The reality of the COVID-19 pandemic is looming over the music and arts community in Ethiopia. The ripple effects reach everywhere, from film to live concerts to visual art to performances. There’s no arguing with the need to take precautions, keep the virus from harming or killing people, and hopefully keep it from overwhelming the healthcare system. The fallout beyond the immediate health crisis is also much deeper than missing that movie or show you’ve been looking forward to—artists and musicians are bracing for harsh economic impact, and the pandemic underscores the flimsiness of our support systems for arts and culture.
The first but surely not the last one, Oulala, a full day of joy featuring Baloji hosted by the Alliance Ethio-française Addis Ababa is now postponed indefinitely. The event was going to be held on Saturday March 28, 2020.
The event includes musical brunch, animation film for kids, screening of short films, dj set opening of comic exhibition, circus, live drawing concert by cartoonists and kids corner; where Baloji was meant to perform.
“It is with great sadness that we are forced to cancel /for now/ Baloji’s tour in East Africa,” a statement reads from Alliance Ethio-française.
Starting from March 19, 2020 Baloji was planning to have a tour to seven East African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan.
Baloji is a Belgian rapper, MC and hip hop artist of Congolese origin. Known as MC Balo in the hip hop group Starflam, he continued as solo artist starting 2004. Baloji is an artist, a musician, poet, film director, a man of images and ideas.
Concert postponed after coronavirus fear
Colonial era treaty is a fairy tale
No earthly power will stop Ethiopia from building the dam
Threatening Ethiopia on developing of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is unacceptable and a waste of time said government officials.
The project that is being constructed on Abay (Nile) river near the boarder of Sudan has become a source of disagreement between Ethiopia and Egypt for the past years.
Though Ethiopia disclosed that the project would not have significant harm on downstream countries, Egypt claimed that the project would affect its share of water without any concrete evidence.
Egypt tirelessly claimed over the years that the project would minimize its ‘historic water share’ without even giving a slightest concern for the people of Ethiopia and their development.
In the latest conditions since Ethiopia rejects the involvement of any external body on the negotiation of the three countries Egyptian media outlets have been disseminating several threatening reports that mock Ethiopia.
On Friday March 13 during a discussion about Abay, GERD and related issues Hirut Woldemariam, Minister of Science and Higher Education, strongly stated that because of Abay Ethiopia is being threatened by external powers.
“Because of utilizing our national natural resource, military warning, refusal to access of finance and enforcing other tactics should be stopped,” she said.
She also stated the treaty that was signed during the colonial era without Ethiopia is a simple fairy tale that Ethiopia will never recognize.
During the week Ethiopian senior military and security officials who paid a visit to the project, announced that the country is fully ready for a full-fledged military response.
A delegation led by General Birhanu Jula, Deputy Chief of Staff and Military Operations Division Head of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, visited Sudan and met with Prime Minister Abdela Hamdok, who survived an assassination attempt earlier on the week, and other top Sudanese officials.
Seleshi Bekele (PhD), Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, stated on his twitter page on Thursday March 12 that there was a meeting with project stakeholders to look the progress of the project.
“Today, we had progress review meeting with contractors and consultants at GERD site and witnessed rapid implementation. Early generation units, placement of steel and concrete work for 5 additional units going well,” he Tweeted.
The government disclosed that no earthly power will stop Ethiopia from building the dam as per the timeframe that is already tabled.
Gedu Andargachew Minister of Foreign Affairs was also quoted on Associated Press saying “Egyptian water experts and politicians know too well that our dam will not harm their interests. It will only generate electricity and won’t consume any water.”
In recent press conference he said the three countries need to resolve their differences without outside pressure.
On the Friday high level panel discussion Ethiopian negotiators stated that they believed President Donald Trump does not have proper information about the project and previous negotiations.
“We consider that the president was misinformed by Egyptians,” they said.
Experts criticized Egypt and its media outlets on baseless fabricated information about GERD, Abay and Ethiopian side on the negotiation.
EBA recommends to limit cash withdrawals
The Ethiopian Banker’s Association (EBA) provides policy recommendations to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) that includes accessing NBE bills and limit cash withdrawals from banks as a way out from the current liquidity crunch.
The financial industry has been in liquidity shortage in the past couple of months. Meanwhile the government through the central bank took several measures to tackle the problem but to no avail.
NBE cut the 27 percent NBE bills implemented since 2011 on private banks to buy 27 percentage bonds from their every fresh loans. Besides that to improve banks liquidity the central bank has been auctioned 14.5 billion birr for banks to ease their cash shortage.
