Somaliland targets over 30 percent of Ethiopian container cargo as construction work for the first phase expansion of the port of Berbera progresses halfway. The Port Authority says expansion should be completed by October 2021.
Berbera Corridor is a comprehensive engagement between Somaliland and Ethiopia. It allows for sea access, roads, telecom infrastructure and electricity led by a joint coordination committee.
The first phase consists of building a 400-meter quay and 250,000-square meter yard extension. It was awarded to Shafa Al Nahda. The port expansion will cost 442 million USD.
“The expansion process is going well as we are closely following the project, which will be completed on time,” General Manager of Somaliland Port Authority Said Abudilahi told a group of journalists adding that the contractor is very experienced.
Shafa Al Nahda has been involved in the Port of Dakar expansion in Senegal as well as the Port of Maputo expansion project in Mozambique.
DP World holds a 51 percent stake in Berbera Port, while Ethiopia holds 19 percent and Somaliland the rest.
“A port without a road is nothing so we are working side by side and struggle to complete the Barbera corridor comprehensive scheme with a road, all the way from Barbara toTogochale. “The General Manager said expressing his strong dedication for the road connectivity.
Still another UAE and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development Construction the company are also building a 250-kilometer divided highway between the city of Berbera and the Ethiopian border town of Togochale which should be finished in May 2021.
The joint coordination committee (JCC) was formed at the ministerial level to deal with trade engagements and legal aspects. As the expansion goes on, the trenching activity will begin after 10 days to reach the international level of port facilities.
They have added another facility as well and a tugboat was already purchased last year that can push 50 thousand tons and they are bidding to purchase another tugboat.
All this is a push to increase the Port’s capacity and make it competitive with regional ports. The standards will be international and Berbera will be a gateway serving 20 at least thousand vessels per year.
The expansion includes a dry port, free trade zone, and oil banker. In 2021 they are preparing a mother vessel from China, Singapore or the USA and soon will begin transmission shipments and finishing the road and port expansion,” the manager said.
As soon as the first expansion work is completed, the 2nd phase will begin with a 269 million USD investment to build a 400-meter expansion project increasing the total capacity to 800 container terminals.
Currently, the port serves as the humanitarian hub for east Africa and the World Food Program and they charge minimal fees. It is not used much by commercial vessels.
“Lack of communication, mixing up Somaliland and Mogadishu (Somalia) and the poor infrastructure make Ethiopians reluctant to use the port,” adds the manager.
To this end, the Port Authority plans to have a forum to market trading with Somaliland and Port Berbera as soon as the Berbera corridor is competed.
The Berbera corridor project should be finished by May.
Concerning the legal issues, a joint committee from Ethiopia and Somaliland are working together on the issues of customs, taxation and legal matters.
In 2016, A Dubai based shipping firm, (DP) World won a 30-year concession with an automatic 10 year extension for the management and development of a multi-purpose project at Berbera Somaliland.
Berbera Ports targets 30pct of Ethiopian Cargo
Net & Com introduces new technological futures
NET & COM, Information and Technology Center introduce new technological features LMS (learning management system mElimu) a cloud based technology from India and Robot MEA (robot Middle East, Africa) South Korea products “Robotami” for creative education. As Mesfin Bekele Managing Director of net and com said “all these new features help developing a creative education system.”
Robotami is collection of educational robot kits with different series and varieties of robot product types for different levels. Robotami has coding session and STEAM classes compromising of four stages of basic intermediate, advanced and profound said Mesfin “It helps for abundant education by shaping the future of youth for an educational model that seeks to achieve creative convergence by combining science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.”
mElimu is a SCORM compliant solution with in-built Asynchronous and Blended Learning Methodology, Learning method Applications and Admission Auto Application Approval/Rejection Student Profiling Selection Process on Boarding, Practice Quiz and Exercises with Feedback for instant gratification Assignments with Video Interactive Questions Submit Assignments, Periodic Reminders and Alerts for Assignments and Quizzes Get Video feedback from teachers on submitted assignments. mElimu is expected to addresses major obstacles in rolling out equitable learning opportunities efficiently and cost-effectively. mElimu has offline and online learning platform institutions learning system which overcomes the challenges of limited electricity, high-speed Internet, and hardware availability by leveraging multiple content dissemination channels, such as mobile, web, and tablet platforms.
By applying this system schools, universities, training centers, organizations would be beneficiary in terms of improving quality, by providing student centric education, save capital expenditures, utilizing the existing resources, rapid expansion in new geographies and new short courses, without capital investment increased student to teacher ratio with modern tools and supporting analytics save recurring expenses with improved staff efficiency save on wastages around the system due to lose controls increase revenue by attracting more self-sponsored. For students it can be one place to get all alerts and reminders, send audio and text messages, anti-plagiarism tools to help identify copied assignments, course level real-time analytics topic level and paragraph level analytics for timely intervention grade and send video feedback to students and value addition to teachers.
