Meles reveals plan for 10% growth at EPRDF conference

The sixth regular conference of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) opened on Sunday 24th September at the assembly Hall of Martyrs Monument in Mekele, during which the ruling party unveiled its plan to increase economic growth in Ethiopia to over 10% in the coming years. Presenting a three-year performance report to the conference which was attended by more than 1200 participants, EPRDF Chairman and Prime Minister of Ethiopia Meles Zenawi, said the party successfully accomplished its previous target set in 2003 of reaching sustained growth of 7 to 10%, with the annual economic rate of growth reaching 9.5% within the three year period.

The Prime Minister’s report attributed this growth to changes in the agricultural sector which itself reached growth of 13.3%. Furthermore, because development activities had been agriculture led, it has significantly contributed to the growth of exports and foreign trade, which has increased by 28.5% annually. The report also detailed plans to increase the growth rate to at least 10% and to increase Ethiopia’s Gross National Product over the next seven years. More attention is to be given to food insecure areas to allow them to benefit from development activities while the Government will increase the provision of technical and professional support to pastoralist regions. Attention will also be focused on the industrial sector, with the party seeking to expand upon the encouraging results achieved over the last three years in the textiles, meat and leather industries and the investments that have been made in construction, sugar and floricultural developments.

The report detailed the work undertaken to provide all round institutional support for development investors, with incentives given to those who established medium and large size developmental institutions, and the significant role micro and small enterprises have played in alleviating urban poverty and unemployment.

The Prime Minister also spoke about the civil service reform programmes being implemented by both the federal and state governments with a view to ensuring the sustainability of the development activities in a transparent and efficient manner, as well as the Executive regulation programme undertaken, following studies by foreign experts drawing on the experiences of developed countries, and after successive discussions with opposition parties in Parliament. He went onto say that while political parties, NGOs, civic organisations and the media play significant roles in building democracy, a stable and developed multi-party democratic system could only be established through ensuring the rule of law.

The EPRDF’s partner parties – the Afar National Democratic Pary, the Gambella Peoples Democratic Movement, the Harari National League, the Somali Democratic Party and the Benishangul-Gumuz Unity Party – reaffirmed their support to the government’s quest to alleviate the country’s socio-economic problems.

President Girma Opens Parliament

President Girma Wolde-Giorgis has opened the Ethiopian Parliament with an address that has identified the strengthening of the democratisation process as key among the government’s priorities for the country over the year ahead.  Speaking at the opening of the second session of the third House of Peoples’ Representatives and the House of the Federation on Monday 9th October, President Girma said

“a system where good governance prevails not only allows the people’s rights and interests to be protected but also provides the opportunity for stability and acceleration of economic development.”

“As the people remain the main force of development in the country, the prevalence of good governance is of paramount importance in mobilising them to ensure and safeguard their own interests.”

The process of reforming the organisational structure and attitudes within government institutions based on the civil service reform and ensuring these institutions fulfil their roles in bringing about rapid economic development and good governance would be pursued with “strengthened vigour and determination”, the President said. Among the bills that will come before the Ethiopian Parliament in this session are the Press Law, along with amendments to the broadcast law and the establishment of the Ministry of Information.  Bills pertaining to the rights and responsibilities of non-governmental organisations and the reorganisation of the National Electoral Board will also be tabled before the House. 

Ethiopians in London raise money for flood victims

The Ethiopian National Consensus forum and the Ethiopian Embassy in London raised £5000 at a fundraising event held for victims of the recent flooding in Dire Dawa and Oromia on 26th August 2006. The event was attended by more than 200 guests and saw performances of Ethiopian music, singing and dancing. Money was raised through the sale of food and drink kindly donated by Ethiopian restaurants, a raffle draw with some fantastic prizes and donations from staff.       

