ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) signed an agreement worth 210m euros with Vergnet Groupe, a French company, providing the former to generate electric power from Ashegoba Wind Power Project.
EEPCo General Manager Mhret Debebe and the president of the company, Marc Vergnet, signed the agreement here on Thursday [9 October].
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Minister of Mines and Energy Alemayehu Tegenu said the project has a capacity of generating 120 MW along with annual energy production of from 400 to 450 GWH. He said the government has been aggressively working to meet the ever growing energy demand in the country.
Activities are well in progress to make three electric power stations operational before 2009.
The project, the first of its kind in Ethiopia, has an implementation schedule of 36 months, the EEPCo general manager said. The first phase, yielding 30 MW capacity, will be commissioned in 16 months, he added.
The French minister of state for foreign trade, Anne-Marie Idrac, said the agreement will contribute a lot to further scale up the existing cooperation between the two countries.
Ashegoba Wind Power project is going to be one of the six generation projects currently under construction with an overall budget size of 3.1bn euros.
The feasibility study of the project was conducted by Lahmeyer International of Germany through close collaboration of GTZ.
The project is financed by AFD [expansion untraced] and one of the largest French banks, BNP Paribas, and is to be constructed by one of the leading French contractors, Vergnet.
Addis Ababa (U.S. Embassy) – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – On September 15, U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director Glenn Anders inaugurated a water system at a ceremony at the Kebridehar town high school. The water system serves the Korahe Zone in Somali Region. The water taps were installed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Samaritian’s Purse. The Kebridehar town water system, which serves the school and the town’s approximately 10,000 residents, was rehabilitated by the International Rescue Committee as part of a water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions project funded by USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. In addition to rehabilitating the town water supply, the USAID-funded project is increasing access to safe drinking water in Korahe and Degehabur zones by rehabilitating non-functional boreholes and installing pumps and generators.
Ambassador Yamamoto and USAID/Ethiopia Mission Director Glenn Anders travelled to Somali Region on September 15-16, as part of a U.S. Government delegation that included the top official from the USAID Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, Michael Hess, and USAID Office of Food for Peace Director Jeff Borns. The group met with regional officials and USAID partners to assess the complex humanitarian situation and analyze the effectiveness of U.S. Government humanitarian assistance in affected areas.
ADDIS ABABA – The American people, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have supported child health services and strengthened the health care system through the Essential Services for Health in Ethiopia (ESHE) project. Over the past five years, the project has improved the lives of over 15 million Ethiopians through health initiatives at the community and national levels.
ESHE is coming to a close, the project shared lessons learned and highlighted the challenges and successes of project interventions at a meeting held September 17 at the Global Hotel. Participants included senior representatives from USAID, the Ministry of Health, Regional Health Bureaus, Woreda Health Offices, and local non government and community based organizations.
Since November 2003, ESHE has helped improve child health services for communities in 101 woredas in the three most populated regions of Ethiopia: Amhara, Oromia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples. The child health interventions of the project focused on improving immunization services, on promoting essential nutrition actions and on strengthening integrated approaches toward care of newborn and childhood illnesses.
For this, ESHE provided capacity building support to health workers and managers in the woredas, zones and regions, strengthened supervision and monitoring capabilities of those managers, helped intensify large scale community mobilization, and implemented strong behavior change communication aimed at improving community and household health practices. Since the project worked in very close collaboration with the Ethiopian Government’s Health Extension Program, its contribution to the mobilization of more than 50,000 voluntary community health workers in support of the prevention and promotion activities of the health extension workers was key to the overall success of the project.
In addition, ESHE celebrated with its Ministry of Health counterparts the progress that health care financing reform has achieved in Ethiopia. ESHE’s support to the establishment of a legal framework for health facilities to retain and utilize fees was instrumental in laying the foundation for regional level implementation of different components of health care financing. The surveys disseminated during the meeting showed how health facilities start devoting resources to improving their infrastructure, their information systems, their human resource capacity and their supplies in drugs and medicine.
During the meeting it was also announced that the achievements of this projects would be build upon by two newly awarded projects.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) today appealed for US$460 million to feed 9.6 million hungry people affected by drought and high food prices in Ethiopia through to March next year.
“The Horn of Africa region is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since 1984, and Ethiopia is caught in the middle,” said WFP Executive Director, Josette Sheeran. “We know what needs to be done – we just need the funds to go out and do our job, protecting the hungry.”
Around a quarter of those in need – some 2 million people – live in the arid Somali Region of Ethiopia where it has not rained for three years.
Pastoralist communities in the region have already lost half of their cattle herds. People are skipping meals and parents are pulling children out of school so that they can help to beg in towns or scour the countryside for food.
“Millions of people are in extreme distress and urgently need food and nutrition,” said Sheeran.
WFP is facing a similar humanitarian challenge in neighbouring Somalia, where 3.25 million people – almost half the population – have been affected by drought, high food prices and conflict.
Ninety percent of WFP’s food deliveries to Somalia arrive by sea, but attacks by pirates are disrupting supply lines and discouraging ship owners from making the journey.
A Canadian naval vessel that has been escorting ships carrying humanitarian aid will withdraw its support on 27 September, and no nation has yet volunteered to take over this protective role.
(APA) ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The Inter-Parliamentary Union, which comprises 143 member countries announced on Monday plans to hold its general assembly in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital in April 2009, APA learns here.
The announcement was made by the visiting President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Pier Ferdinando Casini who arrived here on Monday to observe and discuss with Ethiopian officials about the preparations for the gathering.
Casini told reporters that hundreds of parliamentarians drawn from IPU member states, including many African countries would take part in the conference.
According to him, HIV/AIDS, drought, peace, and religious tolerance would be the major agenda items of the conference.
During ameeting with Ethiopian president Girma Woldegiorgisse, the two discussed issues relating to regional peace and security, including the situation in Somalia.
Established 120 years ago, IPU, which is based in Switzerland, has 143 member parliaments.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s commodity exchange plans to trade coffee through a new electronic system, starting next month, the exchange said on Monday.
“Coffee trading will be conducted in the afternoons, beginning October, so as to link it with the New York market,” Eleni Gebremedhin, Director of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) said.
To participate in the electronic trade, sellers will be required to produce warehouse receipts and buyers will have to show a pre-trade deposit in banks.
Ethiopia has won trademark rights for its specialty Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe coffees and has signed agreement with 70 global companies to promote its coffee brands.
Ethiopia is Africa’s largest coffee producer and prides itself as the birth place of the beans. Last season, it exported 170,888 tonnes and earned $525.2 million.
