Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (ECA) – The expansion of existing and the creation of new dry ports in Ethiopia was the subject of a day-long workshop held at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) this week.
With no direct access to the sea, landlocked Ethiopia appears to be at a disadvantage when it comes to efficiency of transportation of goods. However, dry ports could be a solution to this problem. ECA, on behalf of the Ethiopian Dry Ports Services Enterprise, has undertaken a feasibility study for dry ports in the country. The meeting was to review the feasibility study with a variety of stakeholders from across the country.
With a dry port, goods being transported to a landlocked country, rather than undergoing customs procedures at the seaport, would instead be transported directly to the country’s dry port, where customs clearance would take place.
Mr. Stephen Karingi, Chief of Trade and International Negotiations at ECA, said the importance of dry ports for landlocked countries could not be overstated. ECA studies have shown that, keeping distance constant, transport costs for landlocked countries are on average $2000 USD higher than those for non-landlocked countries owing to delays at seaports and border posts. Efficient dry ports could help reduce these transport costs and make them better able to compete commercially.
“The ability of landlocked countries to trade does rely on the existence of efficient and easily accessible transit corridors of which dry ports constitute a vital component,” he said. “The benefits of efficient dry ports could be enormous for Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia currently has two dry ports – one in Mojo, the other in Samera. In addition to the review and input into the final report, participants discussed the feasibility of expanding these two dry ports as well as possible locations for others.
This is a really inspirational story. It is about Tesfa Foundation. Tesfa has founded five schools serving 800 children in Ethiopia and has recently established a program in Addis Ababa for at risk teenage girls.
Dana Roskey founded the Tesfa Foundation in 2004 with inspiration from his fiance Leeza Woubshet. A Minnesotan Ethiopian, Leeza died in 2003 in an auto accident before she could realize her dream of going back to Ethiopia to open a school for children. Because Ethiopia has no publicly funded options for pre-school or kindergarten, Tesfa has specialized in early childhood education. As the organization develops, they hope to continue offering education and opportunity to children throughout Ethiopia and spread to its neighboring countries.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s regime is not ready to bow to pressure to liberalize its telecoms and banking sectors while negotiating terms to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), its trade minister said on Wednesday.
Analysts say the giant Horn of Africa country’s hopes for WTO membership hinge on calls for the authorities in Addis Ababa to open those areas to international competition.
“There is a demand from some WTO member countries for Ethiopia to liberalise some of our service sectors and it will be subject to discussion in future negotiations,” Trade Minister Girma Birru told Reuters in an interview.
“But from what we see now, we are not convinced it will be appropriate for our own economic policies to liberalise at this stage.”
[In this information age, the stupid minister has no reason for trying to keep Ethiopia in the 19th century. His boss, Meles Zenawi, wants to control the flow of information. That is the only reason.]
Girma said his ministry was answering questions about the Ethiopian economy from WTO members. U.S. officials have publicly said the nation should liberalise those sectors.
The country is one of Africa’s largest potential markets — with a population of about 80 million — and most of its people have no telephones or bank accounts.
It is attracting growing interest from foreign investors in agriculture, hydropower, and oil and gas exploration, and has recorded growth of more than 10 percent for the last five years.
Opposition parties, however, dispute those statistics.
The country remains one of the world’s poorest and it has suffered high inflation, power cuts and a shortage of foreign currency this year.
Girma said Ethiopia’s economic growth rate was the best argument against liberalisation.
“The policies we have in place prove themselves. They mean sustainable growth,” he said. “If liberalisation is not done in the right way and at the right time it will harm us.”
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a former Marxist rebel, told Reuters in an interview in July that he hoped negotiations to join the WTO will be finished within three years and admitted that competition may be inevitable.
Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church (EOTC), His Holiness Abune Merkorios, will officially open the St. Mary of Zion Church’s new building in New York Saturday, Nov. 28.
The inauguration program will start at 6 AM tomorrow in the presence of His Holiness as well as Abune Melketsedik, Abune Elias, Abune Samuel, Abune Baslios, and other religious leaders and guests from all over the United States.
The event will also celebrate the annual Saint Mary’s Day, according to Melakegenet Gezahegn G. Kirstos, the Church’s administrator.
New York’s St. Mary of Zion Church was first established in 1991 by the late Abune Yesehaq, Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Western Hemisphere. It is the first Ethiopian church that took a stand against the illegal take over of the EOTC by a cadre of the ruling Woyanne junta, Ato Gebremedhin (formerly Aba Paulos).
(For further info call (917) 837-8245, (203) 645-0275, (631) 671-6090. Also visit stmaryofzion.com)
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s [tribal junta] will offer up to 14 licenses for oil and gas exploration over the next three years despite threats from rebels who say they will attack oilfields run by foreigners, the government said on Tuesday.
“We have 11 companies exploring in Ethiopia now,” said [Woyanne] Minister for Mines and Energy Alemayehu Tegenu.
“We are still inviting companies to come talk to us about licensing and we hope to have a total of 25 in three years time, and that will be enough,” he told Reuters in an interview.
The 11 foreign companies exploring the Horn of Africa nation include Africa Oil Corporation, South West Energy and Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas .
Apart from a small discovery of natural gas, which Petronas has signed a $1.9 million deal to extract, Ethiopia has not uncovered significant oil or gas deposits.
The government says, however, that the Ogaden basin may contain gas reserves of 4 trillion cubic feet and points to nearby countries such as Sudan and Yemen as evidence there could be major oil deposits under Ethiopia’s deserts.
