The Fifth Africa Climate Resilient Investment Summit ACRIS V under the theme “Embedding and financing climate resilience for Africa’s green recovery” will be held virtually from 16th to 17th June 2021. The two-day program will deal with investments for climate resilience. The panel discussions will deal with cross-border energy, resilience, nature-based solutions, smart agriculture, innovative finance, and Africa Climate Resilience Investment Facility.
The Africa Climate Resilience Investment Summit (ACRIS V) is in its fifth year, following the highly successful ACRIS IV held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2019.
ACRIS V will be held in partnership with The World Bank, Nordic Fund and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
The overall objective of ACRIS V is to strengthen the capacity of African institutions, including national governments, river basin organisations, regional economic communities, power pools and others, together with the private sector to plan, design and implement investment in relative sectors. These sectors include cross-border energy, resilience, nature-based solutions, smart agriculture, innovative finance to increase their resilience to climate change. The AFRI-Res (Africa Climate Resilient Investment Facility) will be discussed during ACRIS V.
Africa Climate Resilience Investment Summit ACRIS V
UAE efforts highlighted at webinar on women’s empowerment, protection
Efforts by the United Arab Emirates to empower and protect women on the regional and global levels were highlighted in a webinar held on 10th June 2021 by the UAE Embassy in Addis Ababa and the Ethiopian Ministry of Women, Children, and Youth Affairs, under the theme “Women’s Empowerment and Protection: UAE and Ethiopia Perspectives.”
Speaking at the opening of the webinar, Talal Al-Azizi, Head of the Political, Economic, and Media Affairs Section at the UAE Embassy in Addis Ababa, said that women’s empowerment and protection have always played an important role in the UAE’s development and have driven the country’s ascent to the global arena. “The UAE has prioritized the empowerment and protection of women as one of the key pillars of its foreign policy and foreign aid strategy,” he added
Global partnership for Ethiopia signs the historical telecom licensing agreement
Global partnership for Ethiopia signs the historical telecom licensing agreement with the government of Ethiopia on Tuesday June 8, 2021 to start its operation in Ethiopia.
The consortium, which includes Vodafone, Vodacom, Safaricom, Sumitomo Corporation, and the CDC Group, won one of the two telecom operator licenses bid by offering $850 million. The move will create jobs for 1.5 million citizens and activate over $8 billion in domestic investment.
Officially the Global Partnership for Ethiopia, backed by US and UK government finance said it will start operations within six months.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed presented the license at a ceremony in Addis Ababa, attended by Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Kenya, as well as Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa and Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub.
NBE board approves primary market directive
- Securities exchange to begin in 2022
On its meeting on Thursday June 10, the Board of Directors of National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) issued a monetary policy operation directive to formalize and modernize the primary market under Open Market Operations (OMO) and Standing Facilities (SF).
The Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA) is also expected to become operational before the end of 2021 to pave the way for the highly anticipated securities exchange that will be realized in 2022.
Following the endorsement of the ‘capital market proclamation no. 1248/2021’ at the parliament 14th session on Thursday June 10, the formal establishing process of the ECMA is on the way.
“We had been under preparation informally but since the ratification of the proclamation happened our work is now officially on the process for the formation of required facility,” Melese Minale, Senior Macroeconomic Advisor at NBE and one of the major players on the process for the development of the capital market proclamation and related operations, said.
Melese told Capital that the implementation process has already commenced and project team is in the formation, while partners have also supported the process for the establishment of ECMA.
Eyob Tekalgn, State Minister of Finance and one of the leaders on the formation of the new market, told Capital that it is looking for required technologies to see the authority in the coming Ethiopian year.
Meanwhile, there is guidance on the designing of the exchange market which is mainly expected to make the private sector a major actor in the upcoming work.
“On the operational process of the market, currently, we have started engagement with experienced consulting firms that is fired up with the support of IFC,” he explained.
NBE is also calling experts on the formation of project team for the establishment of the first in kind authority.
“The government has shown its intention for the formation of the authority due to that we are tirelessly working to establish ECMA,” Melese says and added that the authority is expected to be real in the next six months time.
According to the proclamation, the Director General of the upcoming authority will be assigned by the Prime Minister. It is part of the formation process. The ECMA shall be accountable to the Prime Minister too.
“Definitely the Ethiopian Securities Exchange (ESE) will not happen by the end of this year. Starting from designing of the market there are several technical and practical processes that may involve different stakeholders. Several entities like listing companies and others should be also operational to embark the secondary market,” Senior Macroeconomic Advisor says, “due to that it would be challenging to see the ESE in the coming up to one year time but it may have life by the end of 2022.”
So far with the support of Financial Sector Deepening Africa (FSD Africa), a UK government organization, local experts have taken training for the capital market and the second round would be undertaken soon.
The ECMA may have a board that comprised seven members, consisting of ECMA Director General, Governor of NBE, and the Director of Accounting and Audit Board of Ethiopia as permanent ex-officio members of the board and four others by qualification.
In related with financial market strategy, which introduced about three years ago for modernizing the sector market up to the establishment of capital market, the Board of Directors of NBE has ratified a directive for monetary policy operation on its meeting on Thursday, which was the same day of the enactment of the capital market proclamation.
“Meanwhile, NBE’s directive, it is not for the stock market but they are related,” Melese explains, adding, “usually for the liquidity inception of securities exchange the banking system is crucial. So that developing the money market is very important to mush-rooming the securities exchange.”
Eyob also said that the directive for the primary market corroborates to see feasible capital market. He told Capital that the NBE board that he is also a member and chaired by Girma Birru, is issuing the directive to expand the primary market on modern arraignment.
The financial market strategy has classified the money market, which is short term financing and, a capital market will be introduced in the next step as per the economic reform agenda.
Under the Home Grown Economic Reform Agenda, the first stage is developing the money market that is introduced by making competitive the treasury bills (T bills) on market based and now it will introduce the modern inter-bank money market, and use instruments of OMO to foster the sector.
Currently, banks are engaged on interbank money market. But experts said that is informal deposit placement between banks is not really efficient.
According to the Senior Macroeconomic Advisor, the major objective of the directive is to make the money market structural and solve problems that it currently faces.
To develop the interbank money market NBE has hired a consultancy firm based in the Netherlands, working on the area of capacity building including for banks, legal framework for secure financial transaction, market infrastructure such as Central Security Depository (CSD) and trading platforms and others.
The new directive for the OMO and SF, shall avail instruments to provide and absorb overnight liquidity at banks, and is under development and will be launched in the near future.
Introducing these instruments means NBE is trading with banks and when banks have marketable security instruments they shall trade it as using collateral with each-others.
As part of modernizing the money market NBE is also emplacing infrastructures and technologies.
The market infrastructure such as CSD will enable to register securities electronically at a central platform that allows interested trader to use it electronically.
“So far, currently, a bank that demands to borrow from NBE is required to come physically with collaterals like T bills or other physical certificates, which is inefficient. But if it is deposited at CSD any bank need not to come physically, while using the trading platform at the core banking system,” Melese recently told Capital.
