The Board of Directors of Dashen Bank has elected Dulla Mekonnen as its chairman effective December 21, 2021. Dulla took over the chairmanship from Neway Beyene, who resigned from the post for personal reasons. The outgoing chairman joined the Board in 2014 and had been in the post since 2018.
The newly appointed chairman, Dulla Mekonnen, has academic background in agricultural and electrical engineering. He received his BSc. in Electrical Engineering from Adama Science and Technology University, where he also pursued an MBA. Dulla is a veteran of Ethiopia’s sugar processing industry, having served the oldest sugar plants, Wonji/Shoa, Matahara, and Fincha, for over 18 years. He was General Manager of Fincha Sugar Factory before joining Limu Coffee Farm PLC in February 2016. In July 2018, he moved to Ethio Leather Industry PLC as General Manager. Dulla then joined Horizon Plantation PLC in October 2019 where he served as Assistant to the Managing Director. Currently, he is Deputy CEO of Midroc Investment Group. Dulla joined the Board of Dashen Bank in early 2021.
Dulla Mekonnen assumes chairmanship of Dashen Bank
Nation earns 520 million USD from coffee export in five months
The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority disclosed that it has earned 520 million USD from the export of 140,000 tons of coffee in the first five months of this Ethiopian fiscal year.
Senior federal and regional officials have visited major coffee producing areas surrounding the market town of Dila and Yirgachefe Woredas of Gedeo Zone to monitor coffee development and production activities of farmers in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR).
Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority Director –General, Adugna Debela on the occasion said the country has earned 520 million USD from 140,000 tons of coffee export in the past five months.
“This is more than double in volume and earning compared to the same period last Ethiopian fiscal year,” Adugna said. “It is also the largest of our exports ever.”
The director general attributed the remarkable performance mainly to the ongoing activities to boost the development and production of quality coffee.
The invaluable policy reform conducted has decisively shortened coffee supply value chain, and significantly reduced produce wastage, he added.
Coffee producers who supplied quality coffee were made to gain better price as a reward and this helped well to get 70 percent of quality coffee supply which is competitive for the export market, he pointed out.
Moreover, the policy reform coupled with the efforts being carried out to expanding international market options have yielded notable results, he noted.
The authority has planned to export 280 million tons of quality coffee and earn over 1.2 billion USD this fiscal year, the director general stated.
Ethiopian Diaspora to open state of the art Dialysis Unit at Menilik II Hospital
An Ethiopian diaspora from Atlanta, Georgia, is going to open a state of the art dialysis unit at Menelik II Referral Hospital.
It is to be recalled that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made a call to the Ethiopian diaspora to come home for the upcoming Ethiopian Christmas and Epiphany holidays.
Among the diaspora who responded to the call, Tigist Abebe, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Yeabe Medical Center and Rehabilitation said she has been doing various activities to start dialysis service with an outlay of over 10 million birr in Ethiopia over the past four months.
Tigist said some 30 machines have been delivered to the hospital and it is expected to start operation soon.
She added that the coming of the diaspora has many advantages, noting that even before the premier’s call for homecoming, “some of us were exchanging ideas to come and do something to our country.”
Following the call, the motivation of the diaspora has grown greatly and they need to contribute to their motherland, following our footstep, the CEO stated.
There may be challenges like in any less developed countries, Tigist noted, adding that many things are being done by the government and a lot of things are being facilitated now.
From my own experience, a lot has changed. As a member of the diaspora, we do not have to take advantage of it and we have to be treated like any other fellow Ethiopian.
The Chinese tech giant America tried to crush rises again
The US carried out a ruthless campaign against Huawei, but its sanctions have simply made the firm find innovative ways to break the technology stranglehold placed on it.
By Tom Fowdy
There has been no other technology firm that has symbolized and encapsulated the dynamics of the emerging struggle between China and the United States the way Huawei has. The Shenzhen telecommunications firm has been one of China’s leading technology giants, and was subjected in 2019-2020 to a relentless campaign by the United States, which sought to destroy it through a variety of means.
From blocking exports to it, isolating it from global chipmakers, forcing allies to ban its participation in their 5G networks, imposing criminal charges against it and kidnapping one of its senior executives, America’s campaign against the firm was relentless across the board and bruising to its commercial fortunes.