Net and Com usually works on software solutions, cyber security, data center and infrastructure.
UNCTAD 2019 Least Developed Countries
The United Nations conference on trade and development calls on the poorest countries to take a leading role in directing external loans and aid for their development. Developing Countries should take ownership of their development agenda and manage the allocation of external development finance in alignment with their national development priorities.
LDC criteria are reviewed every three years by the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) group of independent experts that reports to the UN Economic and Social Council. According to their per capital income, human asset and economic vulnerability, Currently 47 countries have been designed as least developed countries of the world, 32 from Africa’s, eight Asians and seven from Oceania countries.
As the report shows LDCs account for around 20 of the most aid-dependent countries due to persistent shortfalls in their domestic savings and per capita income. Except those who are oil-exporting countries, 50 percent of these countries have zero account capacity to general surplus and they are dependent on external resources for capital accumulation. As World Bank and international monetary fund debt sustainability framework In May 2019, five countries were in debt distress, 13 in high risk of debt, 17 moderate risks and nine were in low risk of debt. The report indicates that Ethiopia is at high risk of paying back its debt with zero account capacity. The country expansion of trade flows has largely failed to support the nation and commodity dependency. The resource gap remained about 15 percent of its GDP. In the latest report shows Ethiopia has 52 billion debts which are 26 billion of it is the external debt which covers 33percent of the GDP. Targeted aid less than 10 percent of it has reached the targeted area.
From the overall 23 percent of the gross disbursements of Ethiopia official development assistance flows in 2015- 2017 weight of aid for trade subcomponents Agriculture, forestry and fishing take the largest part followed by transport and tourism 6 percent, energy 4 percent, industry mining and construction 1.5 percent, business, and other services and trade policy and regulations 1 percent, banking, and finance 0.7 percent, communications 0.1 percent
Developing countries lose 100billion USD annually due to aggressive tax avoidance through the use of tax havens, tax envision and illicit finance flows are some obstacles to achieve sustainable and equitable growth. Reducing the illicit finance and arms flows, strengthening the recovery and export capacity, domestic and public resource mobilization, returns of stolen assets and combat all form of organized crimes is needed to strength there capacity. Developing countries should create a way to participate in private sectors on with national development priorities and the international community should revamp international development partnership and build up to aid management system. Aid flows relatively to economic variability’s has been on a steady decline since 2003.
Countries will typically need to qualify thresholds under at least two of the three criteria if the three year average per capital gross national income of the least developed countries has risen to the level of at least double and the performance is considered as sustainable the country will be eligible for the graduation from the list. Ethiopia has been listed as least developed countries for the last 40 years. And the government has planned to get out of the list until 2025 as middle-income countries.
LCDs have increased their debt more than doubling their external debt stock from 146 billion USD to 313 billion USD between 2007 and 2017.
Workshop advances food fortification
A seminar has been held on advancing food security and food fortification of Ethiopia at BASF. The workshop connects stakeholders from the food value chain and enhances cooperation to address challenges in the food value chain.
The key to ensuring food security in Ethiopia lays in public-private partnerships. A high prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies is a major problem for the nation. The Government of Ethiopia has been working hard to improve food security and food fortification by understanding these prevailing nutrition problems and their consequences, as well as the manifold benefits of addressing these issues.
“We are working with the stack holders starting from the production process storage and transportation of food improvement needed to ensure food safety and quality during processes and to ensure minimum waste.” Andreas Bluethner, director of food fortification and partnership at BASF
The UN estimated that the world population will increase and will have an environmental impact and also affects social issues.
BASF is working on Three major areas “resource, environment and climate,” “food and nutrition “and “quality of life” to provide sustainable solutions for food security and fortification.
“The government, private sectors and international organizations should collaborate to generate multifaceted solutions to ensure sustainable food security” said Gift Mbaya, BASF general manager and business lead for BASF TRO Ethiopia. “Innovation will impact how world will feed the growth of population, decreasing the natural resources, soil degradations and climate change
Ethiopia has set its first National Food and Nutrition Policy in 2018 to fulfill the nation’s ambition to end malnutrition and stunting by 2030, the policy, prepared on the basis of the national nutrition strategy, and programs that have been under implementation since 2008.
Solomon Tadele, Director of Food, Medicine and Health Care says, “this kind of session on food fortification helps to make different analysis on products and their nutrients to fulfill the gap of a fortification based on our context.”
The German chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world, BASF Group runs six major business segments. This division includes chemicals, performance products, functional materials & solutions, agricultural solutions, nutrition, and oil & gas. Positioned across 80 countries with its subsidiaries and joint ventures, it has 390 production sites in Europe, Asia, Australia, the US, and Africa.
Beside its plant on seed agricultural on Arerti, business solutions concentrated around biological and chemical crops, soil and pest protection, BASF has been working on Capacity building, training, coaching with the government and private sectors on food fortification and nutrition in Ethiopia.