According the latest move by EBA, it has provided short and long term policy recommendations to improve the matter.
The short term recommendation elaborates the liquidity access from national bank shall be liquidating banks NBE bills. “Liquidating their NBE bills, which is equivalent to the amount needed by the respective bank to solve the current liquidity problem; or availing credit with flexible tenure and lower interest rate,” the policy recommendation of the association that Capital looked stated.
It added that the members suggested that the NBE may take appropriate other monetary measures to regulate the adverse effects of any fund it would avail to the banks as recommended above and states “but restoring public confidence shall be given priority at any cost.”
In the long term policy recommendation the association that represents all banks including the two public financial enterprises stated that supporting CBE, the state owned financial giant, to improve its liquidity position is a must, because the measures that could be taken to reduce liquidity stress would affect the industry as a whole.
CBE’s deposit mobilization for the first six months of 2019/20 financial year stood at 24.6 billion birr which is 71 percent of its target. The performance in the first half of the past financial year, 2018/19, was 29.8 billion birr, which is 5.2 billion birr higher than this year first half performance.
The recommendation for the long term solution also added that the central bank to put cap for cash withdrawal from banks.
“Introduce directive that limit cash withdrawal from banks, because high cash is observed outside banks,” the recommendation reads.
“Support banks to modernize their chase management and payment system,” it added.
Currently sector actors claimed that several individuals prefer to save huge amount of money in their safes than using the formal banking system.
In different occasion it has been recommended by the sector actors that the government should impose maximum rate that individuals can have in their possession at a time.
Recently Abie Sano President of EBA and CBE, said that even though the government accrued finance that it collected in terms of tax and other means, it reserved to disburse it.
“Currently the government is reserved to release finance and due to that the financial sector is affected,” Abie explained.
He said that if the government disburses the money the financial sector would be beneficiary. He said that he believed the problem is short term.
One of the bank presidents, who preferred anonymity, told Capital that the policy recommendation is developed by the initiation of the association itself.
“Although NBE is the regulatory body responsible to supervise the sector, we also have stake to take such kind of initiative since we are also working for the country and administer public finance that we have to keep the public confidence,” the president added.
The scope of the policy recommendations includes looking the cause of the problem and solution that the government should or consider to follow.
“We expect positive response from the government,” the president expressed his hope.
The association submitted the policy recommendation for national bank this week.
Gov’t to open up multimodal, dry port to private businesses
Liberalizing the logistics sector the Ethiopian government is to open up the multimodal and dry port sub sectors.
According to the new strategy of the government selected private movers will be allowed to engage on the business for both dry port operation and multimodal scheme.
Mekonnen Abera, Head of Ethiopian Maritime Affairs Authority (EMAA), said that selected private sector actors will be allowed to be involved in the sector. But he did not elaborate the criteria of the selection.
“At the current level we will open the two sectors on limited steps and they will be allowed to operate independently unlike the previous draft directive that proposed the operation to be run under ESLSE,” he said.
The previous directive had been put in place different criteria that will be included on the multimodal operation. For instance the oldest draft document indicated that a company should have 5,000 square meters of transit plot and a capital of 10 million birr. Mekonnen told Capital in the near future the new approach will be implemented. He said that local private actors will be part of the new opening up. However by default foreign investors will be involved since they have a right to invest up to 49 percent on local businesses.
The multimodal scheme includes almost majority import items that eroded the business of the private actors.
During the establishment of Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), the state owned logistics enterprise, in 2011 by the amalgamation of the former Ethiopian Shipping Lines (ESL), Ethiopian Maritime Transit Services (EMTS), Dry Port Service Enterprise (DPSE), and Comet Transport the enterprise become the sole multimodal and dry port operator in the country.
The government in its recent reform plan disclosed that it will open some of the mega public monopoly businesses for the private sector and foreign investors. The logistics sector is one of the areas that the government targets to open for local and foreign investors.
As per the government decision the involvement of foreign investors on the logistics sector is up to 49 percent.
So far CMA CGM and Bolloré Africa Logistics, both French companies, have agreed to get the maximum share on two local logistics companies.
Since the government introduced the multimodal scheme (land, sea or road transportation services) under ESLSE monopoly private actors expressed their disappointment about the exclusion of them despite they have a capacity to run the business.
The logistics sector of Ethiopia is one of the bottlenecks for the economic growth. The government has been trying its best to modernize the sector but the change is not as required.
