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Ethio telecom aggressively upgrading its service

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Ethio telecom aggressively upgrading its service

Ethio telecom is aggressively upgrading its service all over the country making it the most vibrant company in the country. Despite the process of privatization the sole telecom provider is advancing its service in different parts of the country.
This time the company yet again launched its 4G LTE Advanced service in its East Region on Tuesday May 25 and Central East Region on Thursday May 27. East 0Region includes Dire Dawa, Ayisha and Chiro towns while the Central East Region includes Harar, Aweday and Haremaya towns.
The expansion is based on where the company said that there is high mobile data traffic and surge in demand. “The service covers areas with a high demand for speedy internet,” said Frehiwot Tamiru, CEO of Ethio telecom during the launching ceremony.
LTE Advanced mobile service is one of the latest mobile technologies providing reliable connections enriching customers’ experience with exceptional speed to download or upload large-sized data, high-definition (HD) multimedia, live streaming and video conferencing in real-time.

(Photo: Anteneh Aklilu)

The new expansion will enable and empower customers to digitize their services, increase productivity and improve their experiences.
Speaking about the expansion of the new project at the launching ceremony Frehiwot said, “It opens a new chapter and brings an immediate impact on congested areas of telecom service.”
Our massive 4G LTE expansion in the country including the one we made here today is also aimed at facilitating conditions for the mobile banking service including the newly-launched Telebirr. The internet service advancement in the area also contributes to modernizing economic activities and easing COVID-19’s business impact thereby helping the country’s move to digital economy, she remarked.
The project is one of ethio telecom’s three-year growth strategies, including data traffic growth, and demand-based 4G/LTE expansion around the country.
Ethio telecom’s internet penetration rate has also surpassed the overall sub-Saharan countries’ operators. The current mobile penetration in Ethiopia is over 51 percent while it is 45 percent in sub-Sahara Africa.
The reliability and high-speed features of the 4G LTE service will also increase productivity and improve experiences of the over 1.3 million ethio telecom customers in the region of which 330,000 have smart phones capable of operating the advanced service. The CEO further stated that amongst the 244 ethio telecom stations in the East Region, 47 will run the advanced service which is 11 times faster than the existing connectivity.
Prior to this launch, ethio telecom has established a 4G network in its South East, North-West, East East, South South West regions within 2021, following the 4G launch in capital Addis Ababa one year earlier. The operator has also a vision to launch 5G by 2022 at pilot level.

Nyala Insurance S.C purchases a 26 mln birr bond for GERD construction

Staff Reporter
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Nyala Insurance S.C purchases a 26 mln birr bond for GERD construction

Nyala Insurance S.C has purchased a 26.7 Million Birr Bond in support of the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Officials and public figures who attended the ceremony have extended gratitude to the company on behalf of Ethiopians for its support of the national flag project.
It is stated on the occasion that the National Public Participation Coordination Office has mobilized more than 17 Billion Birr for the construction of GERD from the community.
The construction of the dam has reached close to 80 percent according to officials.

We need to close the vaccination gap

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We need to close the vaccination gap

By Josep Borrell

By the end of May 2021, only 2.1 % of Africans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. We need to close the vaccination gap between advanced economies and developing countries to avoid what Tedros Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organisation, has called “vaccination apartheid”. Doing so is both morally right and in everyone’s interest.

Therefore, we need global multilateral action to increase the production of vaccines and accelerate the roll out worldwide. Since the beginning of the pandemic, this is the path chosen by the EU. It is now also the path defined by the G20 leaders at the Global Health Summit in Rome on 21 May.

The pandemic is still killing thousands of people every day and at the current pace, the whole world will not be vaccinated before 2023. Yet, a widely vaccinated world population is the only way to end the pandemic; otherwise, the multiplication of variants is likely to undermine the effectiveness of existing vaccines.

Vaccination is also a prerequisite for lifting the restrictions that are holding back our economies and freedoms. These restrictions penalise the whole world, but they weigh even more heavily on developing countries. Advanced countries can rely more on social mechanisms and economic policy levers to limit the impact of the pandemic on their citizens.

If the vaccination gap persists, it risks reversing the trend in recent decades of declining poverty and global inequalities. Such a negative dynamic would hold back economic activity and increase geopolitical tensions. The cost of inaction would for sure be much higher for advanced economies than what we collectively would have to spend to help vaccinate the whole world. Therefore, the EU welcomes the $50 billion plan proposed by the International Monetary Fund in order to be able to vaccinate 40% of the world population in 2021 and 60% by mid-2022.

