President Sahle-Work Zewde met with African Development Bank President Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina while on a working visit to Côte d’Ivoire.
Meeting at the Bank’s headquarters in Abidjan, they discussed Ethiopia’s current and post-Covid-19 development priorities.
Describing the African Development Bank as Ethiopia’s development partner of choice, President Zewde commended the Bank for its longstanding support and its role in Ethiopia’s development. “In so many areas agriculture, transport, energy, the water sector, multisector the support we have been getting for years from the African Development Bank, up to more than one billion dollars, has been very vital for Ethiopia,” she said.
She said Ethiopians had endured a difficult time over the past two years but that there were positive signs for the future despite the troubles the country was going through. “Industrial parks have especially brought about hope for many young Ethiopians, but specifically women,” she said.
President Sahle-Work, AfDB chief discuss Ethiopia’s development priorities
New interactive report shows Africa’s growing hunger crisis
A new, interactive digital report launched shows that the number of hungry people in Africa continues to rise, spurred by conflict, climate change and economic slowdowns including those triggered by COVID-19. The African Union Commission (AUC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) launched the digital report as the latest update to their annual reporting on the state of food security and nutrition in Africa.
Hunger on the continent has worsened substantially since 2013, the report states, and most of this deterioration occurred between 2019 and 2020. The situation is expected to have deteriorated further this year, with no easing of hunger’s main drivers.
The three agencies behind the report are calling on African countries to heed the call for agrifood systems transformation.
“Countries must engage in and leverage the outcomes of the United Nations Food Systems Summit, the Nutrition for Growth Summit and the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26),” FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa Abebe Haile-Gabriel said with William Lugemwa, UNECA’s Director of the Private Sector Development and Finance Division, and Josefa Sacko, African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment, in the report’s joint foreword.
Report finds trade misinvoicing continues to be a massive and persistent problem
A report published by Global Financial Integrity (GFI) finds an estimated US$1.6 trillion in potential trade misinvoicing among 134 developing countries, of which US$835 billion occurred between developing countries and 36 advanced economies, in 2018. This report, Trade Related Illicit Financial Flows in 134 Developing Countries 2009-2018, shows trade misinvoicing is a persistent problem across developing nations, resulting in potentially massive revenue losses and facilitating illicit financial flows across international borders.
GFI’s President and CEO Tom Cardamone said that “during a time when developing countries are scrambling for every penny to fund vaccines and medicines to fight COVID-19 infections, billions of dollars in duties and taxes are going uncollected. It is absolutely shocking,” he continued, “how few governments are paying any attention to these massive losses.”
Trade misinvoicing occurs when importers and exporters deliberately falsify the declared value of goods on invoices submitted to customs authorities. This allows traders to illegally move money across international borders, evade tax and/or customs duties, launder the proceeds of criminal activity, circumvent currency controls, and hide profits in offshore bank accounts.
U. S. Ambassador visits USAID humanitarian supply warehouse
U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Geeta Pasi viewed some of the supplies that make up America’s $940 million humanitarian assistance to the people of Ethiopia in 2021. At a humanitarian assistance warehouse managed by the U.S. partner, UN World Food Program (WFP) in Kality, Addis Ababa, the Ambassador met WFP Acting Country Director Mietek Maj, and inspected nearly 5,000 bundles of emergency tarpaulin shelter material funded by the U.S. government. This material will provide life-saving emergency shelter for roughly 12,000 Ethiopians affected by the conflict across Amhara, Afar, and Tigray. These supplies are part of a $9.5 million grant from USAID to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) to provide emergency relief for people displaced by the conflict.
“It is important that these life-saving humanitarian supplies reach those in need in Amhara, Afar and Tigray as soon as possible,” said U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Geeta Pasi. She emphasized that the tents are just a small part of the nearly $1 billion in humanitarian assistance the American people have devoted to the people of Ethiopia this year.
