Ethiopian Airlines and the United States announced a new partnership agreement that will enable the nation’s flagship carrier Ethiopian Airlines to source locally grown produce and ingredients for preparing in-flight meals for global passengers.
Ethiopian Airlines Group CEO Tewolde GebreMariam and U.S. Ambassador Michael Raynor signed a memorandum of understanding in which the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide Ethiopian farmers and food producers technical assistance and access to financing in order to ensure they are able to meet the airlines’ standards of quality and volume to serve its customers. These new business linkages will help farmers and local agribusinesses reach a prominent new market and increase their revenue streams – with annual sales as high as $10 million in total – while providing Ethiopian Airlines farm-fresh ingredients sourced directly from Ethiopia, reducing the need for foreign suppliers’ processed foods for their catering services.
USAID support will help Ethiopian Airlines identify local suppliers for the list of catering materials the airline might potentially require, as well as provide support to farmer cooperative unions, youth groups, women groups and other local agriculture businesses to enable them to meet production requirements. A U.S. government loan facility also will expand access to financing for local companies, farmer cooperative unions, and others to expand their operations as needed to meet the Ethiopian Airlines quality and supply demands.
“We deeply value our relationship with USAID and extend our appreciation to USAID for all the support. The new partnership consolidates our effort to continue providing high-quality inflight meals to global passengers while intensifying our effort in creating an enabling environment for local farmers across the value chain. We would like to maintain our partnership with USAID on a range of spheres,” said Tewolde GebreMariam.
“The partnership we’re launching today demonstrates what’s achievable when prominent businesses like Ethiopian Airlines invest in other Ethiopian businesses and individuals, resulting in truly home-grown economic success that has the potential to be a model for other sectors,” said Ambassador Raynor.
This partnership agreement will run through December 2022 and will help pave the way for Ethiopian Airlines and local producers and farmers groups to continue these supply linkages and partnerships into the future.
Partnership to source food from local farmers for in-flight meals
A leap into the future: How liberalization will power mobile innovation in Ethiopia
By Gary Dewing: Country Manager of Ericsson Ethiopia
Ethiopia has taken some very positive steps in its digitization journey by outlining the Digital Strategy for Inclusive Prosperity 2025. With the right execution this can set the country on the path from mobile telephony to broadband connectivity and eventually digitizing entire sectors, creating jobs, improving education & healthcare and help the government in achieving its socio-economic development goals.
As digital infrastructure starts to play this increasingly central role in Ethiopia’s socio-economic development, affordable broadband access will need to be extended to all of the Ethiopian citizens. What is now needed is an execution framework that effectively enables Information and Communications Technology (ICT) access to drive inclusive socioeconomic development in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is opening its telecom market to foreign investment by partly privatizing Ethio telecom as well as introducing two new full-service operator licenses. This will catalyze steady growth in all sectors in the coming years. The liberalization initiative is meant to enable the provision of more, better and innovative communication services across the country as well as offering a host of opportunities including:
- Attracting new investment
- Upgrading national infrastructure
- Delivering macro- economic benefits such as creating jobs
- Contributing to improving universal access
- Improving services, pricing and choice for the end-user community
- Encouraging innovation and differentiation of services
In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile broadband subscriptions are predicted to increase, reaching 72% of mobile subscriptions by 2025. LTE share will reach around 30% by the end of the forecast period, and LTE subscriptions are set to triple, increasing from 90 million in 2019 to 270 million in 2025, according to the June 2020 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report.
Empowering a connected Ethiopia
As Ethiopia’s mobile market accelerated, driven by Ethiopian’s high demand on connectivity, Ericsson committed to support the development of Ethiopia’s telecom industry, leveraging our global expertise and technology leadership.
Ericsson has been present in Africa for more than 120 years, with our first entry onto the continent in Ethiopia in 1894. Ericsson started by supplying the first 500-point switching system and then Ethiopia ordered its first crossbar switching exchange in 1961.
In 2014 Ericsson signed a framework agreement with Ethio telecom. The agreement contained 2G/3G mobile communication equipment and related services including design, planning, deployment, tuning, and optimization. The framework agreement allowed Ethio telecom to further improve the capacity and performance of its 2G/3G network. This consequently ensured improved quality of network coverage, richer and more innovative mobile communication services to subscribers in the southern regions of Ethiopia.
