In a surprise move, Takele Uma, Vice Mayor of Addis Ababa suspended the 30th round of the city’s land bid auction five days after it opened and began selling documents on August 1st. No reason was given for the temporary halt or indication of how long it would last.
A total of 117 plots of land were floated in five sub cites for commercial use. It is expected that the bidding will reopen shortly.
Ninety one plots were offered in Bole sub city while Yeka and Kirkos had 17 and 6 plots up for sale respectively. One plot was floated both in Gullele and Arada Sub cities.
Negusu Lema, Public Relations Head of the Addis Ababa Land Management Bureau told Capital that they will resume the sale after approval from the mayor’s office.
He added that the auction will be carried out via computer like the 29th auction.
“The computer system is simple, a bidder comes to the central station and fills in only the CPO amount and the amount of money they are bidding. If they cannot type on the computer, they can come with someone or an employee of the bureau can help them. The system helped us a lot in the 29th round because it saved us time and money,” he said.
In the last land auction the Bureau received 110,000 birr per square meter in Kolfe Keranyo Sub City for 367 square meters from a woman called, Hamzia Muzae. Sheffa Kider had the second place bid at 24,888 birr per square meter. In total Hamzia will pay 40.3 million birr in addition to the interest rate which will be calculated every year. She must make a 20 percent down payment.
The second record bid amount came from Alemayehu Dejen who offered 68,119 birr per square meter to buy 226 square meters of land in Bole.
Nifas Silke Lafto got the third record price from Seid Ommer who offered 58,830 birr for 349 square meters with a down payment of 30 percent.
The 4th highest price was offered in Arada Sub City by Shekur Abubeker who tagged 56,767 birr per square meter for 788 square meters.
Vice mayor suspends Addis land auction
ECA head urge leaders to act collectively to combat money laundering, tax evasion and bribery
The Executive Secretary of UN Economic Commission for Africa, (ECA) Vera Songwe, said that combatting bribery, money laundering and tax evasion should be a priority if Africa has to finance its transition to middle income status and increase prosperity.
Songwe was speaking in a two-day African Leadership Forum 2018 last week in Kigali, a meeting hosted by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and convened by Benjamin Mkapa, former President of Tanzania. The Forum was attended by other former Heads of states: Olusegun Obasanjo former president of Nigeria, Mohamed Moncef Marzouki former president of Tunisia, Joaquim Chissano and Armando Guebuza former presidents of Mozambique.
In the last three decades to 2009, Africa has lost an estimated close to USD 1.4 trillion. In addition, losses through non-trade channels averaged an estimated USD 27 billion annually between 2005 and 2014.
According to the report of President Mbeki’s high-level panel on illicit financial flow, the Continent loses between USD 50 billion and USD 80 billion a year due to illicit financial flows.
Songwe called governments to take action on several fronts, and she insisted leadership was critical demonstrative effect important. As such governments should aggressively investigate and prosecute money launderers and companies that evade taxes.
What things can countries do on their own?
UN estimates that the amount Africa loses through illicit financial flows is roughly double the Official Development Assistance that Africa receives, and also outweighs the USD 42 billion that the continent received in Foreign Direct Investment in 2017.
“For a continent that needs substantial financial resources to meet its development needs, we should celebrate our accountability agencies, the auditor general, the chief justice and the media to support the collective effort”, said Songwe. She asked for more integrity and transparency among leaders and officials of the public and private institutions through asset declarations; and urged African countries to sign up to the international tax information treaties to enable exchange of information.
“Countries should also build human and technological capacities of agencies tasked with tackling Illicit financial flows, and institute information sharing and collaboration between relevant government agencies and ministries”, she said.
Vera Songwe also applauded countries that have ratified existing global and continental initiatives on halting Illicit financial flows.
Nyala Insurance introduces insurance for Afar, Somali pastoralists
Nyala insurance in collaboration with Mercy Corps Ethiopia and Farm Africa has launched asset protection based livestock insurance for pastoralists in Afar and Somali regions.
The insurance firm, which is well known for micro insurance products in agriculture has now included thousands of pastoralists in the two regions, affected by drought, through its micro insurance business.
The index based livestock insurance pilot program launched on Tuesday, August 7 at Semera, Afar is considered to be a sustainable input to mitigate challenges pastoralists face.
Negusu Aklilu, Chief of Party of Farm Africa BRACED Project, said that pastoralists in Afar and other areas are affected by drought, floods and other natural disasters and diseases. “In the previous trend providing livestock was considered an emergency support to rehabilitate the victims, but this method is very expensive,” Negusu said.
This kind of new approach will help the pastoralists mitigate or prevent challenges by providing insurance coverage as opposed to providing aid, according to the project Chief of Party.
