Ethiopia’s Finance Minister is meeting international banks Barclays, Citi and BNP Paribas about a planned Eurobond issue for late December 2014 or January 2015. The amount is unknown, the duration is likely to be “at least 10 years”.
Low-cost manufacturing is shifting from China to Ethiopia, lured by cheap electricity and labour costs that are a tenth of China’s. Ethiopia is building a name for producing clothes, shoes and other basic goods, while also tackling transport bottlenecks.
Ethiopia, Africa’s fifth biggest economy, is thinking of a debut Eurobond, after it received its first international credit ratings on 9 May: it got B from Fitch and B/B from Standard & Poors.
An intriguing article just published by The Africa Report highlights the potential of the East African region, where the economy is forecast to grow 18-fold to $3.5 trn by 2050, and the growing links, self-determination, infrastructure and risks.
Kenya has invited Ethiopian companies to list on the Nairobi Securities Exchange in a ground-breaking move that would let them raise capital and trade their shares
IFC signed 2 grant agreements with MicroEnsure Ltd for index-based weather insurance to help small-scale farmers in Rwanda and Zambia manage drought and too much rain.
Ethiopia’s Government says trading on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange totalled transacted some Birr 20 billion ($1.06 bn) worth of commodities on the trading floor during the 2012/13 Ethiopian state budget year (to July).
Entrepreneurs running small and medium-enterprises (SMEs) in West and East Africa stand to benefit from a new $75m private equity fund. The announcement follows the news on 29 Jan that two long-term private equity partners – Jacana and InReturn Capital – are merging.
The World Bank has cut its growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier in the year it forecast 5.2% growth overall for SSA economies in 2012, but yesterday (4 Oct) it cut this to 4.8%.
The Silk African Food private equity fund, run by UK regulated specialist asset manager Silk Invest Ltd, has acquired a significant minority equity stake in NAS Foods Ltd., a biscuit maker in Ethiopia.
Five leading Africans and innovators were named Social Entrepreneurs of the Year 2012 Africa by the Schwab Foundtion last week at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Addis Ababa.
This article by Dr Eleni Gabre-Madhin, CEO of the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange, gives a fascinating, self-critical and revealing account of the creation of the exchange and the sometimes breakneck pace at which the market grew. It’s very good, and well worth reading in full.
London-based alternative asset manager Duet Group and Vasari, a company with a record of growing businesses, announced recently in a press release that they had made the largest private equity investment in Ethiopia so far to expand Dashen Brewery.
Ethiopia has raised Birr 7 billion ($408 million) of debt to finance the $4.8 bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River, and plans to issue more bonds to raise the finance domestically.
Somaliland media sources and other rumours have suggested (12 Aug) that a deal on Somaliland’s Berbera port is imminent with China and Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervising Agency (PPESA) has privatised 287 enterprises since 1995, and plans to sell 18 companies in direct sales and 5 companies in joint ventures.
The dynamic Ethiopian Commodity Exchange is further spreading its information feed. Now customers can access general information and their accounts through SMS and voice telephone (“Interactive Voice Receiver”) systems, according to an article in Ethiopia’s Fortune newspaper.
On IMF forecasts Africa has 7 of the world’s top 10 places for fastest growing economies for the 5 years from 2011-2015, reports the Economist, and 6 of the top 10 over the past decade were also African.
The International Finance Corporation is investing $21 million to guarantee coffee crops. The facility would be to support the Ethiopian Coffee Initiative run by Technoserve.
Ethiopia may soon have corporate bonds, paving the way to a bond market, according to a press conference last week by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. According to a report in the respected Fortune weekly newspaper, the Prime Minister told media on 18 March that state-owned enterprises would start issuing bonds
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