Infrastructure is the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or an area in providing necessary services to the residents. The government builds infrastructure and provide services so as to satisfy the demand of the whole society.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inaugurated Sheger Bakery Factory constructed in the capital with a total sum of 900 million Birr fully financed by MIDROC Ethiopia. The Bakery, whose construction carried out by MIDROC Construction, has a capacity to bake over 80,000 loaves of bread per hour and two million a day.
Prime Minister Abiy said at the inaugural ceremony that the construction of this state of the art Bekary is an excellent indication of the efforts that the country has been making to ensure food security and eradicate poverty.
Pointing out that the nation has been importing food items from abroad with hard currency, he stated that the construction of such food industries has a great deal of contributions to address such challenges.
He also affirmed that efforts will be strengthened to satisfy local demand by expanding local production in order to fully stop importing wheat in the coming two years, indicating the commencement of large farms in several parts of the country this year.
Abiy has further announced government’s plan to develop 100,000 hectares of land with wheat in the coming Ethiopian Budget year. According to Abiy, the expansion of Agro-Processing factories in the country is the other focus of the government and he invited the private sectors to partake in the development of such industries.
Deputy Mayor of Addis Ababa City Administration Takele Uma on his part said that the construction of the Bakery is one of the plans that the administration has been implementing in response to resident’s development demands.
The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), in collaboration with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), the Ethiopian Agriculture Transformation Agency (ATA), regional bureaus of agriculture, and other stakeholders has recently launched an initiative to produce wheat in three lowland basins of the country. This initiative is being implemented in Awash Oromia and Afar regions, Wabeshebelle Somali Region, and Omo SNNPR basins, locations where wheat production was not previously practiced.
Lowland wheat production was successfully demonstrated in Awash and Omo basins. In the next year, the initiative will plan to demonstrate on 10,000 hectares along the basin. The implementation of the lowland wheat project will contribute to achieving Ethiopia’s import substitution efforts in the long term, and will also have an immediate positive impact on improving the livelihoods of the farmers and pastoralists residing in the implementation areas.
Lecturer of Economics at Addis Ababa University Dr. Atlaw Alemu told the Ethiopian Herald that commenting on the significance of the lowland wheat initiative to ensuring food self-sufficiency and improving the lives and livelihoods of Ethiopian smallholders.
The initiative commenced by the government to import substitution is one step towards ensuring food security and lifting out society from poverty. In addition, the newly inaugurated project helps in easing cost of living for the public residing in the city, create job as well. This kind of project has positive effect in stimulating economy and eventually create job for local citizens.
The implementation, the lowland wheat initiative, will cover the input needed for the project. Combined with the existing support to increase production and productivity in the Ethiopian highlands, this lowland wheat project will make significant contributions towards achieving Ethiopia’s plan to gradually replace importation as laid out in the country’s import substitution strategy, Atlaw noted.
For close to half a century, Ethiopia has been importing wheat to provide for local consumption, with the quantity of imported wheat gradually increasing to meet the growing local demand. All the while, the need for ensuring food sustainability without importation had lingered in the minds of the Ethiopian agricultural leadership community. With the introduction of the lowland wheat initiative, import substitution and sustainability of local supplies will soon be achieved.
On the other hand, it is widely accepted that investments in infrastructure can lead to direct and indirect jobs, and usually have effects into other economic opportunities. For example, good transport systems and agro-logistics services help move freight from manufactured place to locations where value can be added like intermediate processing, packaging and sorting of agricultural produce and ultimately to consumers.
The Ethiopian Herald June 27, 2020
BY HAILE DEMEKE