“This pilot project will allow the pastoralists to get water, feed and medicine when climate based challenges occur and in the future they will follow the trend by buying premiums by themselves in collaboration with the government and the private sector,” he added.
He explained that insuring people costs less than providing aid after disasters.
“Now at this time our role is to promote the initiative,” Negusu told Capital.
“During the last five decades rangelands in most pastoral areas of Ethiopia have undergone unprecedented changes which have manifested themselves in terms of marked deterioration of conditions,” Gifawossen Tessema, Director of Hide and Skin Directorate at Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said.
Product redesign and structuring are being conducted by a consulting firm called Pula Advisors and Funded by DFID through implementing organizations, Mercy Corps Ethiopia and Farm Africa, the project is expected to reach over 3,520 smallholder pastoralists in Awash-Gewane, Eli-Daar, Teru and Namalfane livelihood zones of Afar with the services of index based livestock insurance distributed with livestock drugs.
Solomon Zegeye, General and Micro Insurance Business Manager at Nyala Insurance, told Capital that the same number of households will benefit from the pilot in Somali region.
In the past Nyala has undertaken similar micro insurance services for low income farmers in SNNP in collaboration with Mercy Corps Ethiopia and Farm Africa and partners.
“The product in SNNP has been indemnity based livestock insurance, which includes multiple risks. The current one launched in Afar and Somali regions are focused on the risks of drought and asset protection,” Solomon Zegeye, General and Micro Insurance Business Manager at Nyala Insurance, told Capital.
Last March it launched in the Somali regions in collaboration with WFP. In its program with WFP 5,000 smallholder pastoralists were included.
“Even though the current product is similar to the preceding pilot with WFP, this one is more of technology based in terms of data collection, claim settlements and other related issues,” Solomon added.
According to the statement of Farm Africa, the product is one of the first of its kind being distributed along with livestock drugs sold by Agro- Vet shops. “The product employs the use of state of the art-technology, namely, an IT-based call center for registration and claim processing-reducing paper work significantly. The product employs blended information sourced from satellite based remote sensing data and ground data- minimizing basis risks the common phenomena widely prevailing in index based insurance,” it added.
The product redesign and structuring is being done by a consulting firm called Pula Advisors and Funded by DFID through implementing organizations.
Nyala is not new to this type of micro-insurance at the same time it is pioneer promoting it by introducing crop insurance in the past. Besides that it has a target to expand the business in different regions in the country, according to the manager.
To achieve its short and long term goals set under micro insurance business strategies, the company has been working in partnership with international donors to test the marketability of products targeting the low-income population in general and smallholder farmers in particular. Having entered into a partnership agreement for provision of Climate Insurance for pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in Somali, Afar and SNNPR regions under a Memorandum of Understanding signed with Mercy Corps Ethiopia and Farm Africa under the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) project.
Negusu Aklilu, Chief of Party of Farm Africa BRACED Project, said that in the past consultants have came via partner organizations instead of insurance firms but currently Pula is working directly with Nyala to allow the insurance firm to obtain the experts. “This kind of approach will allow the micro insurance sector to expand,” he added.
Nyala Insurance as a pioneer of agricultural micro insurance business in the Ethiopian insurance market has been striving to set up a sustainable and commercially viable micro-insurance to serve the low-income population at the bottom of the pyramid with double objectives of addressing its corporate social responsibility and bringing reasonable and adequate return/profit for its shareholders in the long-run.
Ethiopian wins USD 20,000 Maltavator Prize
Ethiopia’s Keariyam, was the winner of the Pan African TV show tagged the Maltavator Challenge which included 40 contestants from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana and Ivory Coast. The eleven week long contest finished after a challenging finale which featured eight quarterfinalists from four countries. Keariyam who had a low performance in the prior rounds couldn’t get enough points to join the last five Ethiopians in the next round but made it through via the vote of his group. The transformed performance by Keariyam gave him the chance to get the support not only from everyone.
“I will use the prize to cover my educational cost and help my family,” said Keariyam at the welcoming event held at AV lounge last Saturday. “I didn’t expect this result as the contest was challenging and the competitors were so tough. I am happy that I won the prize and I would like to thank Malta for such a chance.”
The Pan African Maltavator Challenge TV show, which was hosted in Nigeria, challenged the participants both physically and mentally. The challenge has only one winner while everyone else left as brand ambassador and was rewarded with goodie bags and cash prizes.
The high energy drink, Malta Guinness, which has the motto ‘fueling the greatness’ was promoted throughout the contest and the contestants had to drink it during the games.
The second round of the Maltavator Challenge will begin soon and those who want to know the details are invited to check out the Malta Guinness Facebook page.
