Denmark’s Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) signed a shareholder agreement with TDB, acquiring 1,750 of its Class B shares. With an investment of USD 20 million in TDB’s capital stock, IFU becomes TDB’s newest institutional shareholder.
A Cooperation Agreement was also signed during the same occasion between both institutions, whereby these agreed to collaborate on various new initiatives such as the Bank’s SME programme, special purpose funds and technical assistance.
With this agreement, TDB and IFU will also explore co-financing opportunities via various financing structures and information sharing, in key sectors including agriculture, healthcare, education, energy, hospitality and infrastructure.
Denmark’s IFU becomes TDB’s latest institutional shareholder
Netsanet Raya
Name: Netsanet Raya
Education: MA in Development management
Company name: Elbat Solution
Title: Founder
Founded in: 2016
What it does: Enabling and accelerating digital finance
HQ: Addis Ababa
Number of employees: 30
Startup Capital: 500,000 birr
Current Capital: Growing
Reasons for starting the business: Addressing the missing middle in the digital finance arena
Biggest perk of ownership: Space for innovation and flexibility
Biggest strength: Understanding and solution oriented
Biggest challenging: Finding professionals
Plan: To be operational at scale and innovation solution
First career: Officer in financial institute
Most interested in meeting: Entrepreneurs
Most admired person: My father
Stress reducer: Sports
Favorite past time: Reading books
Favorite book: Return on integrity
Favorite destination: Historical places
Favorite automobile: None
Ethiopia in 30 years
Tesfaye Workineh (Eng.) is the Managing Director of United Consulting Engineering PLC and the president of Ethiopian Association of Civil Engineers (EACE). Now he is a major player behind a special conference where thought leaders will gather to dream of a brighter future for Ethiopia, ETHIOPIA 2050. People from all walks of life who want to help the Ethiopia’s population, expected to reach 190 million by 2050, thrive are invited to ponder nine major areas that if addressed would leave a better country for our children. Ensuring they have enough food-security, energy, housing, transportation, and healthcare is a daunting challenge so the questions posed at ETHIOPIA 2050 will be deep and engaging. How are we going to provide adequate drinking water for potential 10 million Addis Ababans? What sort of bold and innovative engineering solutions can be proposed to address these challenges? What is the role of technology in meeting societal grand challenges? This report to be written by Blue Ribbon Panel will present some of the ideas generated by the best minds of our time to proactively address these challenges. Civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, agricultural, environmental engineers, ICT professionals, architects and planners and advanced technology experts are just some of the many expected guests. The conference will be at the Skylight Hotel in Addis Ababa from December 19-20.
Capital: In 15 days you will hold an international conference can you tell us the objectives and expected outcomes? How many research papers will be presented during the two-day session?
Tesfaye Workineh: The first Ethiopia 2050 conference will bring together seasoned professionals and friends of Ethiopia and the Diaspora from all walks of life to look at the ten major challenges the country faces in the near future. We will work to offer thoughtful and practical solutions with the goal of laying the groundwork for a national conversation among policymakers, political and economic leaders, professionals and various stake-holder towards formulation of concrete and actionable sets of policies that could turn these challenges into opportunities.
We will be discussing ten major pillars: Integrated Water Resources Management, Large-Scale Urbanization, Food Security, Sustainability the Environment, Meeting Energy Demands, Advanced Manufacturing, Transportation Infrastructure, ICT Infrastructure Expansion, Access to Healthcare, Education, Workforce, and Employment. There will be over 70 technical presentations during the conference.
Capital: You are part of the steering committee for the Blue Ribbon panel; tell us about the whole idea behind the initiative?
Tesfaye Workineh: The ETHIOPIA 2050 initiative creates an atmosphere for professionals and policy makers from various walks of life to assemble and to take up critical national issues that influence the lives of Ethiopians and deliberate on them to draft findings and proposals that will be forwarded to policy makers in hopes that they may implement them and help the country develop in a healthy way.
Capital: What were the criteria to select those four institutions that carry the objectives of the initiatives and what is expected from them?
Tesfaye Workineh: The most important factor for host institutions is their strong organizational foundations, so that we believe they can bring the vision forward together. We feel confident that they can implement the mission and objectives of the far-sighted agenda of Ethiopia 2050.
These four institutions include: the Joint Ethiopian Engineers Professional Association (JEEPA), Ethiopian Academy of Science (EAS), Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA) and Unity University (UU), in partnership with the Association of Ethiopia architects (AEA) they are all hosting Ethiopia 2050 together.
Capital: Has a consensus been reached among the parties concerning the country’s destiny in 2050?
