Salaam salaam from BA! This is the Rorshok Ethiopia Update from the 11th of September twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Ethiopia.

On Tuesday the 9th, Ethiopia officially inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the largest dam in Africa and one of the biggest in the world. The dam is built in the western part of the country, in the Benishangul Gumuz region in the Guba area. Construction took fourteen years and over five billion US dollars.

The leaders of neighboring countries, including Somalia, Kenya and South Sudan attended the inauguration. Throughout the fourteen years it took to build the dam, Egypt has been unsuccessfully attempting to derail the project because it fears that the dam will decrease the volume of water that it gets from the Nile River. However, Ethiopia has always said that this wouldn’t happen.

A day after the inauguration, on Wednesday the 10th, state media reported that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sat down with South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit to discuss bilateral issues, but details weren’t revealed. In a separate meeting, PM Abiy talked with Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed about areas of common interest.

The attendance of the Somali president at the inauguration came as somewhat of a surprise because Somalia and Egypt recently agreed on military cooperation. On top of that, relations between Ethiopia and Somalia were strained because Ethiopia agreed to recognize Somaliland, a breakaway administrative unit that the Somali government doesn’t recognize, in exchange for a sea outlet. Ethiopia says that it is entitled to access to the sea, as the largest landlocked country by population.

We have been reporting that the government has been detaining journalists, and this week was no exception, as three journalists from the same radio station were arrested on Wednesday the 3rd. The senior journalist was immediately released but the other two remain in custody.

They were detained after they talked on air about a report that they had worked on about the salary demands from health professionals. Specifics about the report aren’t known because the station immediately removed it from its archives.

The Ethiopian Media Authority issued a letter following the broadcast, saying the station planned on inciting violence by reporting the matter. Journalists’ detentions have significantly increased recently.

Another report, this time from the International Organization for Migration, draws a very grim picture of the high number of migrants who are crossing borders illegally. The document says that from early twenty twenty-four until mid-twenty twenty-five, more than two hundred and twenty thousand people have migrated illegally to Arab countries through Yemen and Djibouti, with ninety-seven percent being Ethiopians.

The report said that ninety-seven percent of migrants decide to cross borders illegally because of economic hardship, while three percent leave because of conflicts, wars and persecution. It added that the number of migrants through this channel has increased by thirty-four percent compared to last year.

Speaking of border crossings, South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday the 11th that Ethiopian authorities have detained twenty-seven armed South Sudanese cattle herders after they crossed Ethiopia’s border. The Ministry said the herders are from South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria state, that their crossing was accidental, and that it wasn’t unusual for people to carry arms.

The Ministry’s spokeswoman said South Sudan is negotiating with the Ethiopian government through its embassy in Addis Ababa for the detainees' release. The Ministry didn’t say when exactly the border-crossing happened.

In news from another ministry, The Ministry of Finance recently issued its national debt report, which said that as of the 30th of June, the country’s domestic debt has reached two and a half trillion birr, which is over sixteen billion US dollars.

The Ministry explained that treasury bills make up a significant proportion of the domestic debt at around eighty percent — a figure that recently increased because the government allowed the sale of more treasury bills last month. Loans from the Commercial Bank, the National Bank and pension funds make up the rest of the country’s domestic debt.

Investors' interest in treasury bills was more than expected, and the amount the government earned exceeded what the executive had planned on getting from investors.

Meanwhile, The Ethiopian Investment Holdings (or EIH), which controls over forty major state-owned corporations, said this past week that its subsidies brought in over two trillion birr, which is more than thirteen billion US dollars. The sovereign wealth fund also said the companies earned more than two hundred and fifty billion birr, which is almost two billion US dollars, in gross profits, an eighty-eight percent increase compared to last year.

The EIH said companies in the transport and logistics sector accounted for the majority of the fund’s profit, followed by companies in the finance, power and communication sectors. The EIH plans to bring in more than four hundred billion birr, which is around three billion US dollars, in profits in the new Ethiopian year.

On another note, one of the highest-grossing companies under the EIH is Ethio Telecom, the rival of the privately-owned Safaricom, which announced on Friday the 5th, at a giveaway event it organized for its customers, that it is planning to significantly expand its operations. The company revealed that the planned expansion will see it spending one and a half billion US dollars over the next three years.

Its head of PR, who is the former CEO of Ethio Telecom, said the company has already invested two point six billion US dollars over the past few years. He also explained that the company plans to increase its prices, especially on internet data.

In more business news, on Monday the 8th, the Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration, along with the EU and Germany’s sustainable development organization, unveiled a solution that will significantly reduce the time it takes to get a business license.

The platform is called the Integrated Business Registration and Licensing Digital System and works by integrating information from different government institutions involved in issuing business licenses. The system’s developers say that not only will this development help the business community, but it will also let the government charge more for licensing services, allowing it to make a billion birr more in fees, which is more than six million US dollars.

In other news, on the sidelines of the second Africa Climate Summit, which was held in Addis on Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th, some participants struck finance deals. The European Investment Bank (or EIB) has agreed to provide technical assistance on managing climate risks and green lending to the Ethiopian private commercial banks Zemen, Hibret and Dashen. This deal is the first of its kind in Ethiopia, and it comes after the EIB agreed to work with the National Bank.

The EIB’s Africa representative emphasized the importance of financial institutions in helping fight climate change.

Changing gears, professionals and consultants in different sectors will have to keep track of their earnings and spending, and register for value-added tax payment regardless of the amount they earn. This requirement is part of a directive that the Ministry of Finance prepared to enforce new tax rules.

The Ministry said these professionals must be registered within thirty days of the issuance of the directive and will have to start adding the VAT on the services they provide.

And to wrap up this edition, a sports update. Last week, we mentioned that the Ethiopian national football team would face Egypt for a World Cup qualifier match on Friday the 5th. Ethiopia lost the match two-nil as Premier League stars Mohammed Salah and Omar Marmoush scored for Egypt.

For more than a week, club football has stopped due to the international break. This international break will be one to forget for Ethiopia as the team also lost its second match of the break two-to-zero against Sierra Leone, which was supposed to be a much easier opponent.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Ciao!