Siinqee bank announces its official operation becoming the first bank to transfer from micro-financing. On Thursday September 22, 2022 the bank held its official opening ceremony with the presence of higher government officials and its customers.
Speaking at the occasion, Neway Megersa, president of the bank, said that the bank has prepared to give both banking and micro finance services to its customers.
On February 16, 2022, Siinqee officially received its license from the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) to start operations with a subscribed capital of 15 billion birr and a paid up capital of 7 billion birr following its transformation from Oromia Credit and Saving Share Company staring from May 2021.

Following the issuance of proclamation no.40/1996, a proclamation that determined the licensing and supervision of micro finance institutions, Oromia Credit and Saving Share Company was established in August 1997 to give micro finance services obtaining an operational license from NBE and trading license from the federal Ministry of Trade and Industry.
“The purpose of the establishment was because of the inaccessibility of contemporary financial services to the rural people in the region which contributes to their impoverishment,” said the president.
According to him, with in the past six month the bank has served over one million clients including farmers, women, unemployed youths, traders, Medium and Small-Scale Enterprise operators, women entrepreneurs and others. The bank president also emphasized that the vision of the bank is to be the first (the leading bank) in the next five years and be one of Africa’s largest banks.
Six month ago, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) approved the appointment of Neway Megersa as the first president of Siinqee Bank. The company has also appointed Zewdie Tefera, who has been working as acting president of the bank as the Chief Operating Officer.

The change came through the proclamation no 626/2009 and NBE directive no SBB/74/2020, which allows microfinance institutions to evolve into commercial banks with a two-year transition period, to which the executives of the microfinance made the transformation from microfinance to banking services. The company was thus renamed to Siinqee Bank, which is sourced from the cultural institution of Oromo women.
Currently, the company has more than 400 full-fledged branches which 250 of these branches has got the NBE permit to start operating while the rest 155 are waiting the permits.

Energy utility providers in Somaliland and their government form a special purpose vehicle (SPV) as per the Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) recommendation in order to realize interconnection to access cheap energy from Ethiopia.
The SPV Company, Tayo Energy Transmission Company (TETCO) LTD was formed from the Somaliland side to carry out the project that shall connect the country with the Ethiopian line.
According to the information Capital obtained from EEP, recently a private utility operator in Somaliland was in communications with the state owned energy generator, which is also responsible for power export, to connect Somaliland with Ethiopia through high tension lines so as to embark electric export to the self proclaimed country in the horn of Africa.
“However, we understood that the there are several utility companies operating in Somaliland. So we have communicated with their government to come up with a single entity that will be conducive for EEP to sell power smoothly,” Moges Mekonnen, Public Relation Head of EEP, told Capital.
He said that once their line stretches up to the Ethiopian boarder it will not be difficult to commence the cheap power export to Somaliland. However, the need for a single focal body to get in to a deal was mentioned as vital.
“I think the formation of the SPV is part of our recommendation,” he added.
Mohamed Farah, Managing Director of TETCO, told Capital that the company is formed and owned by current energy service providers, government and investors.
“We intend to serve all Somaliland energy service providers,” he explained via email.
He added that the creation of the company is to handle the project for transmission line and other related parts with an estimated cost around USD 200 million that will be covered by the private sector, Somaliland government and international stakeholders. However, he did not disclose who the international partners will be.
“Regarding the commencement of the project, we are planning to start as soon as possible and we expect that it will be three phases. The first phase will be finalized within two years or less,” he said.
In Somaliland about 15 major electricity service providers are currently operational.
Moges estimated that once the project is started it may take from one and half to two years, while the workload from the Ethiopian side will be shorter.
He reminded that there is ample infrastructure in the area since Somaliland is connected to about three countries. “The Aysah Wind Farm project, which is located at Shenelle Woreda of Sitti Zone of Somali region, is very close to the boarder of Somaliland so we have the line which has a capacity to carry 230 KV there, with a minor investment required from Somaliland to ensure that connection,” Moges said.
“We expect the total length of the transmission to be around 500 KM with a capacity of 220 KV or 400 KV. The number of substations is not finalized yet,” the TETCO Head said on his part.
Capital learnt that the Somaliland government through SPV arrangement joined TETCO to realize the demand of the Ethiopian side to connect the two nations.
The newly formed company will be responsible to distribute the energy for the utilities in the country.
So far the border town of Wajaale of Somaliland that shares Tog Wajaale of the Ethiopian border town is accessing Ethiopian power for cheap. However, big cities like Hargeisa, which is the capital, are using the diesel energy that is provided by multiple companies.
The cost of electricity in Somaliland is one of the highest in the world, while the Ethiopian rate is the vice versa.
Moges said that the country has ample capacity to provide energy for the neighboring country, “We are improving the handling of our energy. For instance for the New Year holiday festivity, we did not force factories to halt their operation as we did in the past.”
“We have made ready all our units for the holiday season and made available up to 3,200 MW energy capacities and the estimation consumption for this pick season was 2,700 MW, while the actual usage was 2,500MW. I say this to show how we are capable to provide energy for Somaliland at this stage if not in the coming years,” the Public Relation Head explained.
The 40MW energy generation wind mills of Aysah Wind Farm that was erected about 15 km from the border of Somaliland was connected to the national grid this week and the second phase with an additional 40 MW will be connected within three months time.
The wind farm has a capacity to generate 120 MW of power, “To commence the installation of additional windmills with the capacity of 40 MW, it is now in the manufacturing stages.”
The EPC project is managed by the Chinese Dongfang Electricity and 85 percent of the USD 257.3 million worth project is covered by Exim Bank of China while the remainder is covered from the national coffer.
Aysha is located about 700 km east of Addis Ababa and about 173 km from the Dire Dawa, one of the biggest cities in eastern Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is exporting energy for Djibouti and Sudan, while export to Kenya will be officially commenced in November.