The agreement was also used to transform the existing network and added additional capacity to meet the country’s need to bring connectivity to more than 40 million subscribers nationwide.
Achieving universal access should be a vitally important part of any country’s economic development strategy. In Ethiopia, the greatest economic and employment benefits and growth opportunities after this landmark ruling will be achieved when improved communications are extended throughout the entire country. Most importantly, digitalization will create an infrastructure that can boost livelihoods, promote financial inclusion, and improve access to health, education, government services and more.
Attorney General indict high profile individuals for money laundering
The Federal Attorney General (FAG) filed massive criminal charges on ten individuals and companies in relation to involvement with eight criminal acts including money laundering, financing of terrorism, illegally confiscating others property and illegal money transfer.
The charge was filed at the Federal High Court- Lideta Criminal Bench and indicated that seven individuals and three companies, have been sued on allegation of criminal acts that they did from 2016.
The individuals that were sued are Haregewoyne Tedla, Azeb Miretab, Efrem Mulatu, Temesgen Yilma, Adefres Habte , Daniel Tibebu and Mesfin Asmamaw. The companies included on the charge file are; JJ Properties Management PLC, TTH Trading PLC and Boston Real-estate.
The file indicated that the individuals were involved in an illegal act that entailed forceful confiscation of a seven floor hotel property owned by Cosmo Trading PLC. The property is located at Wolo Sefer, Bole and was confiscated as collateral for the compensation of a loan.
FAG’s charges stated as follows: Efrem (Defendant 3) had swayed Haileyesus Mengistu (plaintiff and owner of Cosmo Trading PLC) to take a loan from Azeb (Defendant 2) when he was faced with a liquidity crunch. The charge adds that Azeb (Defendant 2) stated the money needed would be availed to Cosmo Trading PLC by Haregewoyne (Defendant 1), who lives in the US. In June of 2016 a non-formal or traditional agreement between Haregewoyne and Haileyesus (plaintiff- ‘accuser’) was signed for the provision of 50 million birr with a nine percent interest. Azeb and Efrem (Defendant 2 and 3) were witness signatories to the traditional agreement. In addition, the collateral for the loan was the seven-storey building which has an estimated worth of 250 million birr, the charge stated.
According to the charge, whilst the two parties had agreed on a 50 million birr loan, only 3.2 million birr was transferred from Azeb’s United Bank account to Cosmo Trading PLC of the same bank.
The charge further states, that the defendants accused Cosmo Trading PLC for not paying the 50 million birr (of which they only gave 3.2 million) and as a result forcefully secured the property that the company placed as collateral. JJ Property Management PLC bought the company for 60 million birr, despite the company not having any legal registration.
Following this acquisition, Azeb and Temesgen (Defendant 2 and 4) got the right to administer Cosmo Trading PLC. Using this privilege, they received a 61 million birr long time loan from Awash Bank using Cosmo’s 7 storey building as collateral.
From the 61 million birr approved by Awash bank, 21 million birr went into paying the loan that the company had at United Bank (Friday, the 22nd of March, 2019). The remainder, 40 million birr, was wired to Cosmo’s account the following Monday. (25th March, 2019).
The charge indicated that on the same day Cosmo received the 40 million, from the amount 32.5 million was wired to JJ Property Management’s account. Azeb is a major shareholder and general manager of JJ property whilst Temesgen has the power of attorney.
According to the charge from the stated date of the first money transfer, several similar money transfers had been done to different accounts of individuals and companies from the remainder of the 40 million birr.
Some of the transfers on individual accounts are stated as money sent from abroad for different residents, which the Attorney General called as witnesses on the charge.
The FAG charge file claimed that the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th defendant conducted illegal banking businesses as well as involvement in money transfer that affected the foreign currency revenue that the government shall obtain.
Apart from the stated amount, an additional ten million birr over a draft short term loan was released by Awash Bank to the company in August 2019.
The charge claimed that in exclusion of the 21 million birr paid to the United Bank for the loan settlement by Awash Bank, the rest of the money was spent on unrelated businesses that were not in direct benefit to Cosmo.
The Attorney General’s charge has also claimed that the 2nd defendant gave a misleading testimony to the Federal Police in March 2017 on Police investigations in relation to the USD 1.8 million transfer.
FAG has called 35 individuals as witnesses who include well known individuals in the business community to testify the case besides 62 testimonial documents with 822 pages.
The case was filed at Lideta on September 25.
