Senior government officials and experts are gathered in Addis Ababa for an Economic Commission for Africa Expert Group Meeting to review the ECA’s new report on the State of Urbanization in Africa: The Role of Cities in Domestic Resource Mobilization.
The two-day review meeting is being led by the Urbanization Section of the Gender, Poverty and Social Policy Division at the ECA which is technically supporting countries to unleash the potential of cities in financing national development.
The report argues that African cities are yet to tap into revenue opportunities that rapid urbanization offers and proposes a framework for consideration which focuses on cities as drives of domestic resource mobilization.
It also highlights that African cities are generating a large share of GDP and are home to the manufacturing and services sectors that are leading structural transformation. The report also states that urban-based tradable economic sectors can provide a broad, stable and growing tax base in Africa.

The Africa Fintech Summit (AFTS) announced special discounted prices for local delegates to attend the summit, scheduled to take place on November 21st, at the Sheraton Addis Hotel. The Africa Fintech Summit has partnered with AMOLE to process the registration & payment of local delegates and have produced special QR codes for registration and payment in local currency.
Organizers of the Africa Fintech Summit have indicated that ticket sales are also available through all Dashen Bank branches to expedite local registration of delegates to attend the summit. With just a week left to the summit, delegates and interested participants can purchase tickets for ‘last minute registration’ Delegate Start-up for the discounted price of 3,450 Birr, down from 10,500 Birr.
“Presently, significant number of registrations to attend the Africa Fintech Summit have been from international delegates and we wanted to encourage as many people as possible to register locally, to attend the summit and take advantage of this unique opportunity of learning, networking and partnering with global leader in Fintech”, said Zekarias Amsalu, Founder and MD of Ibex Frontier and a co-organizer of AFTS.

Ethiopia recorded 3.04 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) by March 2019 due to ethnic conflict and environmental shocks over the past year, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM).
Since April 2019, the Government of Ethiopia has rolled out a phased plan to return, relocate and integrate those displaced, resulting in tens of thousands of IDPs returning to their places of origin.
Humanitarian partners, including IOM, are now scaling up use of the community-based planning (CBP) approach to support the government’s return initiative, and to strengthen sustainable return, recovery, and social integration.
This approach encourages communities to form community-based structures that assist in identifying and prioritising their emergency and recovery needs.
It also helps displacement affected and host communities, returnees, and other migrant groups to build social cohesion and peaceful coexistence.
IOM mission in Ethiopia, in close cooperation with the Ministry of Peace, therefore, last week (4-7 November) organized and facilitated a five-day CBP Training of Trainers workshop in Jigjiga, in the Somali Region.
The meeting was attended by 50 participants, who comprised government officials, support organizations, and community leaders at regional, zonal and Woreda (district) levels.
The community leaders came from six identified Woredas in Jigjiga with a high number of communities affected by displacement. These are Adadle, Hudet, Moyale, Tuli Guled, Babile, and Erer.

Adam Boehler, Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), visited Ethiopia November 13-14 to promote U.S. investment in Ethiopia and strengthen relationships with key partners in support of mutual development goals.
The visit marks Boehler’s first official travel to Ethiopia as CEO of the DFC, a new U.S. Government agency that combines and modernizes the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and USAID’s Development Credit Authority (DCA). Equipped with a more than doubled investment cap of $60 billion and new financial tools, DFC has more resources to mobilize private sector capital to address development challenges and advance U.S. foreign policy in priority regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa.
Boehler met with President Sahle -Work Zewdie, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, National Bank of Ethiopia Governor Dr. Yinager Desse, Minister of Finance Ahmed Shide, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy Dr. Sileshi Bekele and leaders from the private sector, to discuss DFC’s approach to mobilize private capital to invest in projects that create jobs and opportunity in emerging markets.