Asrat Seyoum

For the tax authority, which has been busy defending its excise tax revision to stakeholders and taxpayers, this week; the decision to levy progressive and prohibitive tax on the used car business in Ethiopia was one long overdue. Presented at one of the discussion platforms organized by the authority, a study, conducted by the authority, estimated that in Ethiopia, used cars consume on average 76 percent additional fuel than their counterparts.

Philip Parham was appointed the UK government’s Envoy to the Commonwealth on 18 June 2018. He is also the Special Envoy for the UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020 which takes place in London in January 2020.

Andrew McLachlan is Senior Vice President, Development, Sub-Saharan Africa, Radisson Hotel Group. Andrew is a 48-year-old South African national based in Cape Town with 28 years’ experience in the hotel industry.

Ambassador Fumio Shimizu is the head of the Japanese Mission to the African Union (AU). A lawyer by profession, Shimizu is a seasoned Japanese diplomate and official at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On December 2014, a newly found trading company called Ziway Share company shocked Ethiopia with a whopping offer 350,000 birr (USD 12,000 at current exchange rate) for one square meter of land in the heart of Merkato, the busiest commercial district in Ethiopia.

Merkato, once proclaimed to be the single largest open-market place in Africa, seemed to be evolving overtime. In the past decade alone, Merkato has undergone a significant level of transformation.

Ephrem Haile is a familiar name and face in Tokyo and Japan as a whole. Featured on a number of television shows and documentary programs in Japan, Ephrem has really been the face of Ethiopian community in Japan for over a decade.

Started off as a government agency established to support Small and Micro Enterprises (SME) and startups within the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development (KFED) is set to expand its support to SMEs, entrepreneurs and startups in Ethiopia allocating USD 100 million to be used as revolving fund by the program which the organization will implement in partnership with the Ministry of Technology and Innovation (MoTI), The Reporter has learnt.

Imagine some of the oldest agricultural equipment such as tractors and combine-harvesters finally being able to perform their task without the active involvement of farmers.

A thriving city in central Japan, Kobe, has taken a daring move to offer what is called a startup visa program, a one-year visa package, for enterprising young business leaders wanting to setup shop in Japan, as the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tries to manage the fallout from another (national) program which offered a five-year Japanese visa for semi-skilled workers around world to curb the crippling labor shortage in the country.