IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, announced that it will co-host the AFRICA CEO FORUM 2020, the leading international conference dedicated to supporting private sector-led growth on the continent.
IFC’s support for the event—to be held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on March 9-10, 2020—underscores its increasing commitment to help Africa’s governments, businesses, and entrepreneurs overcome challenges, create jobs, increase trade, and drive innovation.
IFC CEO, Philippe Le Houérou, said, “These are exciting times for Africa as it moves towards a continent-wide free trade area, rapidly adopts mobile technology, and works to address longstanding infrastructure and jobs challenges. IFC is at the center of discussions on these and other development topics that will help drive economic transformation in the region. The AFRICA CEO FORUM is where some of the most relevant and insightful discussions on Africa’s development happen.”
The upcoming 8th edition of the AFRICA CEO FORUM will focus on regional integration, infrastructure development, the impact of technological advances, jobs, and other areas relevant to unlocking the continent’s economic potential and helping improve lives.
IFC to co-host the Africa CEO Forum 2020 to support Africa’s economic growth
Amole and Africa’s Talking: Revolutionizing digital payments in Ethiopia through a strategic partnership to provide key IT development infrastructure
Amole, the mobile payment, and commerce platform with digital payment capability across aggregated digital products and services, announced that it has partnered with Africa’s Talking, the leading communications, and API platform with simplified access to telco infrastructure across Africa. A strategic move that will create more development opportunities for businesses and software developers in Ethiopia to seamlessly build their solutions and create new sustainable and scalable enterprises.
Through this strategic partnership, Africa’s Talking will wrap its API infrastructure around Amole’s payment services which will create a new unique platform for the Ethiopian and African market. The ease and simplicity of building and monetizing digital services creates a new opportunity for entrepreneurs and enterprises to create powerful scalable solutions that cut across different sectors and geographical boundaries. This will improve the potential value creation in the country and provide job creation opportunities across different markets and supply chains.
The partnership between Amole which has consumers in 78 different applications and e-commerce sites will bag on Africa’s Talking’s platform which has over 37,000 developers in Africa across the 10+ markets they’re actively supporting. Amole in conjunction with Africa’s Talking will enable more access to entrepreneurial opportunities for more than 73.5 million youth who are under 35 in Ethiopia, which will eventually fuel economic growth in Ethiopia.
Annual Meeting of the African Economic Zones organized by the Africa Free Zones Organisation (AFZO)
Africa Free Zones Organisation (AFZO) organized on November 19th, 2019, at the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, its 4th Annual Meeting, under the theme “Economic Zones – Accelerator for Industrialization in Africa”, with the support of the Department of Trade and Industry of the African Union Commission (AUC).
Opening ceremony of the Africa Free Zones Organisation’ 4th Annual Meeting co-chaired by M Albert Muchanga the Commissioner for Trade and Industry of the African Union Commission (AUC), Dagmawit Moges the Minister of Transport of Ethiopia, M Mehdi Tazi Riffi the President of the Africa Free Zones Organisation.
The meeting was held during the “Africa Industrialization Week”, organized by the African Union from the 18th to the 22nd November 2019.
Several international speakers representing international and financial institutions such as UNCTAD, UNIDO, UNECA, AfDB etc. shared during this event their expertise on effective means for economic zones development in Africa. In this respect, various topics related to challenges and trends of African economic zones were addressed including strategic directions and effective governance model, contribution of economic zones for FDI growth and job creation, importance of logistics competitiveness within economic zones, skills development and training.
A historic moment as the Ethiopian Parliament goes blue to mark World Children’s Day
On the eve of World Children’s Day and the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 20 November, the House of Peoples’ Representatives lights up in blue to signify Ethiopia’s support for child rights.
Countries across the world are lighting up their national landmark buildings in blue as a symbol of their commitment to child rights. Globally, the buildings include the European Parliament in Brussels, the Shanghai Tower in China, the Acropolis in Greece, the Panama Canal in Panama, the Monument for African Renaissance in Senegal, and the El Noor Mosque in New Zealand, where 51 people were killed in a terrorist attack earlier this year.
“When UNICEF approached me to consider lighting up the House of Peoples’ Representatives in blue, I welcomed the idea since this is the Ethiopian peoples’ house and it represents everybody, including the 41 million children of Ethiopia,” said Speaker of the House Tagesse Chafo, in remarks read on his behalf by Abeba Yosef, Chair of Social Affairs Standing Committee. “Another reason is that Ethiopia has been in the forefront of advancing child rights globally. We have organized many international conferences on children and some have been held right here in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is also among countries in the world that have made great advances for children’s rights.”
