Board Extends Voter Registration Deadline

Apr 24 , 2021


[ssba-buttons]

The deadline for voter registration has been pushed by two weeks to May 7, 2021, officials at the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) have announced. Electoral officials are confronted with organisational and logistical hurdles in the run-up to the sixth national elections scheduled for the first week of June 2021. Political uncertainty, the war in the Tigray region, and widespread conflicts across the country have made it difficult to open electoral offices, where half of the over 50,000 remain unopened. Completing voter registration within the deadline initially set for April 23 was found to be unattainable. Only around 18.5 million voters of the 50 million expected to register have taken cards up until last week. The extension in the Afar and Somali regional states will last an extra week, seeing as most electoral offices in the two regions remained closed due to security concerns while offices elsewhere were operational.


Radar

US Renews National Emergency, Sanctions on Ethiopia

The United States has extended the national emergency and sanctions on Ethiopia for another year under the African Growth & Opportunity Act (AGOA). Signed by President Donald J. Trump, the measure was first declared on September 17, 2021, through an executive order citing the conflict in northern region of the country as an "unusual and extraordinary" threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy. The extension, effective until September 17, 2026, keeps in place restrictions targeti...


Radar

Rockefeller Pitches Clean Cooking to Curb School Meal Emissions

A recent study has revealed the staggering environmental toll of school feeding programs. A single school serving 400 students can burn through the equivalent of 56 hectares of forest each year to fuel cooking. The Rockefeller Foundation flagged the health risks too, with most cooks, predominantly women, breathing smoke levels ten times higher than the World Health Organisation's safe limit. "If every school meal transitioned to clean cooking with electricity and solar, the emissions saved wo...


Radar

Sun-Powered Grid Brings Light to Qunbi District

A new 600KW solar mini-grid in East Hararge'sQunbi district has connected 2,200 households to electricity, marking a milestone in the recent rural electrification push. Ethiopian Electric Utility (EEU) laid seven kilometres of medium-voltage and 10 kilometres of low-voltage lines, installing four transformers to reach communities long cut off from power. Customers cover only meter and installation costs before accessing the service. The project is part of the national strategy to expand energ...