Regional Bank Donates Masks to Ethiopia

Jul 13 , 2020

The Eastern & Southern African Trade & Development Bank, aka TDB, has donated 160,000 locally manufactured face masks to healthcare workers. Ahmed Shide, minister of Finance and the country’s shareholder representative on the TDB board of governors, handed over the masks to Lia Tadesse (MD), minister of Health, during a ceremony on July 8, 2020. The Bank procured the masks from Everest Apparel Ethiopia S.C., Everest Textiles’ garment factory in Hawassa Industrial Park that employs 2,000 workers. To boost the member states’ efforts in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, TDB has launched Covid-19 Emergency Response Programme (CERP) through which essential supplies are procured mostly from regional factories to address healthcare sector imperatives while supporting local private sector and employment, including of women and youth, according to Admassu Tadesse, president and chief executive of TBD. TDB is implementing similar interventions in 20 of its member states as part of CERP, as well as continent-wide, via a half-million-dollar grant that was extended to the African Union’s Africa Centres for Disease Control & Prevention (Africa CDC).