Birhanu Fikade

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that mass desert locust migrations and second generation breeding have occurred in the eastern and southern parts of Ethiopia, further exacerbating food insecurity in these areas.

In the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, where the impact on the economy is not yet known, economists have come up with a grim projection indicating that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth could shrink to 0.6 percent for the current year, The Reporter has learnt.

A lot has happened and a number of scholars have written about the grand economic plans the Government of Ethiopia put in place. The Growth and Transformation Plans (GTP), a two-term five-year economic plan was being implemented.

In a bid to allow two new telecom operators join the Ethiopian telecommunications market, the Ethiopian Telecommunications Authority (ECA), together with the Ministry of Finance, have received expression of interests from major telecom companies.

Lycée Guébré-Mariam, a French community school, has been facing angry parents over its recent school fee price hike, until the school came up with certain adjustments that will impose a 20 percent added fee on those parents who can afford it, The Reporter has learnt.

From the very beginning, Donald Trump’s election campaign for the US presidency, almost four years ago, has targeted one nation— China—as the source of most of his country’s economic problems.

Midroc Technology Group, owned by Sheik Mohammed Alamoudi, an Ethiopian-born Saudi Business Tycoon, has decided to implement a new, restructured governance system, splitting the leadership into four major administrative scopes and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), The Reporter has learnt.

In order to help businesses withstand the growing impacts of COVID-19, the Addis Ababa City Administration has decided to waive some 4.5 billion birr in interests and penalties on unpaid tax, accumulated since 2005, benefiting some 7,800 taxpayers in the capital, The Reporter has learnt.

Following the announcement of Ethio telecom’s liberalization project, companies such as France’s Orange, South Africa’s MTN Group and Kenya’s Safaricom have all expressed interest in joining the industry which Ethiopia desires to uplift. So far, at least two operators are in the process of joining the sector, once they acquire licenses for operations.

Egypt, which has been at loggerheads with Ethiopia over the hydroelectric dam project the latter is building over the Nile, has now defied a UN arms embargo with an alleged arms delivery it has made to Somalia, on February, 2020, The Reporter has learnt.