Ethiopian Airlines donated an economy class open return ticket to Ethiopia for the first prize and a restricted economy return ticket for the second prize. The third prize came courtesy of Eurostar, who gave one return ticket from London Waterloo to Paris or Brussels. Abyssinia Restaurant donated the fourth prize, which was a dinner for two with Tej or Ethiopian Beer.

The event was part of global efforts to raise funds to assist the victims of the floods which hit the town of Dire Dawa on 6th August. More flooding followed a week later when the Omo river and its tributaries burst their banks.  

Ethiopian exports earn $1.8 billion

Ethiopian earned US $1.8 billion from exports in the last budget year, according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The amount surpasses the previous year’s earnings by $189.6 million. Hailu Abebe, Head of Public Relations at the Ministry said that exports would continue to receive special attention, with joint chambers of commerce established with Sudan, Nigeria and Iran and trade agreements being scaled-up, and studies underway to look at how best to increase floricultural and coffee exports.

Meanwhile, the Ethiopian Investment Agency has announced that it has licensed 742 foreign investment projects with investment capital totalling more than 20 billion Birr in the same period, exceeding the previous year’s figures by 4.82 billion Birr. Among the sectors receiving investment, the manufacturing industry took the lion’s share with projects worth more than 10.78 billion Birr. Licences were granted for projects in many areas, such as agriculture, construction, education, health, mining, tourism, transport and communications among others.

$1.5 billion China telecoms deal

An agreement has been signed between Ethiopia and three Chinese companies to upgrade and expand telecommunications services. The agreement, worth US $1.5 billion, was signed by the Ethiopian government and the ZTE Corporation, Huawei Technologies and the Chinese International Telecommunication Construction Corporation in a ceremony at the Sheraton Addis which was attended by Tefera Walwa, Minister of Capacity Building, Junedin Sado, Minister of Transport and Communications, the Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, Ambassador Lin Ling.

“The three year, 2007 - 2010, expansion plan aims to increase the number of mobile services from 1.5 million to 7 million and that of land line telephone services from 1 million to 4 million” said Abdurahin Ahmed, the Head of Communications at the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation. The Chinese investment forms part of a $ 2.4 billion plan by the Ethiopian government to improve the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, which will also involve the expansion of the fibre optic network, from the present 4,000km to 10,000km by 2010.

Power contract agreed with India

Indian firm Overseas Infrastructure Alliance (OIA) Pvt. Ltd has signed a contract with the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPC) to supply electrical equipment worth US $66 million. The agreement, which was signed by Mehret Debebe, General Manager of the EEPC, and VB Soni, OIA Chairman, will see the Indian company provide equipment to be used in the installation of 132kv transmission and distribution lines as well as equipment to be used in the construction of sub-stations in Boku Luguma and Hagere Mariam over the next six months, and the installation of lines from the town of Hagere Mariam, located 467km south of Addis Ababa, to the Kenyan border town of Moyale, located 771km south of Addis Ababa, benefiting five towns along the route. The installation is part of the EEPC’s five-year programme, which it hopes will raise Ethiopia’s electric power distribution from 15% to 50% in the next four years.

Ethiopian Airlines wins award

Ethiopian Airlines has won the African Airline of the Year 2006 Award. The award was given to the airline chairman Girma Wake at the end of the 15th Annual Air Finance for Africa Conference in Cape Town, South Africa yesterday on 25th September 2006 by Susan McDemoff, US Deputy Assistance Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs. The award, which was introduced by the African Aviation Journal in 1999 to give international recognition to individuals, companies and organisations that make a significant contribution to aviation development in Africa, was given to Ethiopian Airlines for its financial performance and overall profitability, passenger growth, route network expansion, fleet modernisation, in-flight services and customer care.

“It is a special privilege for Ethiopian Airlines to have been awarded African Airline of the Year 2006. The award inspires the airline to enhance its commitment to provide quality services to its esteemed customers,” said Girma.

