The Coordinated Land Information System Project Coordination Office opened a tender two weeks ago to put up streets address poles in Mekele, Adama, Bahir Dar, Harar, Adama and Hawassa. The poles will ha ve signs attached to them with street names and addresses. The Office will incorporate; naming and numbering of streets and properties.
The street addresses are similar to ones in Addis Ababa. They are intended to facilitate registration of immovable properties, fire emergencies, postal services, elections, censuses, ambulances and other services.
The address system will be based on the cadastral map. It will use an aerial survey photographing roads, boundaries and houses in the respective cities. The fixing pole has two parts; one is the physical erection of poles with all information and the other is the navigation work, which will post the address information online. The total project, which will cover all of the districts in the six cities should be finished in a year.
Yared Teshome, who is in charge of gathering information at the project office told Capital that poles will keep people from getting lost.
“Knowing the exact location of where you want to go is an essential part of our day to day life. We selected these cities because they are capitals and they have better roads and infrastructure to install street address poles, eventually we will do the same in 18 other locations.”
According to Yared, they plan to raise awareness about the poles before they finish the project.
“Addis Ababa installed many street addresses but the problem is, many do not use them because they don’t know about them or how to use the address information. We want regions to focus on raising awareness when the poles are put up.”
The work will involve 46,841 new house numbers and 4,500 poles, according to Assake Kawefa, operations head at the Integrated Land Information Centre.
A study indicated that lack of appropriate mapping in Ethiopia has slowed down the growth of e-commerce. 
In 2012 the Addis Ababa City Administration changed all the house numbers and road signs and gave new numerical names to unnamed roads as part of a 400 million birr contract with the Metal and Engineering Corporation, which installed poles.
Six regional cities to install street address signs
Roads in progress will be completed this fiscal year
Ten new roads in pipeline for Addis
The Addis Ababa City Roads Authority plans to complete 25 roads project and start 10 new ones this fiscal year.
The Authority has spent over three billion birr to build and maintain the city road network and facilities.
“As part of the government’s existing trend, the Authority is paying attention to completing the existing road projects on time,” Moges Tibebu the authority director general said.
Many road projects were delayed because the contractors were not qualified, problems with consultants, design defaults and court cases connected to demarcation.
The Authority is under discussion with the Supreme Court to set up speedy trial to alleviate the court cases in connection to demarcation which is the fundamental cause for the delay of most roads construction, the director adds.
The Authority spends the money for the construction and maintenance of over 400km road networks in various part of the city including traffic and street lights, pedestrian roads.
Asphalt road construction accounts for14.3 km. There are 36.9 km of gravel roads. There are 190km of cobble stone road projects, the highest share. There be 7.3 km of sidewalks built so to accommodate increasing foot traffic. The Authorities long term game plan is to modernize and upgrade the road system.
According to Moges Tibebu, the Authority’s Director General, the projects are part of the city’s three year Road Master Plan which was adopted in 2017. Hopes are this will make traffic more efficient.
Currently city road coverage is less than 20 percent which is below international standards.
“The Authority plans to finalize five road projects before the end of this fiscal year,” Moges added.
Afro Tsion, Kuriftu, team up to bring 5 star service to Afar
The Afar region now sports a five-star hotel. A soft opening was held for the state of the art 600 million birr facility on Saturday February 16.
Afro Tsion Construction owns and built the hotel that will be managed by Kuriftu Resorts. Located in the region’s capital, Semera, the hotel behind the airport has 144 rooms and four presidential suites on nine floors. It has four restaurants, two bars, two halls capable of holding 400 people, shops for travel agents and gifts, an open air terrace, gym which includes an Olympic standard swimming pool, tennis court, and ample parking.
Sisay Desta, CEO and owner of Afro Tsion told Capital that he decided to invest a lot of money into the region. “I first worked here as an engineer about 24 years ago. My first private project in 1999 was in Afar so I want to do something in the area since it is where I got my start. The region is also a major tourist destination, but it does not have enough hospitality facilities,” he said.
According to the CEO, the regional administration started asking him to invest in the sector when guests came for the Nations and Nationalities Day celebration in December 2017.
“After they asked us we built bed rooms and received guests that came for the ceremony, and after that we started preparing a project and now most of it has been accomplished except for part that will be completed in a few months,” Sisay added.
So far the hotel has cost half a billion birr and in the end it may be 600 million birr. The total area of the hotel is five hectares.
“We are prominent and manage huge projects in the country but we have left the management to the skilled people at Kuriftu, one of the top hospitality companies in Ethiopia. The contract we have with them is similar to international companies,” Sisay said.
At the press conference held in relation with the soft opening Tadios Getachew, founder of Kuriftu, said that they have trained the staff for over a year at
Kuriftu owned hotels like Beshoftu and Semera.
Afar features Dallol, a place with the lowest elevation in the world, Erta Ale, active magma volcano, Afdera Salt Field, Alo Lobed, the site of the cradle of human kind, and parks with a variety of wildlife.
Awol Arba, president of Afar region, said that the region considered the tourism sector one of the major centers of the regional economy.
He appreciated Afro Tsion, saying the hotel will attract others to invest in the hospitality industry. The hotel construction took only 20 months which people at the opening found impressive.
Afro Tsion has also received an additional four hectares of land at Alo Lobed, 23km from the regional capital. Sisay said that he will establish a recreation facility at Alo Lobed, which is a location with natural streams and with eight volcanic hot lakes. Currently the place is visited by tourists and individuals because they find it healthy. There are no other attractions there besides the natural streams.
Esayas charged with abuse of power
Esayas Dagnew, former Chief Operation Officer at the Ethio Telecom, has been charged with grave corruption and abuse of power for allegedly damaging the public interest in relation to a procurement made with ZTE for an NGPO project.
The same day, February 20, 2019, the Federal Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the police and upheld the lower court’s decision granting him 50,000-birr bail in another case.
Police told the High Court, that they suspected him of improper conduct in relation to a contract with US based consulting firm EDM. Investigators said the company obtained the deal without following the proper procurement procedure.
On February 13, Esayas was freed on bail by the lower court. It was the second time this happened because On January 22 his bail was reversed by the Supreme Court Reversed. Police were then given ten more days to investigate the former Ethio Telecom official.
He was initially accused of awarding a purchase for the military complex, Metals, and Engineering Corporation (MeTEC), using his affiliation with his brother who was the former CEO of the MeTEC, Major General Kinfe Dagnew.
After the Adjudicative Court, the High Court granted bail for the suspect at 200,000-birr but then police appealed to the Appellate Court.
The recent charge also listed a co-conspirator, who allegedly mismanaged the telecom’s procurement manual during the purchase of networking devices for universities.
He is suspected of concluding a contract with the Chinese telecom multinational, ZTE, worth USD 44.5 million. And then illegally benefiting from the transaction.
The charge was read to him at the public trial which will be held at the 15th criminal bench of the Lideta Court this Tuesday.
