Harry A. Adams is Executive Chairman of KEFI Minerals. The mogul is also founder and co-founder of a number of other businesses including the Citicorp Capital Investors Australia, Pilatus Capital, Australian Gold Council, EMED Mining and Cyprus-based Semarang Enterprises. He has overseen a number of start-ups principally through the roles of chairman, deputy chairman and managing director. EBR sat down with the tycoon to discuss about KEFI Minerals investment in Ethiopia.
Holidays spice up social life as they add flavour to a rather dry and dull routine daily life. They not only bring people together to create shared values but also reaffirm social bond and solidarity. However, due to economic, social and demographic changes, holiday celebrations are fading away in Ethiopia especially in urban areas like Addis Ababa. Hiwot Selalew explores the evolutions.
Nicknamed the ‘Yellow Kings’ and with a huge fan base at their home town in Adigrat, Tigray, The Welwalo are joining the Premier League, a top echelon football tournament in Ethiopia, for the first time. Welwalo joned a team of few elite football clubs – Tidel, Mesebo, and Seloda as well as Guna, Trans and Mekelle City – from the State of Tigray to make notable contributions in Ethiopian football. EBR’s adjunct writer Abiy Wendifraw spoke with the club’s administrators to learn about their preparations for the soon-to-begin football season.
Businesses are legally responsible for their criminal actions as if they were individual. This concept, known as corporate criminal liability, looks at practically every commercial or industrial organization whose existence is to make profit. As to the concept, businesses are responsible as an entity separate from their shareholders or partners.
In economics, the Laffer curve is one possible representation of the relationship between rates of taxation and the resulting levels of government revenue. It postulates that no tax revenue will be raised at the extreme tax rates of 0Pct and 100Pct and that there must be at least one rate that maximises government taxation revenue. The curve is typically represented as a graph (see the figure on the following page), which starts at 0Pct tax with zero revenue, rises to a maximum rate of revenue at an intermediate rate of taxation, and then falls again to zero revenue at a 100Pct tax rate.
In a recent commentary for the South China Morning Post, Helen Wong, HSBC’s chief executive for Greater China, shows that China’s rising generation of 400 million young consumers will soon account for more than half of the country’s domestic consumption. This generation, Wong notes, is largely transacting online, through innovative, integrated mobile platforms, indicating that it has already “leapt from the pre¬web era straight to the mobile Internet, skipping the personal computer altogether.”
For 20 years, productivity in the global construction industry has grown at an annual rate of just 1Pct. Now, the industry needs to enter the twenty-first century, so that it can meet increasing demand for new structures and address the world’s growing housing and infrastructure gaps.
Mezgebu Tesema, a contemporary painter, is known for his real life reflections mainly from rural livelihood. Though many regard him as a realist painter, he prefers not to be regarded as a practitioner in a category. Mezgebu is known for his 10square meter painting – Nigise ‘ንግሥ’ – a highly festive event of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
A number of professionals in the field appriciate that Mezgebu’s look for details is vividly demonstrated in his fascinating work of art. His pictures release aroma of the New Year and fragrance of the breaking new days. EBR’s Hiwot Salelew sat with the silent painter to discuss his perspectives and highlight the career trajectory of a distinguished Ethiopian painter.
Small scale farming holds a dominant role in Ethiopian Agriculture. Though productivity is still low, it employs almost 85Pct of the population, produce for consumption, export and industrial raw materials. That’s why; transforming the sector has been a priority for the government.
The annual production by small-scale farmers during the main harvesting season increased from 171 million quintals to 290.4 million quintals within the last ten years, showing a 70Pct increment.
However, with the surging population and looming climate change, experts stress that smallholder farmers cannot continue feeding themselves and the rest of the population and be engines for economic growth in the long run. Experts recommend that enough attention should be given to large scale farming. EBR’s Samson Hailu explores the saga behind small scale farming to offer this report.
Akinwumi Ayodeji Adesina is the 8th President of the African Development Bank Group. He was elected for the position on May 28, 2015 by the Bank’s Board of Governors at its Annual Meeting in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
Adesina is a distinguished economist and thought leader in agriculture with nearly three decades of experience gained though research, development interventions and policy making. He served as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2011 to 2015, during which time he implemented bold policy reforms in the fertilizer sector and pursued innovative agricultural investment programmes to expand opportunities for the private sector. He is credited for ending Nigeria’s 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer sector by developing and implementing an innovative electronic wallet system. He also led financing initiatives to support youth engagement in agriculture as well as small and medium enterprises.
Before assuming his Ministerial position, Adesina was the Vice President (policy and partnerships) of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. He also served as Associate Director and Regional Director for the Southern Africa Office at the Rockefeller Foundation, for over a decade until 2008. He had also served as the President of the African Association of Agricultural Economists, and a member of the editorial board of several academic journals.
Adesina got a PhD in agricultural economics from Purdue University in 1988, USA, where he won the outstanding thesis award for that year.
EBR’s Amanyehun R. SiSAY caught the President who was attending the 29th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Addis Ababa on July 3rd to discuss about his bold initiative of lighting Africa. The following is an excerpt:
Ethiopian Business Review
Hiwot Selalew
Abiy Wendifraw
Fikru Tsegaye Wordofa
Alemayehu Geda (Prof.)
Michael Spence (PhD)
Nick Baveystock
Samson Hailu
Amanyehun R. Sisay