In related news, the Airbus A380, which will be the world’s largest aircraft when it enters service, landed at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport on 16th October, for the start of the first test flights of the craft in Africa. Addis Ababa Bole airport was chosen for the high altitude performance tests because it is 2,268 metres above sea level, providing take-off and landing conditions not available in other test areas.

Nigeria & Ethiopia seek closer ties

Nigeria’s President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as the two countries seek to strengthen their trade and investment ties. During his three day State Visit which began on 8th October, President Obasanjo also met with Ethiopian President Girma Wolde-Giorgis, addressed a Joint Session of the House of People's Representatives and the House of Federation, and visited Addis Ababa University where he held discussions with the President and management of the University as well as Ethiopian and Nigerian intellectuals. The two countries also signed a Cooperation Agreement on Culture and Tourism, a Trade Agreement, as well as a Mutual Recognition Agreement on Standardisation to strengthen their cooperation in the tourism and trade fields.

During their meeting, President Obasanjo and Prime Minister Meles discussed the Memorandum of Understanding that provides for institutional cooperation between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, signed at the first Joint Ministerial Commission meeting in April, and called for Ethiopian and Nigerian Chambers of Commerce and business communities to explore opportunities. They urged the private sector to accelerate the creation of the Ethiopian Chapter of the Nigeria-Ethiopia Business Association as a tool for promoting investment and trade.

Ethiopia to benefit from MDRI

The Board of Governors of the African Development Fund (ADF) have approved the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative which will see thirty-three member countries, including Ethiopia, benefit from $ 8.5 billion debt relief, giving them the opportunity to reduce their overall debt repayments substantially and secure additional resources to help them attain the Millennium Development Goals.

Meles meets EU Commissioners

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi met with European Commissioner President José Manuel Barroso on Tuesday 3rd October, who was in Addis Ababa for the joint working session of the European Commission (EC) and the African Union Commission (AUC) at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. Among the topics discussed by Prime Minister Meles and President Barroso were the €155 million donation to assist with the construction of roads, the EC’s plans to strengthen its support for Ethiopia in its efforts to further economic development and democracy and regional issues such as the Ethiopia-Eritrea border impasse and developments in Darfur and Somalia.

Barroso noted the strong relationship between the EU and Ethiopia and lauded the country’s efforts to build enhance democracy, which the EU would continue to support.

Meles also met with European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, to discuss Ethiopia’s position on trade policies and various concerns about the ongoing negotiations on the economic partnership agreement between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.  The joint EC and AUC meeting was the first ever meeting of the EC on another continent other than Europe. EC Commissioners Margot Wallström (Communication), Franco Frattini (Justice, Freedom and Security), Siim Kallas (Administration), Louis Michel (Development and Humanitarian Aid), Dalia Grybauskaité (Budget), Janez Potocnik (Research), Markos Kyprianou (Health), Laszlo Kovács (Taxation), Vladimir Spidla (Employment and Social Affairs) and Andris Piebalgs (Energy) were also in Addis for the meeting. The session focused on institutional partnership and development, with a review of the EU Strategy for Africa and the EU-Africa Partnership on Infrastructure and discussed the better management of migration flows for the benefit of both continents. During their stay, the Commissioners also visited various development projects that the EU helps fund in the region.

Seismic data to be restored

The Ethiopian government has signed an agreement with Australian company SpectrumData to retrieve more than 1 million files on 3000 deteriorating magnetic tapes which house seismic data on 5,000 linear kilometres in the Ogaden Basin. The information, which is expensive to record, is important to international oil and gas exploration companies searching for suitable places to explore. SpectrumData, one of the biggest data migration, conversion and recovery companies in the world, will have third party distribution rights for the data for a period of four years.

In related news a national consultation workshop on Digital Materials Preservation was held in Addis Ababa on 17th August with a view to supporting the preservation of heritage material and increasing access to information and knowledge as a lever for development. Organised by UNESCO and the National Archives and Libraries of Ethiopia, the workshop was attended by representatives from government, academic institutions and the private financial services sector. The workshop raised awareness of the need to incorporate preservation practices and guidelines within the framework of the national ICT4D plan, the country’s massive effort to introduce information systems and high bandwidth networks currently underway.

