• The Nile draws its water from three long rivers – the White Nile, Blue Nile, and the Atbara, which flows from North-West Ethiopia to the Nile in East Sudan. The longest river in the world, the Nile stretches 6,650 kilometers and passes through eleven countries: Burundi, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
• Ethiopia contributes over 85% to the Nile water.
• The volume of the Nile’s annual flow is 84 billion cubic meters. These Nile Basin nations have a combined population of roughly over 500 million people and is expected to double in the next twenty-five years.
• To date, there is no international legal regime that governs the utilization of the river among the Nile basin countries.
• After more than thirteen years of negotiation, among the Nile basin riparian states, The Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), a treaty that outlines principles, rights, and obligations for cooperative management and development of the Nile Basin water resources, was signed by all riparian states except Egypt and Sudan. Among these, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda have ratified it. With two more additional ratifications, it would be the first and only binding legal regime on the Nile river.

The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF) on 3 July approved a grant of $165.08 million to support Ethiopia’s response to the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including helping to ease fiscal pressures on the economy.

The grant, awarded from the country’s ADF-15 Performance-Based Allocation, will help bolster Ethiopia’s COVID-19 National Emergency Response Plan (NERP).  The NERP outlines a reliable, multi-sector approach to tackling the pandemic. It aims to expand social protection coverage for the most vulnerable, enhance capacity to contain the virus outbreak, and address macro-fiscal imbalances as well as cushioning the effects of the crisis on the private sector.

“This Bank’s support will especially help local businesses and vulnerable households, particularly the urban poor,” said Abdul Kamara, the Bank’s Country manager for Ethiopia. “The program will increase the number of COVID-19 testing laboratories, train 45,000 healthcare workers in COVID-19 response, and aid in rolling out a risk-communication and community engagement strategy to raise awareness on transmission and prevention.”

The country’s health system remains weak, with only three hospital beds per 10,000 persons. The package will assist in refurbishing 300 isolation centers, 34 treatment centers and 100 quarantine centers.

The program will also support the government to offset unplanned expenditures deployed to stabilize the economy under the NERP, and funds will be apportioned to protect small businesses in the formal and informal economy in order to preserve approximately 26,000 jobs.

Ethiopia, along with the rest of Africa, is feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is threatening to reverse recent economic gains. Apart from existing food security issues heightened by COVID-19, the agricultural sector is facing complex and multiple shocks, including the desert locust invasion and climate risks, which pose a threat to productive farmers.

On 8 April, Ethiopia’s parliament declared a state of emergency, and national elections, which were scheduled for 29 August, were postponed.

Ethiopia’s robust economic growth, averaging around 10% annually from 2004/05, is expected to slump as a result of the adverse impact of COVID-1. The country’s 2020 GDP growth has been revised downwards from initial projections of 7.2% to between 2.6% and 3.1%.

The pandemic is also expected to negatively impact the private sector, especially in the construction, exports, and tourism and travel sub-sectors. Ethiopia’s tourism sector accounts for about 9.4% of GDP and employs some 2.2 million people. COVID-19 is expected to further reduce inflows, constraining the importation of raw materials.

The proposed program is aligned with the Bank Group’s Ten-Year Strategy 2013-2022, in particular, the High 5 priority “Improve the quality of life of the people of Africa”, and Pillar II of the Ethiopia Country Strategy Paper 2016-2020, “Promoting Economic Governance”. The NERP is being supported in partnership with several development institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the Korean Exim Bank.

As of 1 July 2020, Ethiopia had recorded close to 6,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 2,430 recoveries and 103 deaths.

Source: AfDB

Discover the article wrote by Travel Tomorrow Eu on Ethiopia being the “new hotspot for tourism”. After being named the world’s best tourism destination by the European Council on Tourism and Trade in 2015, Ethiopia continues to attract more tourists (750,000 in the last nine months alone). “Incredible wildlife, remarkable culture and peoples, delicious food, pleasant weather, and seven UNESCO World Heritage sites” are among its attractions. Read the article here : https://traveltomorrow.eu/ethiopia-land-of-origins-and-a-new-tourism-hotspot/?fbclid=IwAR3da54i78cqio0W_V6D8skH7-7CZ8MILu4_qxkwud4DmrI3ta2SB5pDoWw 

Planning and Development Commission conducted a consultation with the public on the 10-year perspective development plan document.

The draft plan is aimed at reaching the annual national economic growth of the country to more than 10 percent for the coming years.

Planning and Development Commissioner, Fitsum Assefa said the consecutive participatory public consultation from the outset of the plan’s drafting is to ensure it is in the best interest of every Ethiopian.

Short and medium-term plans will be set, she said, adding that the 10-year plan is pivotal in bringing about remarkable change in inflation, poverty reduction and most of all ascertaining the country’s prosperity.

The plan envisages lifting the annual per capital to 8.2 percent and lower poverty from 19 to 7 percent.

Prioritizing agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, and mining, the perspective plan will be able to create 1.3 new jobs annually, and securing 100 percent energy and clean water needs, it was indicated.

Participant of the consultation, Fantu Farris from the International Finance Corporation said the plan, by assessing the realities on the ground and giving equitable value to sectors, considers the economy as an ecosystem.

This, she pointed out will maintain the interdisciplinary value of the sectors and contribution to the entire economic growth.

“However, it needs to utilize the existing private sector and entrepreneurs while bringing about new and capable ones in order to enhance their involvement and contribution in realizing the targeted goals,” Fantu stated.

Private firms gain only less than 20 percent loan from financial institutions, she mentioned, and stressed: “this has to be improved as technology and finance are imperatively determinant in boosting the involvement of capable private sector in the economy.”