What needs to be done in order to create greater financial inclusion and literacy in a developing country like Ethiopia? That’s the question on the minds of many government officials who are looking to encourage greater financial knowledge among the country’s populace. Finance experts are looking to mobile technology to create greater financial awareness. Large banks and companies like M-BIRR, which provide mobile financial services, are emerging in Ethiopia and have ambitious plans to have millions subscribe to their services in a few years. These goals, however, are lofty, considering that Ethiopia has one of the lowest mobile penetration rates in sub-Saharan Africa. So what has to be done? EBR’s Samson Hailu spoke with stakeholders dealing with this issue in order to shed light on its complexity and potential solutions.

The year 2015 marks the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a set of global targets that mainly aim to reduce global poverty by half and improve the livelihoods of impoverished communities. Despite marked improvements in the reduction of poverty in some countries, there’s still much work to be done to achieve the goals set in 2000. That’s why global leaders are convening a series of meetings to establish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to build on the achievements of the MDGs.

Ethiopia’s Sectoral Economic Growth, Sustainability

At the end of the 2008/09 fiscal year, for the first time in Ethiopian history, agriculture gave way to service as the biggest contributor to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Experts argue this was unhealthy because economic theories suggest a healthy structural transformation of a growing economy shifts focus from agriculture to industry and then to service. That was why the service sector’s extraordinary growth was like “putting the cart before the horse”. Accordingly the administration of the late Prime Minster Meles Zenawi took a series of policy measures to adjust the growing economic imbalance. Samson Hailu, EBR’s Research Editor, writes about the implications of these policy measures for the current business slowdown in the country.

The agricultural sector remains our Achilles heel, nonetheless, we remain convinced that agricultural-based development remains the only source of hope for Ethiopia.” This statement was made by the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who described the irony facing Ethiopia’s agricultural sector, in a nutshell, a decade ago. The direction was what the ruling party, Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has been implementing for the last 23 years. The party has been stressing that the development of the country lies in transforming the rural economy in general and agriculture in particular.