The minister said Ethiopia would offer incentive packages to companies on a case-by-case basis, depending on the size of their investment.
“Incentives that we can discuss include duty-free imports of machinery and refunds of exploration costs should oil or gas be discovered,” Alemayehu said.
NO REBEL THREAT
Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels in 2007 attacked an oil exploration field owned by a subsidiary of Sinopec, Asia’s biggest refiner and China’s second-largest oil and gas producer.
Sinopec then pulled out of the Ogaden region. Most of Ethiopia’s exploration activities have centred on the vast province, which borders unstable Somalia.
Insurgents this month said they had seized seven small towns in Ogaden and again warned foreign firms not to invest.
Alemayehu dismissed the rebel threat and said Ethiopia was also offering companies the chance to explore in five basins outside of Ogaden.
“There was an attack in 2007 but companies exploring Ogaden are now secured by our military,” he said. “We don’t see any problems near our camps and exploration areas. The rebels make claims that aren’t reflected on the ground.”
The ONLF wants autonomy for the region, whose population is ethnic Somali, and the group has been waging an on-and-off campaign for more than 25 years.
Addis Ababa says the ONLF does not have the support of the local population and is being funded by arch enemy Eritrea to try to overthrow the government.
Ethiopia has the highest proportion of people at risk of getting trachoma (85% of its population, about 65 million people), according to a report by The Carter Center. Ethiopia has also the greatest number of people in the final, blinding stage of trachoma (more than 1 million). It has the greatest number of people who have gone blind from trachoma (138,000).
The predeterminants of trachoma are poverty, which manifests as poor access to sanitation, poor access to hygiene, high density living conditions, and a general poor health. All of those go together, then trachoma gets laid on top of it. It used to be the slums of London, now it’s the rural areas of populous countries, like Ethiopia. – Dr. Paul Emerson, director of The Carter Center Trachoma Control Program
The Carter Center has launched trachoma control programs in Ghana, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Nigeria, but its most challenging location is Ethiopia. The Ethiopia program began in 2001, in partnership with the federal Ministry of Health and the Lions Clubs of Ethiopia. It has focused its efforts on the country’s most affected region: the northwestern state of Amhara. Two thirds of its work there has been funded by money raised by the Lions Clubs of Ethiopia, through the Lions Clubs International Foundation. The antibiotic it has distributed, Zithromax, has all been donated by Pfizer. The Center aims to effectively control trachoma in the region by 2012.
Trachoma affects the lining of the eyelid, causing it to form granule-like bumps, and to appear red and irritated. Repeated infections over the years cause the underside of the eyelid to scar. The scar tissue pulls the eyelid inward, so that the eyelashes scratch against the cornea, a condition known as trichiasis. The constant rubbing against the globe of the eye is painful, and causes sensitivity to light and particulate matter, like dust and smoke. Within just 18 months, it can begin to cause irreversible visual impairment. If not surgically corrected, it causes blindness.
Amhara region: Ground Zero
Amhara region, which accounts for roughly 20% of Ethiopia’s population, carries 45% of the country’s trachoma burden.
More than 85% of Amhara’s 17 million people live in rural areas, situated in the mountainous highlands. They are overwhelmingly subsistence farmers, growing teff, a grain that is used to make injera, a spongy, flat bread typically served with Ethiopian meals.
In Ethiopia, Amhara region has the highest rate of active trachoma in children aged 1-9 (62%), and the highest rate of adults who have reached the final, blinding stage of trachoma (5.2%). The prevalence is attributed mainly to the area’s poverty, poor access to water, and poor sanitation. Families live in small huts, crowding a small space in which it’s easy for disease to spread from children to the parents. And in some areas of the rural mountains, mothers or children have to walk hours to get water, and then lug it back home. After cooking, drinking, and feeding the animals, there often isn’t enough left to wash hands, or children’s faces. This contributes to the spread of trachoma.
The other major contributing factor in Amhara is the presence of swarming flies, Musca sorbens, that thrive in places of poor sanitation. The flies like to breed in outdoor human stool, and they feed off of discharge around the eyes and nose. As they feed, they transmit the microorganism that infects they eyes with trachoma, from one person to the next. Sanitation facilities have historically been lacking in Amhara — another effect of the region’s poverty. Since 2003, however, hundreds of thousands of household latrines have been built with the help of The Carter Center and other development groups.
The World Health Organization endorses a four-pronged approach to trachoma control, known as the S.A.F.E. strategy.
S – Surgery to correct inverted eyelids, which occur in the most advanced stage of trachoma.
A – Antibiotics, namely azythromicin, to treat trachoma infection.
F – Facial cleanliness, particularly important for children, to clear off infectious ocular and nasal discharge that attracts eye-seeking flies, and which they spread to other people.
E – Environmental improvements, such as the building of latrines and access to water. Latrines help to reduce the population of flies that spread trachoma, and access to water promotes cleanliness.
Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church (EOTC), His Holiness Abune Merkorios, will officially open the St. Mary of Zion Church’s new building in New York Saturday, Nov. 28.
Ethiopia has the highest proportion of people at risk of getting trachoma (85% of its population, about 65 million people), according to a report by The Carter Center. Ethiopia has also the greatest number of people in the final, blinding stage of trachoma (more than 1 million). It has the greatest number of people who have gone blind from trachoma (138,000).