In 2021, Huawei’s sales ultimately tumbled because it was forced to sell off its popular smartphone brand, Honor, whilst also losing chip capacity, which severely limited its other high-end smartphone business. The firm’s network carrier business survived, and continues to lead the world in 5G market share outside of the handful of US-aligned countries who banned it, but Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei described the situation as a fight for the company’s survival.
Huawei is now bouncing back with renewed vigor. It is not only planning big, but acting big too. The company has not accepted its fate or the vice the US has placed around it to cut it off from global chip supplies. A story recently appeared in a series of Chinese news outlets stating that Huawei had established a new subsidiary, called Huawei Precision Manufacturing, armed with capital of 600 million yuan.
The new organization denied it would be making chips, but it has been tipped to focus on “the packaging, testing and assembling of high-end devices, modules, components in the fields of optoelectronics, wireless, digital energy, smart cars, and other terminal products” – many technologies which are associated with the chip industry.
But that isn’t all: throughout the course of 2021, Huawei has quietly attained operating stakes in several Chinese semiconductor and lithography companies, essential root technologies which the US has sought to blacklist the firm from. There are also persistent reports that the company will open its own “wafer foundry” in Wuhan in 2022. While its new subsidiary might not be making chips, it is evident that Huawei as a whole is striving to do so. It is creating an entire self-owned supply chain for itself, outside of America’s clutches.
While this will not be an easy or short-term task, these developments are big red flags that America’s technology war against China may be about to backfire, and that its campaign to isolate and damage Huawei has passed its peak.
Washington’s primary weapon against Chinese companies has been its commerce department’s “entity list” – a prohibition which seeks to block the export of sensitive or critical technologies to the designated target. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have been obsessed with it, adding an ever-growing list of Chinese technology companies across all critical sectors, such as telecommunications, artificial intelligence, aerospace, biotechnology and semiconductor firms.
The US believes it can contain China’s rise in critical technologies by blocking supplies of high-end technology, crippling the capabilities of the businesses.
While these firms could source supplies from outside of the US, Washington brought in an additional sanction, for Huawei in particular, entitled “The Foreign Direct Product Rule,” banning companies who use any American semiconductor patents from supplying Huawei. Hence the firm’s particularly difficult situation.
Washington has assumed that China will struggle to innovate the respective technology needed itself. But because the United States made the challenge against Huawei political, the company, and China as a whole, has a point to prove by ensuring its success.The firm has subsequently poured billions into not only redeveloping and expanding the scope of its business, but also towards making itself self-reliant.
Huawei should not be underestimated, as it has one of the highest research and development budgets on the planet, the fifth-highest worldwide as a company, which last year alone exceeded $20 billion. In fact, this R&D budget alone as a company exceeds that of entire countries, such as Australia. How does Huawei afford it? The company isn’t truly on its knees, but receives a large income through its dominance of 5G patents that earn billions in royalties.
Instead of killing the company, US sanctions against it have simply made it fire all guns blazing towards breaking the technology stranglehold placed on it. For the time being, the exact capabilities that Huawei’s manufacturing will soon have are unclear. It is widely understood that China is not able to make certain types of chips on its own accord, due to having no access to the extreme ultraviolet lithography technology the US is also depriving it of.
However, it was quietly announced that Huawei would launch its own chipset by 2022, and declared that it would “regain their smartphone crown” by 2023. How is it going to do this? The company clearly has something up its sleeve which we don’t know about, leaving the whole process hidden in secrecy.
But one thing is clear: against all the odds, Huawei has set itself on the path towards breaking out of the US tech embargo placed on it. Americans have repeatedly said China can’t innovate, have persistently accused them of “stealing technology” and staked all on blocking China’s technological rise.
But what happens if a single company not only finds a way to outdo this, but likewise provides means to other blacklisted firms as well? Huawei appears to be not only preparing to create new chips in the long run, but potentially semiconductor-related equipment too.
It serves as a reminder that it is indeed a company of strategic importance in China, and that might just be why the US has gone after it so aggressively. As such an innovative firm, Huawei won’t play by the constraints the US has set for it, but is ultimately looking towards changing the game by inventing something new and forcing its way out. In trying to kill the ‘monster’, America has created a bigger, stronger one; Washington’s politicians may not have realized their mistake yet, but when they do, it will hit them hard.
Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.
