Ezana Haddis, Special to Addis Standard In mid-2012 the Addis Abeba City Administration (AACA) has organized a project office called “Addis Ababa City Planning Project Office” and tasked it to prepare a city development plan that it claimed would work for the coming ten years.
Dr Maximilian Martin, Exclusive for Addis Standard
In the 1860s,an English discoverer named C.T. Beke proposed to construct a 225-mile railroad to open up trade with the southernmost territories ruled by the Pasha of Egypt who nominally reported to the Ottoman Empire. His motivation was to provide ready access to source from the cotton fields of Ethiopia, connecting the coast of the Red Sea with the Upper Nile Valley. Nearly 150 years later, the Ethiopian Government, through its Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) that seeks to raise GDP by 11-15 percent per year in the 2010-2015 period, is engaging in massive industrial and infrastructure projects; a 1,500 mile-long standard gauge rail network that will help overcome the landlocked country’s infrastructure limitations and render a national trade logistics strategy viable being among them.
In 2012 Mulu Solomon was elected as the first female president of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce. Two years later the Chamber’s presidential election was held in May this year, and although almost everyone wanted Mulu to run for the second time, she declined saying she wanted to lead by example in teaching the lesson that the position is not eternal as was the case in the past. Our Editor-in-Chief Tsedale Lemma interviewed Mulu on her achievements, challenges and frustrations as the President of the Chamber, and what she thinks is waiting for her. Excerpts:
