Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and visiting Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta inaugurated on March 2 the Debre Birhan Industrial Park (DIP), a project that will initially create 13,000 jobs.

The Ethiopian government has invested $71 million for the construction of DIP, located in Amhara Region around 170 kilometers from Addis Ababa.
Stretched on 75 hectares of land, the industrial park has eight industrial sheds ready to accommodate prospective investors.

The inauguration of the Debre Birhan Industrial Park is crucial for the development of the manufacturing sector in the Amhara Region along with the recently inaugurated Kombolcha Industrial Park, and Bahir Dar Industrial Park, which will be inaugurated soon, and the Arerti Industrial Park that is currently under construction.

The companies that will initially start production within the DIP will create jobs for 13,000 employees in the textile industry. Gradually, the Park should operate in two and three shifts, doubling and tripling the number of employees.

Recalling that Ethiopia is celebrating the 123rd anniversary of the victory of Ethiopians over Italian invasion, Prime Minister Abiy said: “…like our grandparents paid a heavy price for the independence of Ethiopia, today we are willing to make any sacrifices to assure the unity and equality of Ethiopia.”

President Uhuru on his part stressed the need for unity and collaboration to lift the people of East Africa out of poverty and lead to prosperity.

“If we are united we will prosper. If we are united, we will be peaceful. If we are united, we will be strong enough to face any enemy in any direction. I bring to you, the people of Ethiopia, a message of peace, a message of love and a message of unity,” President Uhuru said, stating that the people of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somali, Eritrea or Sudan are the same and needs to work together.

Currently, several industrial parks are already operational in Ethiopia, creating jobs for over 64,000 people.

Ethiopia plans to increase the number of operational industrial parks from the current five to around 30 by 2025, as part of its efforts to make the country a light manufacturing hub and lower-middle-income economy in the same period.

On 1st March, an EU-funded legal research and training facility aiming at supporting the Ethiopian judiciary was inaugurated in Addis Ababa,

The €3.3m Federal Justice and Legal Research Institute is expected to provide training for justice sector officials from across the country.

This is the latest plank of EU support for the sector. In November 2018, the EU announced a 10 million euro support package to the legal sector in Ethiopia.

The EU ambassador to Ethiopia, Johan Borgstam and Chief Justice Meaza Ashenafi were present at the launch. Chief Justice Meaza Ashenafi, the first woman to hold the post, had repeatedly stressed the importance of judicial reforms in the past.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the road linking Ethiopia with Somaliland (Berbera Corridor) took place on Thursday 28 February.

The “Berbera Corridor” is a collaboration project between Somaliland, a Dubai-based Company and the government of Ethiopia to jointly develop the port of Berbera.

The agreement created a new company to manage the Port of Berbera; the ownership shares of the company have been allocated with DP World taking 51% ownership of the company, Somaliland will own 30% of the shares, and Ethiopia will own 19% of the shares.

The port expansion project is expected to be completed in a year. When that happens, the capacity of the port should increase by 50 %.

The agreement calls for infrastructure investment of $442 million to upgrade the existing Berbera Port and to build a new adjacent Container Port. It includes millions of dollars more to build a new road from Berbera to the Ethiopian border town of Wajale.

The expanded Berbera port and the new road will provide Ethiopian government and Ethiopian business community to have increased capacity to import and export merchandise to support the growth of the Ethiopian economy.

• 

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