Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Associations (ECCSA) was re-established in 2003 to safeguard the overall rights and benefits of its members, and serve as a bridge between the business community and the government. ECCSA is an apex organization of chambers and sectoral associations that represent close to 520,000 business enterprises across the country.
The Chamber unifies the voice of the private sector and promotes the sector’s leading role in the economy through advocacy, trade and investment promotion and capacity building. EBR sat down with Endalkachew Sime, the young and dynamic secretary general of the national chamber to learn about its core activities and challenges and the interventions needed to make the private sector the true engine of Ethiopia’s economy.

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.

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:

Breaching information communication protocol ranges from simple show-off of talent to theft of valuable data such as financial and security information. As these problems are fast increasing, it is necessitating a well equipped and proactively prepared cyber defense institutions. The Information Network Security Agency (INSA) is established to ensure the security of advancing critical infrastructures and industries that are vulnerable and going to be more vulnerable due to their reliance on computer. EBR sat down with Mohammed Idris, Special Advisor to the director general of the Agency, to discuss the magnitude of the problem Ethiopia faces and the preparedness of INSA to safeguard the country’s cyber space.

In recent years, there has been a giant leap forwards making Ethiopia a hub of light manufacturing industries in Africa by 2025. To this end industrial parks in Addis Ababa and Hawassa, mainly designed for textile and garment manufacturing went operational to boost export revenues. 13 additional parks are currently under construction for same. EBR spoke to Belachew Mekuria (PhD), deputy commissioner for Industrial Parks Division at the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) about the performance of the already operational ones, status of the industry parks under construction, and the challenges companies and employees in the parks experience.

The Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) is entrusted to facilitate the rapid learning, adaptation and utilization of effective foreign technologies. To achieve this mission, it spearheaded the preparation and adoption of science and technology policies and strategies to support and coordinate national research and development (R&D) agenda.
EBR sat with Afework Kassu (Prof), state minister of the Ministry to learn about what the country is doing to promote R&D. Before assuming his current post, Afework, a young dynamic scientist, was director general of Higher Education Research and Academic Affairs at the Ministry of Education. He had earlier been a vice president for research and community service at the University of Gondar.

Ambassador Girma Birru Geda on Ethio-US Relations

Girma Birru Geda is a familiar name in Ethiopian politics in general and the private sector in particular. This is because of the long years of distinguished public service he had provided.
Before becoming Ambassador to the United States and nonresident Ambassador of Ethiopia to Mexico and Jamaica, Girma served as Minister of Trade and Industry from 2001 to 2010. He had been a Minister of Economic Development and Cooperation for six years before that.
Ambassador Girma started his career as an economist in the Office of the Council of Ministers in 1982. Since then, he also served, representing Ethiopia, as alternate governor of the World Bank and of the African Development Bank and as a board member of the PTA Bank, currently known as the Trade and Development Bank from 1995 to 2001.
Girma had offered leadership to several public enterprises. He had been a chairman and member of the board of directors of the then Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, Development Bank of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Investment Agency, Ethiopian Roads Authority, and the World Bank-funded Ethiopian Social Rehabilitation Development Fund.
The soft spoken and detail oriented politician holds a master’s degree in Economic Policy and Planning from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands; and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Addis Ababa University.
EBR’s Amanyehun SiSAY visited the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington DC and has the privilege of conversing with the able diplomat on a broad range of issues including the current state of diplomatic, economic, trade and investment relations between Ethiopia and the United States. They have discussed about the need to productively engage the Ethiopian Diaspora in the development of the country and other issues. The following is an excerpt.

Ermias Eshetu has been the CEO of Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) since January 2015. Before joining ECX, he was vice president for marketing and corporate services at Zemen Bank. He had previously worked with multi-national organizations such as IBM, Alcatel, Orange and Micro Strategy.
Ermias has a master’s degree in international business and a bachelor’s degree in computation from the University of Manchester. In connection with the soon to be celebrated ten years anniversary of the Exchange, EBR sat down with Ermias to discuss about the performance of the Exchange and the challenges it faced while working to modernise Ethiopia’s traditional agricultural commodity trading.