A French company named Vergnet, based in Orleans, won a contract to build a wind farm of 120 MW in the region of Mekele, capital of Tigray, a province in the north, on the Eritrean border. The wind farm will be the largest in Africa.
The contract, amounting to 220 million euros, will be signed on October 9, during a visit to Addis Ababa by Anne-Marie Idrac, Secretary of State for Foreign Trade of France.
President Nicolas Sarkozy had the opportunity to give a boost to Vergnet during a visit to the region of Orleans, focusing this time on the assistance that the State should provide SMEs seeking contracts abroad.
The EthiopianWoyanne [the ruling party in Ethiopia] authorities could not but be sensitive to this presidential indirect support when they chose Vergnet in competition with a Chinese company which provided the funding.
Vergnet appropriations will be guaranteed by Coface. The French Agency for Development (AFD) will provide a loan to the Ethiopian Woyanne authorities. Much of the energy supplied by the wind park will be exported to neighboring countries, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti.
French companies are also in line for other contracts, including the sale of six ATR aircraft, sub-power stations (Areva), radars for civil aviation … Lafarge will also invest 300 million euros in building a cement plant south of Addis Ababa.
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La France vend des éoliennes à l’Éthiopie
Pays de hauts plateaux balayés par les vents, l’Éthiopie parie sur l’énergie propre et sur le développement durable. C’est une entreprise française installée à Orléans, l’entreprise Vergnet, qui a remporté le contrat de construction d’une ferme éolienne de 120 MW dans la région de Mekele, capitale du Tigray, une province du nord du pays, en bordure de la frontière érythréenne. Ce parc d’éoliennes doit être le plus important d’Afrique.
Le contrat, d’un montant de 220 millions d’euros, va être signé, le 9 octobre, lors de la visite à Addis-Abeba d’Anne-Marie Idrac, secrétaire d’État chargée du Commerce extérieur. Nicolas Sarkozy avait eu l’occasion de donner un coup de pouce à l’entreprise Vergnet lors d’un passage dans la région d’Orléans, en insistant à cette occasion sur l’aide que l’État devait apporter aux PME qui cherchent des contrats à l’étranger. Les autorités éthiopiennes n’ont pu qu’être sensibles à ce soutien présidentiel indirect lorsqu’elles ont choisi Vergnet en concurrence avec une entreprise chinoise qui apportait le financement. Les crédits de Vergnet seront garantis par la Coface. L’Agence française pour le développement (AFD) fournira un prêt aux autorités éthiopiennes. Une grande partie de l’énergie fournie par le parc d’éoliennes sera exportée vers les pays voisins, Soudan, Érythrée, Djibouti.
Des entreprises françaises sont aussi sur les rangs pour d’autres contrats, dont la vente de six avions ATR, des sous-stations électriques (Areva), des radars pour l’aéronautique civile… Lafarge va, par ailleurs, investir 300 millions d’euros dans la construction d’une cimenterie au sud d’Addis Abeba.
PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking poll shows registered voters preferring Barack Obama to John McCain for president by 51% to 42%.
The nine percentage point lead in Oct. 4-6 tracking matches Obama’s highest to date for the campaign, and the highest for either candidate. Obama led McCain by 49% to 40% near the tail end of his international trip in late July. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)
Obama has now held a statistically significant lead since Sept. 24-26 polling and has not trailed McCain since Sept. 13-15, roughly coinciding with the intensification of the financial crisis.
The Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) has launched a new campaign to rally Ethiopians around the world to support its struggle against the vampire regime of the Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne).
EPPF’s campaign was launched at the public meeting that was held last week in Frankfurt, Germany, where it sent exiled members of parliament Ato Leul Keskis and Ato Assefa Hailu as high level delegates.
At the Frankfurt meeting with Ethiopians in Europe, the EPPF delegates announced that the organization is in the process of creating its International Council. The Council will be formally announced shortly, according to the delegates.
Following the public meeting in Frankfurt, Ato Leul and Ato Assefa gave an interview to the Voice of America, which is heard by over 20 million Ethiopians on a daily basis.
Listen the two-part VOA interview below:
VOA Interview with Kinijit’s exiled member of parliament – Part I
[podcast]http://www.zikkir.com/audiofiles/songs/09292008amha1800aMON.mp3[/podcast]
VOA Interview with Kinijit’s exiled member of parliament – Part II
[podcast]http://www.zikkir.com/audiofiles/songs/09302008amha1800aTUE.mp3[/podcast]
According to EPPF sources, delegations from Europe and the U.S. will soon travel to the field to meet with fighters and leaders of the resistance group.
One of the main tasks of EPPF’s International Council will be to establish contacts with governments of Europe, U.S. and other countries in an effort to explain the objectives of the organization and try to reach mutual understandings.
