THE PAPER THAT PROMOTES FREE ENTERPRISE Year 23, No. 1149 Sunday December 13, 2020 / Tel: +251-11 618 3253 | 11 661 0976 / Fax: +251-11 618 5206 / P.O. Box: 95/1110 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia / Price 10.00 INSIDE STORIES Government ATA attaches Top flight performance the livestock Africa Insurance is back on track with 16 folds of proclaims it does not earnings per share growth sector to its new and lower claim settlement in the 2019/20 financial year 3 need a “baby-sitter” decade program Zemen’s financial By Muluken Yewondwossen debut report By Metasebia Teshome assistance only if it feels that it failed to investigate. Zemen Insurance has earned Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) 18 million birr profit as it It has been well over a month since the law “Ethiopia is led by a government which has launched the next ten year program that opened its doors in enforcement operation started in the Tigray knows how to govern a nation. Ethiopia includes the livestock sector and regions, which doesn’t need a baby sitter,” said Redwan. the last month of the region after the 4th of November 2020 attack were not part of the ended program, and ensure 2019/20 financial year 5 and now the government has announced Redwan confirmed that Ethiopia’s security all farmers to be commercialized by 2030. it has completed its military offence after forces shot to the air and detained United Transformation of Ethiopia’s agriculture sector Amhara Insurance taking the town of Mekele from the so called Nations staffers as they tried to reach parts criminal group of Tigray People’s Liberation to one where farmers and pastoralists have Initiated by the success of of the embattled Tigray region that they were Front /TPLF/. market oriented production and productivity Amhara Bank, the organizers not supposed to go. and sustainable natural resource development of the bank have Although the government announced that "They broke two checkpoints to drive hastily and utilization would be the next ten year signaled to establish the TPLF group had attacked the North to areas where they were not supposed to strategy that ATA will engage with its partners, Amara Insurance 7 National Defense, Sekoture Getachew, a go, that they were told not to go," Ethiopian says Yifru Tadesse, Senior Director at ATA said. veteran TPLF politician, publicly justified government spokesman Redwan Hussein Tele blackout the November 4th military attack against He added that the livestock sector will be a core said in a press conference. sector besides the crop sector and five excluded explained the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) as an “They were told in some areas they were regions in the first ten year; Afar, Benshangul Ethio-telecom announced anticipatory self-defense and amongst it all not supposed to move. And when they were Gumuz, Gambella, Harari, and Somali will be that all telecom lines to the the international community still continues left alone they broke two checkpoints, and also included on this coming ten year program. Mekelle core site in to force the Ethiopian government to accept when they were about to break the third According to Yifru, over the next 10 years, Tigray have been independent investigation. one, soliders shot to the air and detained severed ATA has the ability to roll out up to 11 strategic 7 them. Now, of course they are free," Redwan programs in total. On Tuesday December 8, Redwan Hussein, explained. Ready for second wave spokesperson of the state of emergency told For this budget year ATA’s focus will be on four reporters that Ethiopia will invite others for Page 5 strategic programs, that is; systemic interventions, Africa is better equipped to deal with a potential crop agricultural commercialization Cluster second wave of (ACC), livestock ACC, and scale up regions COVID-19 ACC. Under the plan until 2025 systemic 10 interventions, livestock ACC, and scale up The ballooning inflation regions ACC, horticulture in urban and peri- INTERVIEW urban areas, horticulture expansion in the ACC Dissecting the exponential inflation rates over the years regions, and livestock and crop in food insecure areas will be included on the strategic program, By Muluken Yewondwossen controversial election and the violence that while until the end of 2030 that is the next five follows it. “The latter is important as it year starting from 2026 up to 2030, 11 strategic programs are expected to be included. After the 2005 election, the government was contributed to the change in the modality quick to set a growth path that was driven of growth financing which we believe is Khalid Bomba, CEO of ATA, told Capital that ‘partly targeting to politically impress the resulted in the macroeconomic imbalances details of the coming ten year strategy will be public.’ This path is stated as one of the major witnessed,” the study reads. fully finalized in this budget year. reason for spiral inflationary trends of the “It was followed by the behavior of high Mandefro Nigussie, State Minister for country until now. inflation, significant parallel market premium Agricultural Development at Ministry of The government would later be in a dilemma of the currency, shortage of foreign exchange, Agriculture (MoA), recalls that previously ATA to choose either economic growth or significant trade balance and fiscal deficits had come up with high quality outcomes that neutralize inflation. A new study has revealed and huge debt that characterized the Ethiopian needed appropriate capacity in terms of human US-Africa relations its recommendation for the government to macro economy today,” states the study that capital and others at MoA to implement it with focus on food investments at the cost of the was carried out by Alemayehu Geda, Professor similar standard, while it was a gap at MoA. He Harry Broadman managing at Addis Ababa University and Kibrom Tafere, director at Berkeley Research other sectors to curb the food inflation. said that in this current implementation period Professor at Cornell University under the title MoA and ATA have jointly taken part in the Group talks about The latest study conducted by two senior of ‘The Challenge of Inflation and Financing the future of US- economists stated that in Ethiopia, inflation Africa relations 16 was not generally an issue before the 2005 Page 6 Page 6 ISSN 2410-6933 Ethiopia’s Business Weekly www.capitalethiopia.com / Twitter @capitaleth / facebook.com/capitalethiopia Get our latest stories from your smart phone, just download QR reader from your app store and flash on 2 EDITORIAL Year 23, No. 1149 Sunday Dec. 13, 2020 Our Dear readers: The editorial team will be on Sabbatical for the coming few weeks. In the meantime, we will reprint our previous editorials along with accompanying commentaries. CAPITAL is a weekly business With best regard, newspaper published and distributed every Sunday by CROWN THINK, ORGANIZE & TRANSFORM PUBLISHING PLC. CAPITAL is a registered In a world dominated by adroit selfishness and deft manipulations of relations, social or otherwise, gullibility can be fatal. Unfortunately, we newspaper with the Federal Africans don’t seem to grasp the imposed cruel reality that continues Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to play havoc in our collective lives. Flag independence didn’t bring Ministry of Trade license number much, as a more nuanced scheme that goes by the name neocolonialism, 14/673/21142/2004. soon usurped collective thoughts and actions. Thanks to the numbing t Managing Editor educational systems adopted in the early days of our independence (by our Teguest Yilma gullible leadership), our innate criticality was made to systemically vanish By Ben Hunt [email protected] from serious discourse, giving way to the highly celebrated zombification COMMENT of learned idiocy. All in all, our increasingly valueless societies have t Editor-in-chief become clueless about all and sundry. Herein lies the grave danger to our Groum Abate very survival! Forget about [email protected] THINK. Critical thinking is one of the essentials of life. To be without Addis Ababa, Yeka sub-city, it, particularly in the complex societies of out time, is to beg for chaos Wereda: 06 H. No. 514, and destruction. Undermining this important facet of life (by almost all Industrially 011 618 3253/011 661 0976 African countries) has allowed useless/unsustainable schemes to take t Deputy Editor-in-chief over our existence, collective or otherwise. To be able to deconstruct Muluken Yewondwossen the modern world system that is built on our continual impoverishment [email protected] and chaos requires high caliber efforts. Internalizing the principles of the Necessary Schooling, prevailing world order without being able to analyze its consequences will t Reporters not take us far. To start with, the reigning global system is based on the t Metasebia Teshome irrational and brutal domination of both man and nature! The results of we homeschool our [email protected] callous exploitation of life and life support systems are now clearly upon t Senior Graphics Designer us and collective humanity is becoming acutely aware of this destruction. t Daniel Amare Hence, blindly following the dominant system is a non-starter. Not children surprisingly, our learned zombies, or what we affectionately call our ‘Ivy danielamare@capitalethiopia. com Idiots’ and our ‘belly thinkers’ do not have what it takes to bring about don’t talk about this very much in public, because most people transformative changes to our miserable situation. Neocolonial modernity, assume that homeschoolers are either religious zealots or Graphics Designer be it of the neoliberalism type or otherwise, is a dead end. Flogging a antisocial freaks, and we’re definitely not the former. Maybe t Abrham Wuletaw dead horse only results in the unsightly broadcasting of carcass and a bit antisocial, but I wouldn’t call it “freakish” per se.