To achieve this goal, we need closely coordinated multilateral action. We must resist the threats posed by “vaccine diplomacy”, linking the provision of vaccines to political goals, and “vaccine nationalism”, reserving vaccines foroneself. In contrast to others, the EU has rejected both since the beginning of the pandemic. Until now, we have been the only global actor that is vaccinating its own population; exporting large volumes of vaccines; and contributing substantially to the vaccines rollout in low-income countries. Europeans can be proud of this record.

In 2020, the EU supported the research and development of vaccines on a large scale and contributed significantly to the new generation of mRNA vaccines. The EU then became a major producer of COVID-19 vaccines with, according to the WHO, around 40% of the doses used globally so far. The EU has also exported 240 million doses to 90countries, which is about as much as we have used within the EU.

The EU with its member states and financial institutions – what we call “Team Europe”– is also donating vaccines to neigh bours in need, particularly in the Western Balkans. It aims todonate at least 100 million more doses to low- and middle-income countries before the end of 2021, as agreed at the last European Council. With €2.8 billion, Team Europe has also been themain contributor to the COVAX facility, which enables poorer countries to access vaccines; around one-third of all COVAX doses delivered so far have been financed by the EU. However, this effort is still far from sufficient to prevent the vaccination gap from widening.

To fill this gap, countries with the required knowledge and means should increase their production capacities, so that they can both vaccinate their own populations and export more vaccines, as the EU is doing. In cooperation with vaccine manufacturers, we are working to increase the EU vaccine production capacities to more than 3 billion doses a year by the end of 2021. Our European industrial partners have committed to deliver 1.3 billion doses of vaccines before the end of 2021 to low-income countries at no-profit and to middle-income countries at lower prices. They have also committed themselves to further deliverover 1.3 billion doses for 2022 – many of which will be delivered through COVAX.

All countries must avoid restrictive measures that affect vaccine supply chains. We also need to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and technology, so that morecountries can produce vaccines. For our part, we are strongly encouraging European producers to do so, especially in Africa. I participated at the Paris summit on financial support for Africa on 18 May, where the continent’s leaders stressed that Africa imports 99% of its vaccines. This has to change. Team Europe is launching an initiative to this end– backed by €1 billion funding from the EU budget and European development financial institutions–with African partners to boost manufacturing capacity in Africa for vaccines, medicines and health technologies.

Voluntary licensing is the privileged way to ensure such transfer of technology and know-how. If it turns out to be insufficient, the existing TRIPS Agreement and the 2001 Doha Declaration already foresee the possibility of compulsory licensing. According to some countries, these flexibilities are however too difficult and too slow to use. To speed up these technology transfers, the EU will come forward with a new proposal in the WTO framework by early June.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that health is a global public good. Our common global COVID-19 vaccine action to close the vaccination gap must be the first step toward agenuine global health cooperation, as foreseen by the Rome Declaration recently adopted at the Global Health Summit.

Josep Borrell is EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission

THE AFRICA WE STRIVE FOR IS POSSIBLE IN UNITY AND SOLIDARITY

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THE AFRICA WE STRIVE FOR IS POSSIBLE IN UNITY AND SOLIDARITY

By Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu

 I would like congratulate all our African friends on May 25th Africa Day wholeheartedly.

We remember with appreciation the African countries coming together under the roof of the African Union (AU) on May 25th, 1963, predicating on independence and freedom, and displaying a common consciousness based on solidarity and unity. The success story reached in the following decades in this spirit and understanding gives us hope for the bright future of the Continent.

Without a colonial past and having attained its full independence with its struggle against the occupation forces during the War of Independence, Turkey is one of the countries that best grasps the meaning of this day. We are happy to share today this common joy, conscious of the importance of remembering the struggle for independence by the peoples of Africa, for freedom, equality and justice, and evoking the founding goals of the AU.

Our approach to African countries completely matches the founding principles of the AU and is built on a holistic, inclusive, equal partnership on the basis of mutual respect and win-win strategy. We share the spirit of 1963 and the vision of Africa, and attach great importance to Agenda 2063 and UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

In our concerted journey, which gained momentum with our observer membership status to the AU in 2005, we have covered plenty of ground with the 1st Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit that we hosted in Istanbul, and by being declared a strategic partner of the Union in 2008. After the 2nd Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit held in Malabo in 2014, our ties with African countries have become stronger. We hope to host the Third Summit in our country, in September, which we believe will offer opportunities for a strong and comprehensive cooperation between Turkey and Africa.