Black Gold shown in London

Black Gold, a new documentary that explores the paradox within the coffee industry, received its British premiere in London at the National Film Theatre on 20th October. Described by Adam Montgomery, of this year’s Sundance Film Festival as “a moving and eye-opening look into the $80 billion global coffee industry, where the spoils of overpriced lattes and cappuccinos are sparsely shared with the farmers who make it all possible”, Black Gold is the work of British documentarians Marc and Nick Francis, who follow Tadesse Meskela, General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Cooperative, as he attempts to save from bankruptcy the 75,000 struggling coffee farmers of his collective. As these farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.

Black Gold tells this story in what Stuart Klawans of The Nation has called: “One of the strongest documentaries I’ve seen in the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, or for that matter outside it.”

In related news:

Ethiopia has become the leading African supplier of coffee to the international market, exporting a massive 14,687,880 kilos in the period October 2005 to August 2006.

Yirgacheffe coffee fetched a record price at the second Annual ECAFE GOLD internet coffee auction. The coffee reached US $10.65 per pound, nearly ten times higher than the conventional price at the New York Coffee Market. ECAFE (Exemplary Coffee Education), a US based non-profit organisation, began the internet auctions to help farmers secure better prices for their produce.

“Although the volume of coffee beans put up for auction through ECAFE is small, the event will play a major role in introducing and promoting quality Ethiopian coffees”, said Ashenafi Araw, Export Division Head at the Yirgacheffe Coffee Union Hama Cooperative.

The US trademark for Yirgacheffe coffee has been granted to Ethiopia. The country filed applications for trademark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in February 2005 for the Sidamo, Yirgacheffe and Harrar/Harar marks, to protect the reputation and hard work of generations of Ethiopian coffee growers by preventing the misappropriation of coffee identities.

‘Daughter of Lucy’ discovered

The remains of the earliest known child have been discovered in Ethiopia. The almost complete skeleton of a girl, who has been named ‘Selam’ (the word for peace in several Ethiopian languages), is the oldest fossil of a hominin child yet unearthed. The details of the discovery have been published in the journal Nature, while a team from the National Geographic have produced an illustration of what she may have looked like.

The first piece of the fossil was found inside a block of sandstone at Dikika on 10th December 2000 by Tilahun Gebreselassie, who was with a team led by Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, the first Ethiopian to lead a research team that has made a discovery of this importance. It took a further five years to unearth the rest of the find, which includes the whole skull, the entire torso, important parts of the upper and lower limbs, and unerupted teeth still in the jaw.

The skeleton belongs to the species Australopithecus afarensis, with anatomical features that lie between those of humans and other apes. It shows adaptations for walking upright on two legs and for climbing and swinging from trees, while the brain case also suggests the brain of the species had started to evolve towards that of modern humans.

“Her completeness, antiquity and age at death combined, make this find unprecedented in the history of palaeoanthropology, and open many new research avenues to investigate the childhood of early human ancestors,” said Dr Zeresenay.

The skeleton is from the same species as ‘Lucy’, the famous fossil of an adult found in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974, which has led the new discovery to be nicknamed ‘little Lucy’ or ‘Lucy’s daughter’, although she is thought to have lived 150,000 years before Lucy.

The ‘Lucy’ skeleton itself is to travel to the US in June next year, on a six year tour of exhibitions in Washington, New York, Denver and Chicago.

Rare Mid-East bird in Ethiopia

British and Middle Eastern bird experts are delighted after identifying the winter home of the northern bald Ibis, the rarest bird in the Middle East. Three tagged birds, nicknamed Sultan, Salam and Zenobia, have been followed by satellite from their summer grounds in Syria to Ethiopia, (a journey of 3,100km) in a discovery which has been described as a “major breakthrough” by Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The internationally-recognised Red List of Threatened Species categorises the bird (Geronticus eremita) as critically endangered because of habitat loss, farming, human encroachment and pollution. There are thought to be only two surviving summer populations, one in Syria and one in Morocco. Its range used to extend into Europe.

