Ethiopia is making significant strides to maximize its capacity and achieve better economic performance in various directions. The industrial park development is amongst the government’s initiatives which are aiming to attract investment coupled with creating immense job opportunities. In this regard, Ethiopia has established and operationalized 13 industrial parks throughout the country. These industrial parks have not only provided employment opportunities for hundreds of thousands of young people but have also attracted both local and foreign investors.
Additionally, Ethiopia has successfully built and operationalized agro-processing industrial parks, further promoting agro-processing for domestic use and export. Undoubtedly, the industrial parks attract foreign and local investors as they are suitable for the manufacturing sector. Cognizant of the fact that products that have been manufactured in these industrial parks are exported on the international market, the parks are seemingly important to rise ‘Made in Ethiopia’ products in the international market. Especially, the textile sector grew at a high rate following the development of these industrial parks.
While visiting Bole Lemi Industrial Park this week during a three-day work visit in Ethiopia, the World Bank Group (WBG) President, Ajay Banga commends the promising achievements of Ethiopia in job creation and market linkages in the industrial park. The WBG President further stated that the development in the manufacturing sector that Ethiopia is achieving in terms of job creation and market linkages in the industrial parks is a promising and exemplary achievement for developing countries.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) has also discussed with the newly elected president of the WBG, Banga Parallel to the ‘Summit for a New Global Financing Pact’ organized in Paris, France in late June. During their discussion, the Premier expressed his hope that the WBG would enhance its mission of responding to new challenges and reaffirm its efforts in realizing its twin goals of poverty reduction and shared prosperity.
Presenting his views during the discussion at the summit for New Global Financing Pact, PM Abiy also explained that the developing world particularly, African countries, is facing a cocktail of interconnected crises such as financial, climate, debt, cost of living crises and in most places instability. Particularly, the debt crisis remains a common headache for many developing countries. “How to manage debt remains a challenging issue for the developing world countries, not a development issue. All efforts are investing to manage debt instead of focusing on development,” PM Abiy stated.
On top of that, developing countries are extremely facing devastating climate effects. As to him, these all bottlenecks are challenging the developing world on the path to focus on development activities and poverty reduction. Even though these challenges are looking for an enormous amount of resources, the financial flow to the developing countries is limited and unpredictable, which is highly affecting development endeavours.
While recommending the need for a robust and predictable financial safety net to address the multifaceted drawbacks, the Premier stated that adequate resources are of paramount importance for curbing the problems. He further called up the multilateral development banks for their reform hoping new reform measures at WBG with the new president for equitable and predictable financial flow to the developing world. “I am sure the new president of the WBG will not leave us without significant reform which will impact all of us. We Africans are expecting WB and other banks to focus on poverty reduction, also on boosting shared prosperity,” PM Abiy accentuated.
A month after the Paris New Global Financing Pact Summit, the World Bank Group (WBG) President Ajay Banga visited Ethiopia as part of his global tour. Banga’s trip, according to WBG, focuses on identifying available opportunities to create jobs for young people and women. The president’s tour aims “to write a new playbook for the 78-year-old institution,” the WB statement revealed.
During his stay in Addis Ababa, Banga discussed with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Ahmed Shide, with Governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), Mamo Mihretu and also visited Bole Lemi Industrial Park. The discussions aim to strengthen partnerships and collaborations between the World Bank and Ethiopia.
Following his visit to Bole Lemi Industrial Park, which is one of the large projects financed by the bank, where different local and foreign manufacturers are operating their factories, Banga praised Ethiopia’s industrial park achievements. He told journalists that Ethiopia’s achievements in job creation and market linkages in the industrial parks are promising. He observes the role of industrial parks in creating job opportunities and the development of the manufacturing sector.
The change in the manufacturing sector that Ethiopia is achieving in terms of job creation and market linkages in the places where industrial parks are located is promising, Banga stated adding that he has observed a lot of interesting development in the park. The industry park creates brings factories that create jobs for young people, particularly women.
Mentioning that he has observed almost 90% of employees in the industry park are young women, he accentuated that this performance can create social and economic growth that helps the young women to build their self-reliance. The WBG is happy to be associated with the industrial parks. The more a country can invest in such development projects the better performance will be creating more job opportunities for youths, Banga stated.
The president was also surprised by the system that has been built in the park regarding human resource management. He further witnessed that he found the young lady who were working in the park for the past five years as a supervisor. It was a wonderful journey for her and excellent and fair performance of the management, WBG President said. Hence, industrial parks are solving the problems of unemployment, especially for young women.
He further explained that the industrial parks are using inputs for their raw material from local and indigenous sources which create a market for products of the local community. “The other thing that I have
found interesting here is the effort that the government is putting into the development of raw materials which is vital for industries.”
During his stay in the industry park, Banga visited a Malt Plant which creates a value chain with thousands of farmers and played a significant role in import substitution. Mentioning that the malt factory has started using a value-chain of 20 thousand farmers to use their products and now close to 100 thousand, he underscored that it is paramount important for farmers. The farmers for their part also explained to the President that the value chain with the malt company helped them to buy a house. This shows the significance and multi-functioning of the industrial parks for society apart from promoting development in general.
Appreciating the achievements in the industry park, Banga recommends improving value-added manufacturing to encourage local production. Ethiopia’s Finance Minister, Ahmed Shide for his part said that the World Bank is a longstanding development partner of Ethiopia which has been involved in many sectors. The WBG partners with Ethiopia in infrastructural development, social development, and digital development and on regional integration, Ahmed added.
“Ethiopia, as it moves to intensify the reform activities and expand growth, we are going to work with all banking sources of growth in bringing in more private capital into the economy. And particular, Ethiopia is the biggest country in the region, in terms of population size and territory, compared to African countries, regional economic integration is also very much important. So I would like to thank the World Bank for the visit,” Finance Minister Ahmed emphasized.
As mentioned by PM Abiy in Paris, Ethiopia is not an exception in facing the interconnected challenges that developing countries are facing. Despite Ethiopia’s facing multifaceted challenges, the country has built and operationalized 13 different industrial parks that are creating hundreds of thousands of job opportunities.
Supporting similar development projects will help Ethiopia to accelerate its efforts of combating poverty and creating more jobs for its growing youth generation. Additional three million youth are joining the job-seeking market annually and it is tough to address the demand without additional and predictable financing. As observed by the president of the WBG, Ethiopia is striving to invest its maximum efforts in vital development projects which have a critical role in eradicating poverty and creating job opportunities. To strengthen these efforts, the WBG and other financial institutions may boost their development support and further their engagements.
BY DARGIE KAHSAY
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 6 AUGUST 2023
