Berhane Demissie, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Cepheus Growth Capital Partners, has joined the Global Partnership for Ethiopia (GPE) Board, the consortium of international organizations behind the establishment of Safaricom Ethiopia, becoming the second Ethiopian to serve on the Board, following Ermias Eshetu.

Her appointment was approved by the GPE Board, which is holding its two-day meeting at Safaricom Ethiopia’s headquarters in Addis Ababa. The meeting has brought together senior leaders and Board members representing Vodacom Group, Safaricom Group PLC, Vodafone, Sumitomo, British International Investment (BII), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Safaricom Ethiopia.

Berhane brings more than two decades of experience spanning private equity, investment management, corporate finance and risk management in Ethiopia and the United Kingdom. She is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Cepheus Growth Capital Partners, an Ethiopia-focused private equity firm that provides growth capital to high-potential businesses and supports their long-term development.

The European Investment Bank (EIB), through its development arm EIB Global, is providing a grant of up to €4 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) to support the development and rollout of tailored climate-risk insurance products for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. It is the first climate-risk insurance project backed by the EIB. This was announced at the ongoing United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) COP 17 in Mongolia.

The grant will complement EIB Global’s €110 million credit line for the third phase of the Rural Financial Intermediation Programme (RUFIP III) in Ethiopia. The credit line is channeled through the Development Bank of Ethiopia and on-lent to eligible rural finance institutions. The grant is financed under the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Trust Fund’s Member States Compartment.

The initiative is designed to de-risk the agricultural portfolios of rural finance institutions under RUFIP III and help final beneficiaries accessing RUFIP III financing manage climate-related shocks. Activities supported by the grant will include capacity building for the Development Bank of Ethiopia, rural finance institutions and smallholder farmers, as well as the establishment of a Premium Guarantee Fund to pre-finance insurance premiums.

Binance, the world’s leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider has concluded a multi-country engagement tour across Africa, reinforcing its long-term commitment to supporting Africa’s evolving digital payments ecosystem through collaboration with regulators, financial institutions and industry partners. 

During the tour, the executive team met with central banks, regulators, policymakers, payment providers, fintech leaders and law enforcement agencies to explore how digital assets can support faster, more accessible and more secure financial services across the continent.

The engagements reflect Binance’s long-term commitment to bridging traditional finance and digital assets through trusted partnerships and regulatory collaboration, with a focus on strengthening compliance, expanding remittance capabilities and deepening Binance Pay’s everyday utility for users across Africa. 

“What stood out was the shared ambition to build digital finance responsibly. Countries are at different stages of crypto adoption, but their goals are similar: relevance, growth and stability,” said Larry Cooke, Africa Head of Legal at Binance. “The conversation across Africa has evolved. It’s no longer about whether digital assets have a role to play, but how industry, regulators and financial institutions work together to deliver meaningful value for businesses and consumers.”

Speaking at a ministerial dialogue held on the margins of the 76th WHO Regional Committee for Africa RC76, Aboubakri Diaw, Chief of Staff of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and project lead for ECA’s Sustainable Financing Imitative launched in March 2026, called for a fundamental reset in how African governments and their finance ministries fund health systems, warning that the continent’s challenge is not a shortage of reforms but a shortage of financed reforms.

“We have a fundamental fiscal problem that is tied to the health-sector problem,” Diaw told ministers and senior officials gathered for the dialogue. “Many countries on this continent now spend more on servicing debt than on public health.”

As indicated by Diaw, health is a central pillar of Africa’s socioeconomic transformation. Strategic investment in health systems contributes directly to human capital development, productivity, and inclusive growth. Yet Africa’s health financing model remains structurally fragile: governments finance less than 41 per cent of total health expenditure on average, and unpredictable donor funding pushes households toward out-of-pocket payments that drive more than 150 million people into poverty every year.