of trees in production, while another 1.5 million hectares aren’t yet yielding beans, according to the authority.

New trees in the country, where smallholders account for almost all output, take about three to four years to start producing.

The government, non-governmental organizations and research centers are helping to implement the changes, Adugna Debela, director general of the authority, said Thursday in an interview in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

Marketing reforms are helping producers skip some stages of the supply chain, Adugna said. That will help increase income for farmers, who currently receive about 60 percent of the price of coffee, he said.

“Under the new reforms, farmers can directly export,” he said. “We are creating awareness and this will be materialized this production year.”

Ethiopia exports the bulk of its beans to Europe and the U.S., and is trying to tap new markets in Asia, especially China, South Korea and Japan, Bote said.

China has the potential to take half of Ethiopia’s shipments, he said.

The United States launched yesterday a new five-year 40 million US dollars Health Financing Improvement Program to invest in expanding Ethiopia’s capacity to provide quality affordable healthcare to citizens across the country.

Under the new program, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will work with the Ministry of Health to strengthen policy and financing reforms that will enable public and private entities to better provide primary health services while reducing out-of-pocket expenses for Ethiopians.

Over the next five years, the new program will focus on mobilizing increased domestic resources and streamlining medical insurance schemes to expand coverage to millions of people.

The project will also work with public and private healthcare providers to better utilize resources and revenues to finance their services.

USAID’s Health Financing Improvement Program builds upon the successes of earlier investments like USAID’s community-based health insurance initiative, which currently provides medical coverage to nearly 20 million Ethiopians nationwide.

USAID Mission Director Leslie Reed remarked, “We look forward to continuing our joint work to tackle the challenges facing health financing as part of overall efforts to build a truly sustainable and resilient health system in Ethiopia.

Together, we can show other developing countries around the world that with the right political will and commitment, it is possible to lay the promising foundation to a self-reliant healthcare system, capable of providing high-quality health services to all citizens in every corner of the country.”

U.S. development programs like the Health Financing Improvement program invest in the capacity of Ethiopian institutions and the Ethiopian people to address their own needs and become stronger partners.

The United States is the largest bilateral donor to Ethiopia’s health sector, with approximately 150 million US dollars per year in funding for HIV/AIDS; malaria; maternal, neonatal and child health; nutrition; tuberculosis; and water, sanitation and hygiene.

Overall, the United States has provided over $4 billion in development and humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia over the past five years.