A wide range of reform measures are sweeping across our country. Political parties and media are nowadays freely exercising their rights, thanks for the reform measures on the political landscape. Justice is also being done to grand corruption and unspeakable inhuman treatment activities.
As part of the positive changes on the horizon, we are also witnessing some encouraging changes coming into the economic sector. Among the most notable ones in this regard are the completion of formerly stalled mega projects. Now a days, mega projects one after the other are making headlines recurrently.
The inauguration of those projects is sending a strong message to the public that the hope of reviving our mega projects had never faded away at all. The resurgence of hope came at a time when the great majority of the people are well aware of the fact that several mega projects had come to a standstill as a result of rampant grand corruption.
Another very important point to notice is that inauguration of those completed projects is made, as a new trend, with the involvement of other leaders from our sub-region. Among the mega projects inaugurated in companion with Horn of Africa leaders include Omo-Kuraz III Sugar Factory and Jimma Industrial Park.
While the events may appear to have aimed at restoring trust and confidence among the Horn of African States, the signals go farther to indicate the emerging trend of collaboration and economical integration among them.
The completion of those mega projects would have not been possible had it not been for the change made in the leadership and the measures introduced by the reform. In the mean time, some other mega projects such as Dire Dawa Industrial Park and Wolkait Sugar Factory are also well underway to be inaugurated soon. Some others like Yayu Ferilizer Factory’s project, which should have been completed some five years ago, but still stood at 44% have made a change in hand to bring them back to life.
Implementation of mega projects was launched some years back with a great zeal of transforming the national economy from agriculture to industrial led development so as to attain the national vision of becoming a lower middle income country by the year 2025.
Having an unwavering stand on the significance of the mega projects in transforming our economy, the government has introduced swift reform measures that resulted in completion of some of the projects. Encouraged by the emerging results, the general public is embracing a new hope of similar success stories in the other sluggish projects, including those severely stalled by corruption.
There is no doubt about the significance of those mega projects in tackling poverty as well as transforming the economy structurally. The mega projects were initially started so as to attain such noble objectives. As has been envisioned by the national growth and transformation plan, they are expected to expand FDI flow, to generate the much-sought-after export income, increase job opportunities and so on.
With such expectations, the ray of hope reverberated to the nation life by the completion of some of the mega projects in the recent time must be kept alive. That is possible when the lessons gained from the completed projects are used to replicate their success stories in the other stalled projects too.
