South-East Asia Eyes Ethiopia

Last September showed the coming of series of business delegations to Addis Ababa from East. One of the delegates was from small but industrialized country, Singapore. The Singapore’s delegation, which consisted of 20 bossiness people, focused to get dealers from Ethiopia for construction machineries, caterpillars, and agro-processing materials. They also wanted to identify suppliers of spice products. The mission also planned to engage in shipping and logistic sectors to ease trade activities they want to undertake in Ethiopia.

Few days before the arrival of business delegates from Singapore, investors consisting 90 members from Guangdong Province of China also came. The delegation was interested in manufacturing, industry, mining and agricultural sectors. The Ethiopian government has been working to convince the Chinese delegation to invest in Ethiopia.

Even though, Chinese investors are already engaged in many areas in the manufacturing sector, the coming of the delegates from Guangdong has ignited big hope. That is because they came from a province in China which is center of manufacturing in the South East Asian Big economy. For Ethiopia which is moving steadily to change the structure of its economy from on ancient archaic agrarian base to a modern industry led economy, the attention the nation has got from Guangdong investors is hoped to bear big fruit.

“As Ethiopia has sufficient raw material and human resources, there is vast opportunity investors can tap here.” Gashaw Debebe, Secretary General of Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association said. Ethiopians can also get opportunity to acquire new innovation from the knowledge and technology they bring to the country, he added.