Mengistu Wondafrash from the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society said

"We will be doing all we can to implement conservation measures to help increase the numbers of this rare but special bird."

Sport

UK Premiership football matches were shown on giant televisions screens in Addis Ababa’s Meskel Square on 17th September 2006 to raise funds for victims of the recent flooding. More than 40,000 people were present, with US $14,000 raised, which will be used to help provide food for those made homeless by the disaster and to help rebuild their homes. Some of the biggest matches of the season were broadcast, with four Premiership league favourites playing against each other.

Tariku Bekele was victorious at in the 5,000 metres in Beijing, China on 20th August with a time of 13 minutes 31.34 seconds. He was followed to the finishing line by fellow Ethiopian Abraham Cherkos in 13:35.95 marking only the second ever 5,000m double by athletes of the same country. The last duo to achieve a similar feat was the Ethiopian twosome Fita Bayissa and Abraham Assefa.

The IAAF’s Golden League meeting at the 65th Internationales Stadionfest in Berlin, Germany on 3rd September saw Team Ethiopia achieve fantastic results in the Men’s and Women’s 5,000 metre races. In the Men’s race Ethiopia took a clean sweep of the top three positions, with Kenenisa leading the victories in first place with 12:57.74, followed by Tariku with 13:04.83 and Abraham with 13:05.40. In the Women’s race, Ethiopia took a clean sweep of the top four positions, with Meseret Defar finishing first with 15:02.51, followed by Tirunesh Dibaba with 15:02.87, Meselech Melkamu with 15:05.82 and Gelete Bati in 15:07.45.

Haile Gebrselassie won the 33rd Berlin marathon on 24th September with the world’s best time of the year, with Gete Wami completing an Ethiopian sweeping by winning the women’s race. Haile clocked 2:35:56, beating the year’s previous best marathon time. It also ranks as the seventh best time ever and was Haile’s personal best in the fourth marathon of his career. Gete came in first place in the women’s race with a time of 2 hours 21 minutes and 34 seconds. Fellow Ethiopian Shentema Kudama came in second place in the men’s competition in 2:10:43.

Berhane Adere won the Great North Run in Newcastle on 1st October. The athlete, who was taking part for the fifth time, completed the Women’s race in 1 hour, 10 minutes and 1 second. Meanwhile fellow Ethiopian Dejene Berhanu finished in second place in the Men’s competition with a time of 1: 01.23.

Yirefu Birhanu won the sixth annual Under Armour Baltimore Marathon on 14th October, with a time of 2:16:26, in what his first marathon. Yirefu becomes the first Ethiopian to win the event.

Registration for this year’s Toyota Great Ethiopian Run opened on 9th October 2006 in centres in Addis Ababa, including Dembel City Centre, Dashen Bank Mercato, the Hilton Addis Ababa and Addis Ababa Main Stadium. This year’s competition, which, since 2002, has become Africa’s biggest road race, will take place on 26th November 2006. For more information visit www.ethiopiarun.org  Meanwhile, the date for next year’s Great Ethiopian Run has been set. The 10km ‘Millennium Run’ will take place on Sunday 9th September and will coincide with celebrations for the Ethiopian Millennium on 11th September 2007.■

Ethiopian News – Volume 5 Number 2  Aug, Sept & Oct 2006

Edited by James Thresher

Published by the Press Office, Ethiopian Embassy, 17 Princes Gate, London SW7 1PZ

Telephone: 020 7838 3883   Fax: 020 7838 3889

For more Ethiopian news please visit our website - www.ethioembassy.org.uk, info@ethioembassy.org.uk