(hurriyet.com) The Turkish-Ethiopian Business Council, which will serve under the umbrella of Turkey’s Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK), has been established, DEIK said in a statement on Wednesday.
The number of business councils operating in Africa had risen to eight, and the executive board president or Turkish Ayka Textiles company, Yusuf Aydeniz would serve as the head of the Turkish-Ethiopian Business Council, the statement said.
“DEIK accelerated works to establish such a council during Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s visit to Turkey,” the statement also said.
Turkish exports to Ethiopia reached $145 million and imports from Ethiopia were recorded at $42 million in 2007.
(Sudan Tribune) KHARTOUM — Sudanese and Kenyan foreign ministers are expected in Asmara within two days for talks with the Eritrean president in abide to convince him to return to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
Increasingly disillusioned with the eastern African organisation, Eritrea suspended its IGAD membership in April 2007 in protest to member states refusal to condemn and take actions against Ethiopia for sending troops to Somalia.
Asmara also was opposed to IGAD endorsement of a plan to allow foreign peacekeepers into war-torn Somalia to bring stability there.
Deng Alor and his Kenyan counterpart Moses Wetang’ula will fly on Thursday to discuss with President Isaias Afewerki ways to rejoin the regional body as it was decided in a summit of the IGAD head of states last June in Addis Ababa.
The Eritrean president had accepted to discuss the issue with the delegation, Khartoum announced today. The Sudanese ambassador in Asmara, Salah Mohamed el-Hassan today said this move is aimed to convince Eritrea to lift the suspension of its membership and participate in the next IGAD summit n in Sudan.
Eritrea was one of seven member countries of IGAD, a group created in 1996 from an earlier organization that focused on drought and development. The Member countries of the Djibouti-based organisation include: Kenya; Ethiopia; Djibouti; Uganda; Sudan; and Somalia.
Eritrea also disappointed by a plan adopted by the organisation to mediate a border dispute with its archenemy Ethiopia. Asmara considers that boundary commission had already demarcated the border and its decision is binding to Addis Ababa whereas Ethiopia says there should be more discussion on the issue.
Among IGAD’s most high-profile accomplishments is the holding of Naivasha peace talks in Kenya between northern and southern Sudan that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord, ending more than two decades of civil war in Sudan.
IGAD also facilitated the Somali peace talks in Kenya that resulted in the formation of Somalia’s current transitional federal government, and is endorsing an African-Union peacekeeping operation in Somalia.
(Middle East Online) TRIPOLI – State-run Libya Oil Holding on Tuesday announced it had bought subsidiaries of Shell in Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
Company president Ali Shamekh said the deal with the Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell concerns a total of 240 petrol stations in the three countries. He did not give the value of the deal.
Libya Oil Holding has also struck an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government to build a 140 kilometre (87 mile) pipeline on the Atlantic coast, Shamekh said.
The 300-million-dollar pipeline is due to link the Muanda and Matadi regions in the extreme west of the DRC.
Libya Holding Oil, which runs more than 1,000 petrol stations across Africa, has invested massively in the continent in the past year, also buying subsidiaries of Exxon Mobile in Tunisia and Morocco.
By Omer Redi, Addis Fortune
ADDIS ABABA — The state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) may not claim a pioneer place in the introduction of the electronic banking card system to Ethiopia. But, it is trying to catch up with those ahead of it – the private Dashen and Wegagen banks.
Electronic banking cards give depositors 24-hour access to their money from their local or overseas accounts using Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs).
Six IT firms responded to CBE’s international tender issued in mid 2007: AT, M2M, Xiamen Longtop Systems Co. Ltd., Fintech (Kenya) Ltd., Paynet and ACI, an American company entered into a bid in partnership with the local Moti Engineering Plc. Three have been short listed since then, whose technical and financial offers are under review by CBE’s bid committee, chaired by the Vice President for IT.
However, a consortium of companies from Ethiopia and Kenya had been informed two months ago to begin contractual negotiations, before being given the green light to start work on the deployment of the banking solutions, a source told Fortune. CBE has not officially awarded the project yet.
“They [the CBE] concluded the tender process fast, but there seems to be a slight delay due to the negotiations that followed,” a source closely following up on the tender disclosed.
Though CBE seems interested in awarding the project, worth a little less than 50 million Br, to the consortium formed by Oratech Consulting, an Ethiopian technology company which is also partner to the US based Oracle, and Technology Associates (TA), a Kenyan based IT firm, the bank wants negotiations on some arrangements, according to the source, who requested anonymity.
The painstaking issues that kept the process from entering the next phase – installation – are differences over the duration of guarantee offered by the consortium and the CBE; the bank claims the bid document submitted reads three years, as opposed to the one year TA believed it had offered. The latter, however, wrote to the CBE expressing agreement to provide the three-year guarantee, but at the same time requested the client to revise payment arrangements.
TA requested about 30pc be paid as a down payment. The remaining amount would be spread over a one-and-a-half-year period, with the final payment being made at the end of this time. The period would begin after the system went operational – an arrangement meant to evaluate whether the IT solutions the consortium provides is durable.
CBE has not yet expressed whether it agrees to the conditions the consortium requested in the form of payment arrangements.
If awarded, it would be TA’s second project in the Ethiopian banking industry; it was awarded a similar contract earlier this year by Wegagen Bank, whose deal has yet to be signed after three years of floating the tender. Delay has a price to pay, according to industry observers.
In the current trend of price fluctuations, and currency depreciations of both the Birr and the dollar, any delay may affect the deal and require a further price revision, according to current prices of software and hardware.
“Experiences show that the price mostly goes up,” said an IT expert familiar with the project. “The fact that the transactions for this technology demand hard currency create another unpredictability.”
