Benishangul Gumuz region establishes a committee to undertake a process to clear the mining area of Kurmuk Gold Mine (KGM), a large scale mine, from illegally settled artisanal miners, who occupied the area following the declaration of huge amounts of the precious metal at KGM’s mining and exploration license area.
During the latest high level delegation led by Takele Uma, Minister of Mines, Fitsum Assefa, Minister of Planning and Development, Demelash Gebremichael, Commissioner-general of the Federal Police Commission, Ashadli Hassan, President of Benishangul Gumuz region, Debele Kabeta, Commissioner of Customs Commission, Million Mathewos, State Minister of Mines, and others central and regional government officials paid a visit on Monday January 9 to the company mining site 750 km west of Addis Ababa at Kurmuk Wereda of Assosa Zone.
Following the visit, a subsequent meeting was held at the regional President Office in Assosa to evaluate the challenges that the company faces on matters production as per the time frame set by the central government.
On its presentation paper, the company indicated that due to a significant presence of a number of illegal miners carrying out hard rock mining using mercury within the mining license and exploration license area, it has become difficult to conduct any development and exploration activities.
In his presentation, Brox Worku, General Manager of KGM, said that the company was supposed to start production within two years as per the license approved by the Council of Minister about a year ago.
“We have so far spent USD 80 million for the procurement of machines and other relevant expenses to start the blasting and planning of the mining machine. However, due to the invasion of illegal and artisanal miners, who are neither from the locality nor aligned to the site, the operation has been hampered,” Brox explained the current predicament of the company.
He explained that active presence of artisanal and illegal miners within the mining and exploration area has impacted the project by delaying the start of development activities in addition to security and safety treats at the site.
“As per our plan the processing plant is bound to be erected in a short time, but prior to that at least for the coming one year, mining should be conducted since the resource will be fed to the processing plant to produce the gold,” he said, adding, “based on the projection, the company is set to start blasting within the coming five months to start the mining. However as per international law and our principle, we could not carry out the blasting since there is presence of artisanal at the site.”
“We need swift involvement from the regional administration and central government,” he underlined.
He cited that the illegal miners were not at the site about year ago, “What is the difficulty level of relocating or moving the illegal miners from the site? As a company we need a clear line about the issue.”
As per the plan, the company will produce nine tons of gold per annum for two decades and also targets to increase the volume to up to 11 tons in the coming one and half years since commencement of production.
During the visit, the presence of illegal miners was heavily observed. Some eye witnesses that Capital interviewed at the location said that foreigners’ particularly Chinese citizens were working with the illegal miners.
The presentation document indicated that illegal miners useSudanese nationals who use mercury, and Chinese who use sodium cyanide to extract gold.
He recommended that in the near future KGM will focus on the 100 km square mining license area, “So that this new coming artisanal can carry out their activity in the other location that is also under KGM’s exploration license areas but which also has gold deposits.”
He reminded that the company has already transported pilot gold processing machine for artisanal miners at the locality at a cost of one million USD with the installation set to consume USD 200,000.
“The pilot machine shall accommodate all local artisanal,” Brox told Capital.
He said that there are also physical attacks to his employees and vandalism at the camp site is rampant, “we need arms for our security personnel to keep the safe.”
The Federal Police Commissioner General during the meeting expressed commitment to offer support for the security issues and arms.
Demelash also recommended the regional administration in collaboration with federal security apparatus to organize a security body from retired military personnel coming from the region.
Takele said that if the company commences operation it would be a good advantage for the sector, the region and country in general since it is a large scale mining business with a capacity of producing the amount currently produced.
He reminded that the Council of Ministers had approved the mining license through understanding that the company should commence production in two years, “but if everything is smooth and the company delays to keep its commitment we will have to revoke its license.”
“However this kind of illegal issues would be a leverage to mention as a reason for the delay, so we have to solve the problems and push the miners to get in to activity,” Takele added.
He expressed his expectation that the regional administration would play its part to solve the problem as a body that has a mandate to alleviate such kind of problems.
“Problems that would be solved at the central government level would be solved by the federal government,” he elaborated
Ashadli said that the illegal activity has to be corrected since the project has significant advantage for the country.
“The mining site is officially transferred to KGM so it is not acceptable to allow others to enter at the licensed area,” he said.
At the meeting he also declared the formation of a committee comprising of Assosa Zone and Kurmuk Woreda heads, security advisor of the regional president, Deputy Police Commissioner of the region, and the regional Mines Bureau.
“This committee will undertake a detail execution process and make sure the relocation of illegal miners as soon as possible from the licensed area of the company,” he added.
An association of artisans will also be established to use the pilot machine that the company handed over for the Woreda.

