Addis Ababa Housing Development and Administration Bureau and Gojo Bridge Housing Trading plc signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to work together on the access to housing in the capital city.
Gojo Bridge Housing has introduced an alternative housing scheme that the dwellers shall access at reasonable rates with the support of financial firms and volunteers, who agreed to share their plots for the construction of high rise condos.
The city administration recently called residents, who registered on the housing scheme of 20/80 and 40/60 about 8 years ago, to form cooperatives and then to build their houses on the plot that the city administration shall facilitate in the city. However, the access to available space in the city is a challenge on meeting the new scheme that the city
administration commenced; while the model of Gojo shall look forward to ease the issue since it has already enabled to amass huge plots in the town including at the downtown from residents under sharing plots for housing instrument.
Under the document disbursed on the signing ceremony, the MoU targets to solve the possible challenges on the new city scheme.
On the Gojo’s scheme, dwellers will construct their own house on their direct involvement. Under its model Gojo has planned to construct 100,000 houses in the coming five years.
Based on the MoU, those who registered at the city administration to construct their houses via cooperatives shall access the plots of land that are available at Gojo sharing scheme.
The new deal is stated as a good opportunity for dwellers that are registered under City Administration cooperative scheme to trust the initiative of Gojo, who has also already commenced registration for those who have deposited the required amount in order to get their own house on the new arrangement.
Under the MoU, the Housing Development and Administration Bureau will look after the process and projects when they are commenced.
Based on the MoU, Gojo will file a project progress report every month for the city Bureau until houses are transferred to builders. It is also responsible to facilitate access to credit. It has already signed agreements with financial institutions including the state giant Commercial Bank of Ethiopia to work together on the alternative housing project.
On its part the Bureau is responsible to take corrective measures for any errors and follow up project progresses.
Despite hundreds of thousands registering to access condo houses under the city housing program, the actual performance and the demand could not be run as per the expectation. Due to that the government is now coming up with new housing policies and approaches to narrow the huge rift. Under the ten year plan, the government has expected to see one million houses in the capital and additional three million in the country that shall be built in different schemes including foreign real estate developers, cooperatives, public private partnership modalities, joint venture, and other new alternatives.
It was recalled that a couple weeks ago Capital reported that the Ministry of Urban Development and Construction (MoUDC) had revised the 16 years old housing policy and strategy to give more options for the private sector involvement on the housing scheme.
The amended strategy for affordable housing schemes that has been sent to the Council of Minister for ratification has expanded the alternatives to 12 from the previous 8 housing schemes.
Access to housing in Addis to improve
UEFA EURO 2021: 3 Things you Didn’t Know About the Biggest European Football Tournament
In many European countries, summer has come later than usual this year. In a few days, though, at least football fans will not care: the 2021 edition of the European Championship – UEFA EURO 2020, which retained its name despite being postponed from last year – will begin. From June 11th, the only important thing for football fans and Betway users alike will be the advancement of their favourite teams in the tournament.
Right now, there’s no telling which team will emerge victoriously – even bookmakers can only guess, considering some of the excellent squads set to meet each other on the turf. But the winner is not the only thing you probably didn’t know about the UEFA EURO 2020.
Big business
The European Championship, aside from being one of the biggest quadrennial events in football (second only to the World Cup) is also a lucrative business – something football clubs desperately need after a year of revenues hampered by the ongoing pandemic. The UEFA hopes to generate revenues of around $3 billion from the event – a good part of this amount will trickle down to the clubs, the protagonists of the entire event.
The European Championship is certainly a great event for football and the many connected enterprises – and not only the clubs but connected businesses, like apparel manufacturers and bookmakers, along with caterers, hospitality service providers, airlines, and many others will feel its benefits.
A bit dirty
Normally, the UEFA European Championship is hosted by one city, maybe two. From an environmental point of view, last year’s tournament was expected to be the dirtiest, with scientists talking about somewhere around 2 million extra plane trips necessary because of the 12 host cities all over Europe. The two that were furthest away – Azerbaijan capital Baku and Spanish city Seville – are almost 5,000 kilometres from each other.
Considering the restrictions and some shifting around when it comes to hosting cities (among others, the number of hosts was reduced to 11), the carbon footprint of the tournament has been significantly reduced. Still, it is probably the dirtiest edition in its 60-year career.
60 years
Last year’s European Championship would’ve been special, marking 60 (or rather 62) years from the kickoff of the first edition of the tournament. Technically, the tournament was founded in 1958, so the anniversary edition should’ve been held in 2018 – but it was World Cup year, so it wasn’t really possible.
Originally, the tournament itself only had four finalists – the number was doubled in 1980 to include eight teams that had to qualify for the finals from their groups, then in 1996 it was doubled again to 16 teams. Today, there are 24 teams competing in the European Championship.
The trophy awarded to the winner of the championship is called the “Henri Delaunay Trophy” after the French Football Federation’s secretary-general Henri Delaunay who first proposed a European championship in 1927. The first edition of the tournament was only held in 1958, three years after Delaunay’s passing.
Abubaker receives half a million birr prize money
A crackling Premier League season closing evening ceremony at Sheraton Addis, Ethiopia Bunna goal machine Abubaker Naser swept three of the four gongs including the Young Player of the season crown. Champion Seyoum Kebede won Best Coach of the season while Malian Mickel Samake collected the Best Goalie of the Year award.
Young Abubaker’s displays have been very impressive this season indeed thus it took no one by surprise when he swept all three accolades. In addition to his Leading Ethiopia Bunna to runner-up spot single handedly, he broke the five year old top scorers’ record scoring 29 goals. Being young and considered by many the miracle doer teenager, he added The Young Player of the Year to his collection. What made Abubaker’s evening special is that of collecting 510000 Birr money prize, the highest amount of the evening. Abubaker became the first player in recent time Ethiopian Football history to win all three awards within the same season.
Seyoum Kebede has won the BetKing Premier League Best Coach of the Year award after guiding Fasil Ketema to its first ever top flight championship title. Helping the side to stay at the top throughout the season and winning by a margin of 13 points, Seyoum received a 200000 Birr prize.
Fasil Ketema’s Malian shot stopper Mickel Samake won Best Goalie of The Year Award that go along with 150000 Birr prize money while the upcoming Player of the Year award goes to Hawassa Ketema’s Wondemagne Hailu who collected 105 Birr prize money for his season long hard work. Each pocketing 105000 Birr, Tmesegen Samuel and Belay Tadese took Referee and Line man of the Year gongs respectively.
