With the kind of economic progress that
World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, said
Ethiopia has egistered recently, the next 10
years could be when the country sets an
example to the rest of Africa. But only if
it ensures harmony and stability that he
said was lacking in the last 30 years.
Speaking to journalists at the Sheraton
Addis on Wednesday night as he concluded his
three-day visit, Mr. Wolfowitz said
political reconciliation among the country’s
various political parties can “take Ethiopia
a very long way.” He deemed this essential
to growth.
“It is something like a dream,” he told
reporters. “But it is not an unrealistic
dream.”
He was ushered (above) to the press
conference by a Sheraton Addis staff member.
Ishac Diwan (left), the Bank’s Country
Representative for Sudan and Ethiopia,
looked on, perplexed.
Despite having
all suspects in custody, close to 14,000 Br remains unaccounted for
from the 100,000 Br that three armed men ran off with on Friday
afternoon, July 14, after they made a botched robbery attempt at a
branch of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE). Police killed a
fourth assailant.
The robbers
entered the CBE’s Tewodros Square Branch, a.k.a. Banco De Roma,
around 3:40pm armed with two pistols and two AK-47 rifles, the
latter taken from security personnel guarding the bank’s entrance.
The Council of
Ministers has dropped the idea of letting members of the civil
service organize themselves into trade unions or other forms of
association, sources disclosed.
The Council, in
its 18th regular meeting held on Friday July 14th, deliberated on
the Civil Service Bill, before it gets directed to Parliament, which
resumes business in November 2006. The bill, designed to reform the
Civil Service Proclamation of 262/94, is one of the few legislations
the Council debated for four consecutive weeks before it endorsed it
last week by consensus.
At the urging
of the US government and other international entities, legal experts
at the federal government are writing a bill that will allow Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi’s administration to set up an intelligence
agency responsible to “follow the money”.
The legal
services department at the central bank is working on two documents:
a 14-page regulation that will establish the Financial Intelligence
Authority and a 46-page proclamation on the prevention and
suppression of money-laundering and the financing of terrorism. The
bill defines money-laundering and how different transactions can be
identified as such.
The Addis Abeba
City Land Administration and Development Authority has granted a
200,000sqm plot for what federal government authorities hope will
become Ethiopia’s high tech hub, much like Hyderabad or Bangalore
in India.
The plot was
given to the Ethiopian Information and Communication Technologies
Development Agency (EICTDA), a federal agency responsible for the
expansion of information and communications technology in Ethiopia,
in the first week of May 2006, a source disclosed.
Stranded for
three weeks at the gate of the Abay Bridge for carrying construction
machineries too heavy for the bridge’s load capacity, two of the
four Salini trucks were allowed to cross on Wednesday, July 12.
Italy’s largest
construction company, Salini Costruttori SPA, contracted by the
government to build a 5.4 billion Br hydro electric dam on the
Belesa River, had to depend on the expertise of a local engineering
professor, Negussie Tebeje (PhD).
A Yemeni
exporter of vegetable butter, Sheno Lega, and its local
partners have taken a business grievance against East Africa
Holdings and three individuals to the federal Trade Practice
Investigation Commission, claiming that the defendants are engaged
in unfair competition.
The exporter,
Hayel Saee Anam & Co., and its local partners submitted revised
charges to the Commission on July 13.
Over 200
business people from Addis Abeba are due to congregate at Bahir Dar,
the seat of the Amhara Regional State, to discuss what kinds of
policy incentives will attract more investment to the region.
Hundreds of invitations from the office of the regional president,
Ayalew Gobeze, were distributed primarily to business owners born in
the regional state.
According to
the region’s Trade and Industry Bureau, a total of 500 businessmen
and women are invited to the daylong consultation to be held on
Monday, July 17, 2006. Close to 270 of the invitees are from the
Amhara state.
The Ethiopian
Transport Authority (ETA) issued a new directive that allows the
import of fuel truck, which was suspended two years ago. But the new
ruling seems to contradict with existing law governing road
transport.
In protest, 12
transport associations and companies delivered a six page letter to
the Prime Minister's office, to the Ministry of Transport and
Communication, to the Minister of Trade and Industry and to the
Authority.
A group of
senior government officials, academics, investors and diplomats met
last week, with an aim to rehabilitate the Rift Valley lakes,
specifically those around the town of Bishoftu (Debre Zeit), 45Km
south east of Addis Abeba.
The outcome of
the July 12th meeting
was the creation of the Strategic Alliance Group, a new assembly of
concerned stakeholders concerned about how much the ecosystem in
these areas has been affected by pollution, deforestation, land
degradation and harmful utilization of water from the lakes.
The only
caustic soda and soda ash producer in the country that supplies raw
material to 65 local companies was forced to stop production last
week, after Lake Abijata retreated by another kilometer.
Abijata Soda
Ash Enterprise has no access to the lake that supplies it with the
acidic water it needs for the production of materials used for
making glass, ceramics and soap. Operated for close to 16 years,
since the establishment of the factory in 1990 at a cost of 26
million Br, the projection made during the feasibility study has
proved to be incorrect.
The Catering
and Tourism Training Institute (CTTI) selected Gedion Demeke
Consulting Architect (GDCA), a private engineering firm, to turn the
bedrooms at Guenet Hotel into classrooms.
Local
consultants were invited by the Institute to provide detailed
preconstruction study of architectural, electrical and sanitary
design in order to help the Institute turn the 100 bedrooms in Genet
Hotel, its future location, into a language laboratory, lecture
rooms, a library, and offices. The study is expected to be completed
at the end of this month.
