Bussiness Ethiopia at the European Business Summit: Boosting Local Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Economic EU-Africa Partnership H.E Ambasssasdor Hirut Zemene underlined on the focus of the Ethiopian government in generating more job opportunities to the youth and women by giving emphasis to strengthening Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as focusing on sectors such as light manufacturing, agriculture, tourism and information technology which are key to job creation.
Photo credit: The Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels The European Business Summit (EBS) is a renowned organization that creates and supports networking and debating events which takes place in Brussels every year. Adapting to these challenging times, the European Business Summit and celebration of its 20th anniversary has been held virtually on the 16th and 17th of November 2020. This summit was entitled ‘Rebooting the European economy: Towards a green, sustainable, digital and more resilient union’. Her Excellency Ambassador Hirut Zemene participated in one of the panel discussions of the summit under the theme “Boosting Local Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Economic EU-Africa Partnership”. In this panel discussion H.E Ambassador Hirut was joined by Lora Borissova, Senior Expert, Cabinet of EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen; Sérgio Pimenta, Vice President of International Finance Corporation; Soraya Hakuziyaremye, Minister of Trade and Industry of Rwanda; Fabrizio Delage-Paganini, Co-Founder of Valeur-Tech; Anna Ekeledo, Executive Director of AfriLabs; and Celia Moore, EU-Africa Relations Consultant. During the panel discussion, Ambassador Hirut underscored the im-
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portant areas of alignments between the development polices and strategies of the government of Ethiopia and EU’s priorities in Africa such as job creation and, green growth. She spoke at length as to how the Ten-Year Development Plan (2020/21 to 2029/30), themed “Ethiopia: An African Beacon of Prosperity” has focused on the topic of discussion i.e, boosting local entrepreneurship by increasing the role of the private sector to the economy. She underlined on the focus of the Ethiopian government in generating more job opportunities to the youth and women by giving emphasis to strengthening Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as focusing on sectors such as light manufacturing, agriculture, tourism and information technology which are key to job creation. Further referring to the topic of the panel “boosting local entrepreneurship,” she explained how women contribute to the economy through SMEs. She also highlighted how women are forced to engage in the informal sector due to lack of access to finance and the need for them to be supported financially and technically. She also shaded light on how as a country of small holder farmers, Ethiopia projects a strong case for entrepreneurship. She brought the case of coffee in this regard.
