The new 36 room Sheger Royal Hotel which is located around Bole Medhanyalem, opens its doors after a four year construction. The G+8 building lies on 500sqm of land. The hotel is expected to employ 80 people.
Sheger Royal Hotel is owned by Tadele Kassa, who has worked in the construction and retail business. He spent over 200 million birr to build the hotel. His construction company built the hotel.
It has one restaurant, two bar and a parking lot for 20 cars. It also has a spa with a steam bath, a gym and presidential room.  It was officially inaugurated on Saturday May 12.

With the increasing number of Ethiopian business people who import different product from China, getting a Chinese visa is becoming increasingly difficult. One must wake up early in the morning to line up at the embassy but if you are lazy and is not a morning person you have to pay up to 1,000 birr to get a front line at the gate of the Embassy.
Currently up to one hundred Ethiopians go to the embassy daily to get a visa but the long lines forced them to hire someone who wake up early and process their visa for 1,000 birr. The embassy told Capital that they will investigate the case.
Majority of Ethiopians go to china to import clothes, shoes, medicine and electronic devices. In the last fiscal year the majority of imports for the country came from China.

A recent study conducted by the Addis Ababa City Fire, Emergency Prevention and Rescue Agency disclosed that 121,000 houses in Addis, including 1,000 government and private institutions are in locations vulnerable to flood disasters.
The study which took six months to complete identified 143 areas as having a high risk of flooding. It recommended that homes there be relocated or reconstructed to avoid a potential disaster that could take thousands of lives and potentially damage 4.5 billion birr in property.
A majority of the risky places are in Gullele and Nifas Silk Sub cities where houses are constructed near rivers and drainage sites.
The Agency, which is notifying home owners who are at risk, initially identified 53 flood prone areas but recently added 90 places to that number after another investigation.
Source in the agency told capital that many houses should be removed to save them from flood disaster.
“The housing shortfall is likely to increase vulnerability to flood events amongst three specific social groups. First, many people have been forced to live in squatter sites where no formal physical or social infrastructure is available and tenure is insecure. Second, the low values of rentals obtained relative to maintenance costs has meant that households in the public and private rental sectors may suffer from especially poor physical environments. Third, housing demand has encouraged house owners to sub-divide properties (leading to the creation of vulnerable “bottom houses”.
Riversides in Addis Ababa have been a source of worry for residents in their precipices. The areas have been dogged by landslides, pollution and lack of development for ages. But due to a spate of development activities around ten of them, that might change soon.
The research found that Addis Ababa rivers and riversides face problems which include: badly polluted segments through direct discharge of domestic waste generated mainly from households and institutions; river bank erosion; and inaccessible rivers and riversides.
UN figures show that this year alone, 117 million people around the world have suffered from some 300 natural disasters brought about by climate change, including devastating droughts in China and Africa, and massive flooding in Asia and Africa, costing nearly USD 15 billion in damages. This included Addis Ababa.
Last year there were 76 floods in the city, damaging houses and properties worth 20 million birr. Flooding also claimed the life of one man who lived in Nifas Silk Lafto sub – city. The figures are twice as many as last year.

With the initiation of the Ethiopian government a new institution is to be established in Africa to control the trafficking and fabrication of fake drugs across the continent.
The organization which is set to stretch networks among African countries will register original production place of the drugs, their destination and expiry dates to easily identify counterfeit drugs.
The new organization which has yet to be accepted by the Africa Union, will work to overcome challenges in forecasting and distribution that results in limited availability of key pharmaceuticals in hospital, long procurement lead items, inaccuracy in record keeping, issues with the quality of forecasting data, wastage due to expiry and damages and theft of drugs.
Dr. Amir Aman, Minister of Health during the conference said that fake dugs are threating Africa and all stakeholders should work together to combat this challenges.
“Most African countries import their products from abroad and with this process fake drugs will also come along to the continent. So we have to do a big assignment to stop this by working together otherwise it will lead us to big problem in our health facilities.”
He added that the new institution will work with government bodies, distributors and manufacturers to stop fake drugs in Africa.
The conference is organized by GSI, the global supply chain standards organization, in partnership with the Ethiopian Food, Medicine and Healthcare Administration and Control Authority (EFMHACA).
Ulrke Kreysa, Senior Vice- President Healthcare at GSI said that Africa should learn from Turkey to combat counterfeit drugs. “GSI Standards and barcodes are tools that can help all supply chain partners, to ensure that patients receive effective and safe medicines,” he further added.
Yehulu Denekew, Director at EFMHACA said, “ensuring the quality and safety of pharmaceuticals requires utilization of appropriate standards, most importantly the Global standard.”
“Stopping fake dugs is not only one body task, it needs a coordinated effort, good recording system and control should be placed. Turkey is an exemplary country. African countries should strive hard  to get good result for blocking  the production and importation of  counterfeit drugs.”
The presence of falsified medication is a huge threat to patients safety, especially in Africa. The world Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10 percent of medication distributed in low and middle- income countries could be falsified. Falsified medicines negatively impact patient safety, might lead to loss lives, will have economic impact and will result in less trust in the healthcare system.
An increasing list of studies and surveys about fake, counterfeit and substandard drugs has emerged in recent years, but because of deeply entrenched interests from all sides – governments, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies – there has been great reluctance to call the scourge of killer medications in Africa and elsewhere a crisis.
About 100,000 deaths/ year in Africa can be linked to counterfeit drug trade.
This is despite the fact that everything from life-saving Aids medication to emergency contraception are being copied, faked and made with shoddy components on a huge scale.
The ‘Track and trace for access to safe medicines conference’ was attended by over 150 regulatory bodies and international organizations and more than 340 participants.