Tesfaye Workineh: The parties and all engaged in the ETHIOPIA 2050 vision have identical consensus similar to the people of Ethiopia – the well-being and healthy development of the country that will support all that are within its geographical boundaries by 2050 and far beyond!
Capital: Did you meet any government officials?
Tesfaye Workineh: There are many people in the government who support Ethiopia 2050.
Capital: Is there any local or international partner working with you? If so what is their role?
Tesfaye Workineh: The organization structure has been created and formulated by a group of like-minded professionals and subsequently created a management structure, including a Board of Advisors, whose members are fully supportive of the idea of ETHIOPIA 2050. To this aspect The Ministry of Finance one of our Honorarium Partners for the group. The group will work together to realize the vision of ETHIOPIA 2050. In addition to this, more organizations joined to promote and support the realization of Ethiopia 2050 Grand Challenge and Opportunities conference which will be held on December 19 and 20 at Skylight Hotel, Addis Ababa.
Capital: Anything you want to add?
Tesfaye Workineh: ETHIOPIA 2050 is a vision for our nation’s development and every citizen, irrespective their political beliefs, or background must be supportive and be part of this vision. We are asking the media to support this huge and long-lasting endeavor by promoting the International Conference on Ethiopia 2050: Grand Challenges and Opportunities.
Managing your business 2
Effective managers create opportunities for workers and teams to perform well and feel good about it at the same time. To be able to do this, the manager must be good at the basic aspects of management which include planning, organizing, leading and controlling the use of the company’s resources. Here follows first a short description of the four aspects of management.
Planning is the process of setting performance objectives and identifying the actions needed to accomplish them.
Organizing is the process of dividing up the work to be done and coordinate the results to achieve the objectives.
Leading involves directing and coordinating the efforts of the workers to help them accomplish their tasks, while controlling is monitoring performance, comparing results to the objectives set earlier and taking corrective action if so required.
The management process and these four functions, defined above, can apply in all work settings and offer a useful framework for managers. It helps the manager finding out what the main responsibilities are in carrying out his or her job, i.e. being the manager.
Let us now see what many managers go through during a typical working day, maybe also here in Ethiopia. In his book “The Nature of Managerial Work” Henry Mintzberg observes the following:
“There was no break in the pace of activity during office hours. The mail, telephone calls and meetings accounted for almost every minute from the moment these executives entered their offices in the morning until they departed in the evenings. A true break seldom occurred. Coffee was taken during meetings and lunchtime was almost always devoted to formal or informal meetings. When free time appeared, ever present subordinates quickly usurped it.” Mintzberg continues: “Why do managers adopt this pace and workload? One major reason is the inherent open-ended nature of the job. The manager is responsible for the success of the organization. There are really no tangible mileposts where one can stop and say: Now my job is finished. Where the task of the worker is completed every now and then, the manager must always keep going, never sure when he or she has succeeded, never sure whether the whole organization may come down because of some miscalculation. As a result, the manager is a person with a perpetual preoccupation. The manager can never be free to forget the job, and never has the pleasure of knowing even temporarily, that there is nothing else to do.”
What Mintzberg describes points out quite clearly that a manager’s job in any organization is busy and demanding. In summary:
Managers work long hours, 50 to 90 hours per week, sometimes 7 days a week.
Managers are very busy people. Their work is intense and involves doing many different things on one day.
Managers are often interrupted as they work. Their work is fragmented and variable. Interruptions are frequent and many tasks must be completed quickly.
Managers do their work mostly with other people. They spend little time working alone. They work with bosses, colleagues, workers, customers, suppliers and so on.
Managers get their work done through communication, most of it face to face verbal communication that takes place during formal and informal meetings. Higher level managers spend more time in scheduled meetings than do lower level managers. In general, managers spend a lot of time getting, giving and processing information.
From his work, Mintzberg identified three major categories of activities or roles that managers must be prepared to perform on a daily basis, which are:
Interpersonal roles – working directly with other people.
Informational roles – exchanging information with other people.
Decisional roles – making decisions that affect other people.
During the next couple of weeks, we will explore the responsibilities and roles of managers a bit deeper and we will try to see how these apply in the context of managing a company or organization in Ethiopia. While a number of issues mentioned above are easily recognised here as well, there are other cultural factors in Ethiopia which influence the way managers go about their job and their responsibilities. I have noticed for instance that Ethiopian managers take more time for relating to other people, also outside the direct context of their work, as relationships are considered to be very important in this society. In the context of the Ethiopian culture we will then try to apply the framework described above and see how it can help the manager in carrying out his or her job effectively.
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Organization & Business Development Services