RedFox Solutions Group becomes the first private data center after officially launching its Operations on Monday September 19, 2022. The inauguration ceremony took place at Hyatt Regency hotel and saw addresses by government officials and executives from both companies.
The HQ and Modular Data Center 1 (RFETH-MDC01) are strategically located at the ICT Park and are expected to become a key pillar for; building Ethiopia’s digital economy, lifting the startup ecosystem and overall acceleration of the digital transformation of the country. As indicated on the launching ceremony, the move aims to bring state-of the-art infrastructure, availability, efficiency, and sustainability to the sought-after ICT hub at the park.
RedFox was founded by Ethiopian-Diaspora Professionals with multiple years of experience in the areas of Telecom and Information Technology. In addition to its four main products (Edge Presence, Cloud, Modular Data Center and Build-to-suite), RedFox offers off-premise customized infrastructure deployments , secure certified designs, and architectures for institutions that have compliance requirements for in-house solutions. RedFox will also provide certifications-enabled data center designs to keep up with the quick and ever-changing trends in the industry; to list some of the best certifications its designs will enable: HIPPA, PCI DSS, SSAE 16, SOC, ETC.

The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has set the ball rolling this season with an early floatation of international tenders to procure fertilizer unlike previous regular timeframe trends as it gears to import its highest volume ever.
It’s a common occurrence to see the country issue tenders in the months of September and October for fertilizer procurement. However, unlike the past, MoA has now already issued a tender to procure different type of fertilizers for the upcoming agricultural season.
Mengistu Tesfa, Agricultural Input Supply Lead Executive at MoA, said that the volume this time around will vary since the government is working to import up to two million tons of different type of fertilizers.
“We are working to import high volumes of input since there are different agricultural development initiatives in the country,” he told Capital.
He added that particularly this year, the biding processes commenced early to manage the vast operation on time.
In the past, the procurement period of the country faced several challenges including sudden price hikes from the product in the global market.
Recently, Yinager Dessie, Governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia, told Capital that the country was forced to allocate huge sums of hard currency to import the input unlike the expectation.
“In the past, our expenditure was not more than USD 500 million for fertilizer import but that narrative has changed as we have now consumed USD 1.2 billion during the past budget year,” the Governor explained.
In the year, the government made available 1.5 million metric tons of different type of fertilizer for this agricultural season, while of that about 1.3 million metric tons was procured in the 2021/22 procurement season.
From the total available 1.5 million metric tons of fertilizer for the current season the distributed amount was 1.3 million and the remaining 0.2 million metric tons or two million quintal was a surplus that was transferred to the coming dry farming season and or for the major farming season that mostly commences in June.
As per the information that Capital obtained from relevant bodies like the logistics enterprise and the government, the past season’s import has shown reduction when compared with the preceding two years, meanwhile the cost was incomparably higher.
In the preceding two years, Ethiopia had procured 1.45 and 1.74 million metric tons of fertilizer for 2019/20 and 2020/21 agriculture seasons respectively.
Mengistu said that in this coming procurement operation the government has set a target to buy up to 2 million metric tons since the agricultural activity that are held on and off the farming season are growing and as a result it is expected to push the demand for fertilizer.
“This time around we have changed our course by taking the procurement process, that is, the tender floating period, earlier than expected,” he added.
Ethiopian Agricultural Business Corporation, a public enterprise that was recently included in the Ethiopian Investment Holding, is usually the responsible body for carrying out the procurement of the product.
For the last three years, the Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise, the state owned logistics enterprise and vessels operator, has been hired by the government to handle the fertilizer import which is mainly transported from Morocco and ports of the Black Sea.