Dashen Bank announces another digital transformation by implementing IBM’s Cloud Pak for Integration on Red Hat Open Shift, to modernize its cloud integration architecture.
Dashen, a pioneering bank which introduces different technology based financial activities, said that the collaboration with IBM will help the bank expand its ecosystem by accelerating digital transformation and new innovative offerings for its customers.
“The demand for digital banking services are increasing in Ethiopia’s telecom sector, accelerating the adoption of technologies will boost financial inclusion in the country. According to the GSMA, smartphones will constitute 58 percent of internet connections in Ethiopia by 2025 and will play a critical role in facilitating the delivery of digital financial services to consumers,” the bank said in its statement sent to Capital.
“Working with IBM and its business partners Eidiko Systems Integration Pvt. Ltd. and Afcor PLC, Dashen Bank has gained an agile, secure, and reliable integration platform which optimizes the bank’s resources across cloud and on-premise environments,” it added.
By adopting a hybrid cloud strategy, the bank can now deploy and expand its digital
channels across any technology environment, enhancing an open banking experience with key stakeholders such as fintechs, neo-banks and corporate and telecom partners, “Dashen can now constantly onboard and integrate new apps and partners with a fast time-to-market.”
The move will allow the bank to be more adaptable to changing business needs and digital-first customer expectations enhancing its competitive advantage through easier deployment and development using a cloud-native approach. Additionally, the bank is able to comply with government and international policies and regulations.
“The collaboration with IBM has provided the ability of the bank to enhance its integration capabilities and reduce integration costs, whilst increasing the speed to market, agility, security, and quality of integration tasks. We can already see these benefits on Amole, our omni-channel banking platform, which is using IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, for critical financial transactions such as money transfers, mobile wallets, and others to streamline operations and improve digital experiences for our customers,” elaborated Shimelis Legesse, Chief Information Officer at Dashen Bank.
“As consumers’ preferences for digital and mobile solutions continue to grow due to increasing smartphone penetration and the demand for convenience, IBM is proud to be a trusted partner to Dashen Bank to accelerate their digital transformation. We helped Dashen Bank to identify the hybrid cloud strategy that meets its needs to ensure the bank had a fully integrated, cloud-ready solution that meets its integration requirement,” said Caroline Mukiira, GM East Africa, IBM.
Dashen optimizes the cloud to widen digital financial reach
Yonas Desta
Name: Yonas Desta
Education: High School Diploma
Company name: Yonas and Friends Leather Craft
Title: Founder
Founded in: 2020
What it do: Produce leather products
Hq: Addis Ababa around Kality
Number of Employees: 6
Startup capital: 250,000 birr
Current Capital: Growing
Reason for starting the Business: To become financially independent
Biggest perk of ownership: Dependency
Biggest strength: Conscientious
Biggest challenge: Finding market
Plan: To increase our production capacity
First career: Driver
Most interested in meeting: No one
Most admired person: No one
Stress reducer: Sport
Favorite past time: Time with friends
Favorite book: The Bible
Favorite destination: Japan
Favorite automobile: Mercedes Benz
CBE, EagleLion ink deal to digitize the fuel market
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) signs an agreement with EagleLion system technology to launch a platform called ‘Nedaj’ to digitalize the fuel market and transactions thereof.
The agreement was signed on August 18, 2022 by Dahlak Yigezu, digital banking vice president of CBE and Besufikad Getachew, CEO of EagleLion.
“The bank is implementing information technology projects that will modernize our country’s payment system and bring it to the level the world has reached,” stated the vice president, adding that ‘Nedaj’ (‘Fuel’), is believed to help digitize the country’s fuel marketing system as the application enables the establishment of a simple, convenient and fast payment system for all parties by avoiding cash transactions.
Customers, in order to access the platform, should fulfill needed documents of ownership to open an account and download the app and should also be users of CBE-Birr. Vehicle owners and gas stations can use the service by installing the application called ‘Nedaj’ (Fuel) on their mobile phones and connecting it to the mobile banking service of the commercial bank.
“In relation to the bank’s efforts, it is also possible to upgrade the mobile application, which has great importance to vehicle owners, gas stations and fuel regulatory bodies, by modernizing our country’s fuel marketing,” Dahlak remarked.
“The application allows fuel trading to be carried out in a modern way. Gas stations, individuals and organizations that own motorcycles to heavy vehicles can use the application,” Besufikad, the founder and manager of EagleLion said whilst indicating that more than 11.2 million liters of fuel is sold per day with over half a billion birr in transactions.
Gov’t tables 8 sugar mills up for grabs
The government issues an expression of interest (EOI) to sell eight sugar millers, with acquisition highs of 100 percent.
It can be recalled that in 2019 through the Ministry of Finance, the government had issued a request for proposal (RFI) on the way to privatizing selected sugar factories.
This time around, under the EOI, the government has appointed Ernst and Young LLP as the lead transaction advisor to assist with the transaction process.
On the invitation notice issued on August 19, the Ethiopian government disclosed that it has initiated holistic reform aiming at increasing private sector participation in the ownership and control of sugar companies to sustain rapid and inclusive economic growth by laying the ground for economic transformation that leverages the increasing role of the private sector.
The government has invited international and domestic investors to participate in the tendering of eight sugar factories; Omo Kuraz 1, 2, 3, 5, Arjo Dedessa, Kessem, Tana Beles, and Tendaho.
Most of the mills are recently built.
Interested investors have been invited to acquire up to 100 percent of the sugar factories that have been built in great infrastructure, abundant water, land resources and excellent cane growing agro climatic conditions.
The invitation notice stated that in addition to sugar production the enterprises were engaged in the production of ethanol and electricity for internal use and for supply to the national grid.
When the political economic reform was introduced in 2018, the government passed a decision that mega enterprises would be partly or fully privatized. Inclusive of that was the sugar sector and it was actually among the first ones to get on board of the privatization pipeline. However, excluding issuing RFIs, so far further processes had not been conducted.