Ongoing negotiations between Wegagen Bank and Oracle is a good illustration. Although Wegagen floated a tender to procure the solution in 2005, it has yet to become the second Ethiopian bank to enter the electronic banking system market. In the meantime, Oracle has reportedly requested the bank to revise the originally offered price. Industry observors see the possibility of Wegagen losing its second place to the CBE, if the latter strikes a deal faster and speeds up installation.
Better yet, a new runner is around the corner: Zemen Bank, whose series of pledges to launch operations did not materialize last week, has hired a Chicago based IT firm to install technology solutions, which its managers promise will transform the way banking is practiced in Ethiopia.
In the interim, Dashen remains the sole player in the field of electronic banking since 2006. In the last Ethiopian fiscal year, Dashen, a pioneer in introducing international electronic payment systems in partnership with, and using VISA, generated close to 31 million dollars, a little over a quarter of what the country earned from the export of flowers during the same period.
Established a little over a decade ago, with an initial capital of 50 million Br, Dashen Bank has achieved remarkable advances in its applications of technology. Deploying close to 20 ATMs, the bank provides its clients with access to many of its 47 branches and four Forex bureaus, including Awassa, Adama (Nazareth), Bahir Dar and Mekelle.
Dahsen, a bank worth less than 10pc of CBE’s capital, leads the industry in terms of harnessing this advanced banking system. This maneuver on the technological front made it effectively snatch the pioneering role the CBE had maintained for over half a century, beginning in 1942.
If CBE strikes this deal anytime soon, Oractech – the Ethiopian company established in 2001 with a registered capital of 100,000 Br – and TA, the Kenyan company that has been building technology infrastructure in sub Saharan Africa for the past decade – will provide IT solutions to the state-owned bank, which has 205 branches across the country, and registered assets worth 49 billion Br in the fiscal year that ended in June, 2008.
Oratech’s partner, Oracle – a recognized IT giant in database technology and applications in enterprises throughout the world – will provide the database, while TA will secure the software and equipment from European companies, according to informed sources. Wincor-Nixdorf, a Germany company, will provide the Automatic Teller Machines, each estimated to cost an average of 10,000 dollars, while TeiTonator, a Latvian based technology company active in Europe, will provide Point of Sale (PoS) machines.
CBE officials were not available for comment,as they were conducting the bank’s annual meeting at the time Fortune attempted to get hold of them.
Ethiopian Minister of Mines and
Energy Alemayehu Tegenu
(foodbev.com) — The Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy on Thursday (Aug 7, 2008) signed an agreement with the local Moha Soft Drinks Industry S.C., alloting an additional 56.8 thousand square metre of land for the company’s water mining purposes.
According to reports in The Africa Monitor and Capital Ethiopia, Moha will invest between 2.5 to 5 million Euro to enable its mineral water factory to produce an additonal 180.3 million litres over the next ten years.
The agreement states that the company is allowed to mine mineral water on a small scale in the new licensed area, which is situated in West Gojam Zone Bure locality, Amhara National Regional State in Ethiopia. Inititally the license has been issued for five years, but can be extended for a further ten years.
The company produces both Kool Spring and Kool Mineral water at its factory, which it acquired for 27 million Ethiopian Birr (1.8 million Euro) from the former Bure Babuna Mineral Water Company. In addition to being sold on the local market, Kool Mineral is exported to the Middle East.
The agreement was signed by Alemayehu Tegenu, Minister of Mines and Energy and Getachew Birbo, Moha Soft Drinks General Manager at the Sheraton Addis. Following the signing ceremony, the Minister said the government has designed an “encouraging” policy in order to support investors in the sector.
So far 65 companies have obtained 115 licenses from the Ministry of Mines and Energy to engage in mineral water development.
Moha’s parent company, MIDROC Ethiopia, has invested over 500 million Ethiopian Birr (34 million Euro) expanding the company, which has been in operation since 1997.
By Rose Mestika, The Daily Monitor
ADDIS ABABA — Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC), care service training on treating a newborn premature baby, low birth weight baby, was offered to 13 Doctors and Nurses at Black lion Hospital in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.
The five-day training in the Care Service, which is said to be the first of its kind were offered to those medical practitioners gathered from six selected hospitals, namely Adigrat, Dessie, Nekemet, Hiwot Fana, Yirgalem and Yekatit 12 Hospital.
Dr. Bogale Worku, Head of Pediatrics department at Black Lion Hospital said yesterday concluding the training; the aim of the training was to expand the KMC service into other hospitals.
“We offer for those medical practitioners a theoretical and practical training on KMC service. KMC is a special way of holding the baby with skin to skin contact between mother and baby, breast feeding and good bonding,”, he said adding that the benefits of this service are to improve the low birth weight baby temperature regulation or cardio-respirator stability and faster growth and development.
The same as the Kangaroo the mother of the baby or the family members hold the premature baby on their upper body for 24 hrs per day. The service will continue from one to eight weeks, the head further explained.
“There is no much attention for babies born too soon or too small. And Ethiopia is one of the highest low birth weight baby’s mortality in the world. This program was started around ten years and still the facility is not expanded and the risk is not minimized”, said Dr. Bogale.
He also said that before the hospital started this program assessments were done whether the doctors, mothers and policy makers accept it or not. The cost and the feasibility were also been studied.
The training was prepared by KMC with the support of Save the Children, USA and access program.
“In Ethiopia around 94% of births takes place at home and facility based delivery is low, therefore, rolling it to limited health facilities is not enough” Dr. Samuel Teshome, saving Newborns Live, Save the Children/US said at the training’s conclusion.
Currently, the KMC service is delivering in Black lion Hospital, Gonder and Jimma Hospitals