We continue to contribute to peace and stability and economic and social development in Africa through our public institutions, non-governmental organizations and the private sector. Our Africa Initiative and Africa Partnership policies, considered among the most successful initiatives of our foreign policy, constitute an added value to our relations with the Continent. We can see this constructive effect in many areas such as trade, investment, culture, security, military cooperation and development, and especially in our intensifying and developing political relations with Africa in the last decade. We are pleased to observe that African countries also attach importance to strengthening cooperation with our country.

We continue to integrate Turkey and Africa in all areas. While the number of our diplomatic missions in the continent was only 12 in 2002, we increased this number to 43 with our embassy opened in Togo last month. African Countries also increased the number of their embassies in Ankara, from 10 in 2008 to 37. Turkey, which is the 5th country in the world in terms of the number of diplomatic missions, continues to bring the issues of Africa to the agenda at the global level with its wide diplomacy network, and also continues to cooperate with African countries in regional and international platforms.

We continue to develop our commercial and economic relations with a win-win approach. Despite pandemic conditions, we managed to keep our trade volume close to the previous year’s data. The total value of our direct investments in Africa has exceeded 6 billion Dollars. Our Turkish contractors contribute to Africa’s development by undertaking more than 1,150 projects. We appreciate the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, which is considered the most important project of Agenda 2063. We are ready to share our experiences with our African friends and provide support in this regard.

Development and humanitarian aid of Turkey continues to contribute to the creation of favourable conditions for the establishment of a prosperous Africa. The official development aid provided by our public institutions to Africa between 2005 and 2019 has reached almost 3.5 billion Dollars. In line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda commitments, our total development aid for 46 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), 33 of which are in Africa, was 8.7 billion Dollars between 2009-2019.

We are also pleased that the sustainable development projects of Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA), whose representation office number has reached 22 in Africa and whose bilateral official development assistance for the continent exceeded 500 million Dollars, are embraced throughout the continent. Turkish Maarif Foundation has been providing education services to more than 14 thousand students with 144 schools and 16 dormitories all over Africa. The number of our African students who graduated with the Turkiye Scholarships program, has exceeded 15 thousand. Holding the honour of being the only foreign company that flies to the highest number of destinations including 60 cities in Africa, Turkish Airlines continues to contribute to the reunion of Africa with the rest of the world.

We did not leave our African friends alone during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within the framework of the pandemic, we provided medical equipment donations, cash donations or purchase permission assistance for the export and purchasing of medical supplies, to 44 African countries. The approximate value of relief aid material we made to the region has reached 12 million Dollars, and the amount of our financial aid has reached 6 million Dollars. Turkey’s endeavours for developing vaccines against COVID-19 is also continuing. We are determined to complete our vaccine activities in autumn and offer these to the service of all humanity, especially to African countries.

The theme of “Silencing the Guns: Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa’s Development and Intensifying the Fight Against the Covid-19 Epidemic” set for Africa Day celebrations to be held online this year due to the pandemic, is in harmony with Turkey’s humanitarian and entrepreneurial foreign policy agenda. Standing against all kinds of violence, advocating the resolution of disputes through dialogue, and conducting mediation activities when needed, our country strongly supports the goal of “silencing the guns”.  Turkey, along with its different mediation and facilitation roles undertaken across the world, is also the co-chair of the Group of Friends of Mediation established under the UN, the OSCE and the OIC. We believe that our joint efforts with the AU, which is a member of the friends group in UN, will contribute to security and stability in Africa.

With its innovative steps, Turkey shapes not only the diplomacy of today but also that of the future. In 2019, we announced the Digital Diplomacy initiative by taking advantage of the transformative power of technology. We believe Africa’s recent focus on digitalization for sustainable development is spot-on. Within this context, we have observed with pleasure that digital transformation is recommended to achieve Agenda 2063 targets and to ensure sustainable economic recovery in the “Africa’s Development Dynamics: Digital Transformation for Quality Jobs” report published by the AU this year, despite COVID-19. We are ready to work with our African friends in the field of digital transformation.

We will continue to be in unity and solidarity with African countries and the AU with the strength and inspiration we derive from our centuries-old historical, cultural and human relations with Africa.

I avail myself of this opportunity to congratulate Africa Day with heartfelt feelings.

By Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu is Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey

 

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