Harvesting Finance

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Harvesting Finance

From left: Agriculture Minister Girma Amente (PhD), Finance Minister Ahmed Shide, and National Bank Governor Mamo Mihretu during the second Ethiopia Finance Forum on July 22, 2025, at Commercial Bank of Ethiopia’s HQ located around Ras Abebe Aregay St. Officials unpacked the National Agri-Finance Implementation Roadmap (NAFIR), a push to widen credit access for inputs like irrigation, livestock, and mechanisation. Despite making up 32pc of GDP and 64pc of employment, agriculture secured just 8pc of total bank loans in 2023/24, falling well short by 2pc of demand.

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In-Picture

FROZEN FOCUS

A man and woman, cast in bronze outside Menelik II School in Arat Kilo, inhabit separate worlds, he buried in ink-stained pages, she captivated by the glow of a screen. Side by side yet divided by decades, their silent conversation bridges time, technology, and habit. The sculpture captures humanity's attachment to what's immediate, a nod to scrolling and screens, while quietly celebrating the near-vanishing ritual of reading. It's a frozen meditation on focus, distraction, and the delicate danc...

RECYCLING LEGACY

Lelise Neme, Director General of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), and Helen Debebe, State Minister at the Ministry of Urban & Infrastructure, take a closer look at recycled packaging displayed by Mador Packaging during the Circular Economy Hotspot Ethiopia 2025 at the Science Museum in Addis Abeba. The event showcased innovations in recycling and sustainable products, linking the green legacy ambitions with the practical realities of circular economy solutions...

CHAINED MEMORY

The marble gentleman of Addis Abeba, Piazza area stands eternally pensive, hand to chest as if swearing loyalty to an invisible audience. In reality, he is the statue of Abune Petros, the Ethiopian bishop executed by Italian forces in 1936 for resisting the Fascist occupation. Today, he gazes over a city jammed with traffic, bureaucracy, and high-rise ambitions, holding a broken chain that once symbolised defiance but now competes with satellite dishes and billboards. History wanted him rememb...

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