For the last
two weeks, Addis Abeba’s transit business has been profoundly
inconvenienced by a sudden shortage in forklift service. Many
forklifts are no longer in sight at their usual location at the gate
of the former Addis Abeba office of the Ethiopian Customs Authority,
on the Ras Mekonnen Avenue, making the smallest loading or unloading
jobs all but impossible to carry out.
“We are
subjected to unforeseen losses,” said a businessman who imported a
photo-printing machine.
Angry
homeowners at the Ayat residential complex have begun circulating a
resident petition protesting what they see as misleading and
deceptive commercials run prominently during the recent World Cup by
the country’s largest real estate company.
The company
launched a series of TV commercials six weeks ago in its bid to
attract prospective house buyers. At a cost of over 250,000 Br, the
real estate company booked ETV’s prime time right after the eight
o’clock news, each running for close to two minutes.
The
Ninth Civil Bench of the Federal High Court, which has been looking
over charges brought by 19 individuals against Shola Real Estate
S.C., passed a verdict two weeks ago favouring the plaintiffs.
In this
landmark verdict that could set precedence to a similar case pending
at the Federal High Court, the Ninth Civil Bench said the plaintiffs
are entitled to get plots Shola received from the city
administration in the name of the disgruntled home seekers.
A film premiere
at the Sheraton Addis on Wednesday night, July 12, drew an unusual
crowd of 12 top government officials, including Foreign Minister
Seyoum Mesfin, Tefera Walwa, minister of Capacity Building, Kassu
Illala (PhD), minister of Works and Urban Development and Bereket
Simon, public relations advisor of the Prime Minister under
ministerial portfolio.
The strong
attendance by government heavy hitters together with the extravagant
gifts awarded veteran artists, were the major highlights of the
unusual night, more talked about in the subsequent days than the
film itself.
Carrying out a
major management restructuring, Ethiopian Airlines (EAL) is
downsizing the number of its executive officers from 11 to six.
The management
of the Airline has reduced the offices, categorizing two of them as
staff units (Internal Audit and Corporate Quality Assurance as well
as Legal Council) and four as executive vice presidents, all
accountable to the Chief Executive Office (CEO).
The Cabinet of the Addis Abeba
Caretaker Administration decided two weeks ago to begin preparations
to celebrate the Ethiopian millennium, an event that corresponds
almost exactly with the end of Mayor Berehane Deressa’s current
mandate.
In
May 2005, the Council of Ministers issued a directive to begin
preparations for September 2007 millennium events with the creation
of a national council. Federal authorities hope that the millennium
will attract international visitors and help the country increase
from the 227,000 tourists it hosted in the last fiscal year.
Football
means many things to many people. Take, for example, Tadesse Aynalem, the new
chairman of the Coffee Football Club fans association.
30-years-old, Tadesse has
had an unconventional career. He is one of four survivors of the 11 people who
founded Tasfa Goh Ethiopia, a group that helped break the AIDS taboo in
Ethiopia 10 years ago. His first wife, the late Mebrat G. Meskel, was also a
founding member.
When trade
representatives of the United States announced that they would concede 97pc of
their duty on exports from poor countries, many delegates from the developing
world were skeptical. Six months later Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in
economics and a professor of Economics at Columbia University, and
.........
To me, the
opposition parties that have decided to join parliament this year
after so much haggling do not sound brilliant when trying to
articulate their agendas in Parliament. Opposition politicians
looked terrific before, during and immediately following the May
2005 elections. Now well-settled in Parliament, they look more
timid, less imaginative and more divided.
Two distinct ideological tendencies were evident during the
recent parliamentary debate that set the Revolutionary Democrats
against what their chief priest, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, called
liberals, whom he accused of displaying confusion and inconsistency.
My tall Gojame friend called Thursday afternoon to kindly give me
some information that I needed. He enquired about what I was writing
about, and I ......
In history books,
bloody revolutions and popular uprisings get all the attention. But
if you look at the past more closely, many epochal democratic
breakthroughs happened after the storm or next to it, when pressured
autocratic regimes made concessions to democracy out of pragmatism
...
A close member of
my family is in town from Sweden for a few weeks and has been
staying at our house. He has been residing in Scandinavia for well
over 30 years, and it is always most entertaining when he comes to
visit. His entire Abesha ......
The new basilica of the Holy Saviour
church built in the vicinity of Bole (referred to as Bole
Medhanialem in the local vernacular) has become the latest addition
to the series of tourist attractions in the metropolis.
The
usual site for churches in this country is a hilltop or at least an
elevated land with a commanding vantage point from where one can see
the surrounding landscape. The Bole area in the southern part of
Addis, however, is disadvantaged in this regard. Nonetheless, the
grandeur of the basilica and its imposing presence compensate well
for that natural shortcoming.
Yes, many people
say putting an incumbent in the same footage with leaders of
opposition, particularly those who are inexperienced, is unjust.
They sure have a point. Seen in light of this, leaders of Ethiopia's
parliamentary opposition should have been accorded the benefit of a
doubt when they were found erring.
In large part,
this is not the case. They may think of themselves as braving a huge
popular protest when they decided to join the club where their
archrival party has an overwhelming power. Particularly in Addis
Abeba, little were they appreciated for what many believed was an
act of betrayal to their colleagues in jail.