In the first half of the current fiscal year, Ethio telecom generates a total of 33.8 billion birr in revenue hitting 96 percent of its target whilst moving 19.9 percent clear of its previous budget year’s financial mark at a similar period.
From the total revenue share, Mobile voice accounted for 47.4% while Data and Internet contributed 28%, with International business shares taking 8.4%, Value Added Service accounting for 6.5%, infrastructure share holding 2.2% while the remaining 7.5% stemmed from other sources. During the period, 64.8 million dollars in foreign currency was generated from international business which met 90% of the telecommunications firm’s target.
As the firm indicates, its total subscribers has now reached 70 million attaining 98.6% of the subscriber base target and an increase of 15.1% which means an addition of 9.2 Million customers from previous budget year similar period. Mobile voice subscribers reached 67.7 Million, Data and Internet users 31.3 Million, Fixed Services 862.2K and Fixed Broadband subscribers reached 566.2K whilst the telecom density has reached 65.7%.
Service outages due to security instability were noted to have compromised expansion and enhancement projects implementation, supply chain, increasing operational costs and revenue impacts during the two quarters. In addition, fiber and copper cable vandalism, commercial power interruption, and delay in land acquisition for new sites deployment were stated among the main challenges during the reporting period.
“This achievement can be considered remarkable especially given the challenges posed to provide and expand telecom services and the fact that it is obtained amid a competitive market,” said Frehiwot Tamru, CEO of Ethio telecom.
The telecommunication powerhouse as stated on its performance made a loan repayment of 3.4 billion birr or 60.8 million dollars for the projects.
As part of expanding its business, ethio telecom recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Tele Mobile South Sudan Limited Company in the areas of international internet gateways/communication line, telecom infrastructure expansion and telecom services provisioning as well as other related services. Additionally Frehiwot has also indicated that her team is assessing the Djibouti telecom sector to make similar engagements.
“In addition to efforts of expanding revenue, we have formulated and implemented a cost saving strategy by avoiding unnecessary costs, and were able to save 3.5 billion birr, achieving 134% of the plan,” said the CEO.
Furthermore, a total of 228 project works that would help expand and strengthen the company’s infrastructure, increase network coverage and capacity were carried out enhancing the capacity to serve 5 million additional customers.
The firm also launched its pre-commercial 5G mobile service in the city of Adama, to enable mission critical services and realize technologies such as internet of things.
Also through its digital financial service telebirr, it has acquired more than 27.2 million customers and transacted a total of 166.1 billion birr in the economy in six months, generating an income of 82.5 million birr.
As agents and merchants are needed to ensure the delivery of the service to many and increase accessibility of telebirr, the firm has used 372 service centers and engaged with 112 master agents, as well as more than 98.8 thousand agents and more than 25.5 thousand merchants.

In addition, system integration with 18 banks has been completed and money transfer from bank to telebirr and vice versa has been made possible with 15 banks. By launching the telebirr remittance service and linking it to international money transfer institutions, citizens in 44 countries have had the option to easily transfer money to their home country. As a result, the firm received 719.6 thousand US dollars in the last 6 months.
A total of 214 institutions have integrated their payment systems with telebirr. Additionally, 127 government services were made to initiate their payment systems digitally.
At the beginning of the fiscal year, Ethio telecom introduced its new strategy called LEAD after concluding its three year BRIDGE strategy with results of 75.6% growth in customer base, 76% growth in revenue, 104% growth in foreign exchange revenue, and 142% growth in net profit.
A few weeks ago, the telecommunications firm restored telecom services in 27 towns of Tigray region after 2 years. As indicated, maintenance of some 1,800 kilometers of fiber optics line is underway with the maintenance of 931 km of the line so far being completed.

Ethiopia and France sign a grant agreement worth 32 million euros for two projects related to the rehabilitation of electrical infrastructure in war affected areas in north Ethiopia and strengthening of food security in the country.
The Foreign Ministers of France and Germany, Catherine Colonna and Annalena Baerbock respectively, paid a two day official visit starting from Thursday January 12-13 2023 to explore how France, Germany and the EU could support the country and its people on the path to lasting peace.

It is said that the support will meet the needs expressed by the local authorities by addressing 12 million peoples in Tigray, Amhara and Afar region affected by the war.
The first project will support the rehabilitation of the electrical network in North Amhara, Afar, and Tigray, including around Alamata for the supply of electric equipment including electric transformers and high voltage lines. It is said that 10 million people will stand to benefit from stable access to electricity in the northern region.
The second project is 10 million euro co-funded with the EU, and will focus on food security with short term support to agricultural activities in all three regions, benefiting 400,000 farmers, including women who were victims of the conflict in different part of the country with the aim to help restart agriculture through distribution of seeds.
The ceremony took place on January 13, 2023 with the presence of the Secretary of State to the Minister of Finance, Saemereta Sewasew, CEO of the Ethiopian Electric Power Company (EEP), Ashebir Balcha, and the European Union Delegation to Ethiopia.
The two Foreign Ministers held discussions on this issue with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen and the country’s President Sahle-Work Zewde and officials from the African Union. PM Abiy Ahmed tweeted that the, “in-depth and fruitful discussions” he held with the two Foreign Ministers were “reflective of the strong relations Ethiopia holds with both France and Germany.”
Germany and France supported the transport and distribution of 50,000 tons of the wheat donated by Ukraine for Ethiopia and Somalia to a tune of US$14 million each through the WFP. Germany covered the costs for the delivery to Ethiopia while France covered the costs for the delivery to Somalia.
The conflict which broke out in November 2, 2020 between the federal government and the TPLF group has now stopped after 2 years following the peace deal held in November 2022 in Pretoria South Africa. The deal has seen steady progress with basic services restored to the Tigray region, increased aid, and a first handover of heavy weapons by the TPLF to Ethiopia’s federal forces.
The AU brokered the Tigray peace deal to which monitors arrived in the region this month to oversee its implementation. Earlier this week the national defense force has announced withdrawal of Amhara region forces from the region.