The EPPF will also continue to work hard to solidify the increasingly improved relations between Eritrean government and the people of Ethiopia through public dialogues, cultural exchanges and other activities.
More than 35 young women wearing tight trousers were arrested in South Sudan for disturbing the peace, senior police officials said on Tuesday.
[Idiots! Don’t the police have some thing better to do, such as wash their own filthy uniform?!]
The arrests in Juba, the capital of semiautonomous South Sudan, were part of a campaign against youth gangs, the authorities said.
The women were arrested on Sunday night but were released without charge on Monday. Many Juba residents reacted angrily to the arrests. “We saw about 30 girls in two trucks piled up like animals,” said Nok Duany, a civil servant.
The insta-polls, which provide viewers with a somewhat skewed but important insight into how each candidate fared say, by and large, that Obama scored a victory in the second debate.
NBC’s focus group of undecided Pennsylvania voters had the Illinois Democrat winning by roughly a 60-40 split. Frank Luntz’s focus group, over at Fox, showed undecided voters leaning towards Obama because of his position on health care. CBS’s focus group of independents had the Democratic nominee winning the debate at 39 percent to McCain’s 27 percent, with 35 percent of the respondents saying it was a tie. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic polling firm, had a focus group of undecideds leaning to Obama by a margin of 42 percent to 24 percent.
Meanwhile, SurveyUSA interviewed 741 debate watchers in the state of Washington, 54 percent of whom thought Obama was the “clear winner” compared with McCain’s 29 percent. That same polling firm had the first debate as a tie. In tonight’s survey: 42 percent of respondents said McCain was too forceful.
And the CNN focus group of undecided voters in Ohio had the margin at an even wider spread: Obama 54 percent to McCain’s 30.
A look at some of the specific issues that these Ohio voters valued suggest that they prefer the candidate who, at least on the surface, appears less on the attack. When Obama discussed health care as a right for all Americans, his numbers were through the roof. At one point, female respondents were dialing in at 100 percent approval. When he talked about using diplomacy in Darfur and pursuing Bin Laden in Pakistan, he again enjoyed strongly enthusiastic responses.
McCain had his moments too, mostly when he was discussing economic matters and propping up businesses to turn around the economy. His low points came when he was on the attack. On MSNBC, Nora O’Donnell charted how independent voters and Democrats soured on McCain when he said that figuring out Obama’s tax policy was like nailing Jell-O to a wall.
How solid was the consensus that Obama scored better tonight? Even Bill Bennett, ever the Republican optimist, conceded that the Illinois Democrat scored higher marks.
“I confess I so much admire McCain, but I just don’t think the campaign is equal to the story,’ he said. “I just don’t think it’s equal to the man, it hasn’t been. … We needed a breakthrough, talking about the economy. I think he was a little better than last time, but he didn’t break through enough, and he’s behind. So it just wasn’t good enough for McCain in terms of what it had to be.”
CBS News and Knowledge Networks have, once again, conducted a nationally representative poll of uncommitted voters to get their immediate reaction to tonight’s presidential debate.
And this new poll has good news for the Democratic ticket: Just as in the first presidential debate and the vice presidential face off, more uncommitted voters say the Democratic candidate won the debate. (We’ve updated this post with final numbers.)
Forty percent of the 516 uncommitted voters surveyed identified Barack Obama as tonight’s winner; 26 percent said John McCain won, while 35 percent saw the debate as a draw.
After the debate, 68 percent of uncommitted voters said that they think Obama will make the right decisions on the economy, compared to 55 percent who said that before the debate. Fewer thought McCain would do so – 48 percent after the debate, and 41 percent before.
Before the debate, 59 percent thought Obama understands voters’ needs and problems; that rose to 80 percent after the debate. For McCain, 33 percent felt he understands voters’ needs before the debate, and 44 percent thought so afterwards.
There is some good news for McCain, who still dominates Obama when it comes to perceptions of readiness to be president. Before the debate, 42 percent thought Obama was prepared for the job, and that percentage rose to 58 percent after the debate. But 77 percent felt McCain was prepared for the job before the debate, and 83 percent thought so afterwards.
Before the debate, 51 percent thought Obama would bring real change; afterwards, 63 percent thought that. For McCain, just 23 percent thought he would bring real change before the debate, while 38 percent thought so afterwards.
Fifty-seven percent thought McCain answered the questions that were asked, and an identical though Obama did.
Seventy-two percent of uncommitted voters remained uncommitted after the debate. Fifteen percent committed to Obama, and 12 percent to McCain.
We will have a full report on the poll later on. Uncommitted voters are those who don’t yet know who they will vote for, or who have chosen a candidate but may still change their minds.
