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Ethiopian Airlines, Ethiopia’s flag carrier, announced that it has taken charge of the Boeing 737-800 Sky Interior Aircraft ordered in December 2009.

The company is focused on investing in modernizing its fleet and the new 737-800 Sky Interior aircraft built with high technology to provide customers with the comfort and style to enhance the air travel experience according to Tewolde Gebre-mariam, Chief Executive of Ethiopian Airlines.

The airline expects to deploy the new Sky Interior to East African tourist destinations such as Daressalam, Mombassa, Seychelles during day flights and Delhi, Bombay, Dubai and Kuwait at night. 

Adama Town is working to become the second most significant conference destination in Ethiopia after Addis Ababa according to the Culture and Tourism Office.

The Cultural and Tourism office is exerting efforts to foster the growth of conference tourism in the town said Dejenu Eshetu, Office Occupational Support Supervision Process Owner.

The town has several international standard hotels to provide adequate service for any type of conference he explained. The hotels provide services such as swimming pools, internet access, parking lots and meeting halls that make them desirable to tourists and event organizers said Dejenu.

Yara International is to increase its investment in the Ethiopian potash sector increasing ownership in Ethio-potash BV from 16.67% to 51%.

Yara had entered into an agreement with two partners to invest in 16.67% of Ethio-potash. The other partners were Seftec with 26% share and XLR with a 57.33% share and management of the company in 2009.

XLR will retain a 49% share while Yara will take over the management of the company with its 51% share. 

HP today announced it has established operations in Ethiopia with the opening of an office in Addis Ababa and the appointment of Mesfin Makonnen as Country Manager.

Customers in Ethiopia will now have better access to HP’s broad portfolio of products and services, allowing them to transform their businesses by taking advantage of improved IT infrastructure and a future based cloud computing and connectivity services. Governments can leverage HP technology to drive economic growth and stability by modernizing the delivery of services in key areas such as education, healthcare and e-Government services. HP also intends to broaden access of its consumer printer and PCs in the country.

HP is proud to establish operations in Ethiopia at a time when we are fulfilling our potential as a high-growth economy,” said Mesfin Makonnen “Bringing HP’s cloud-based and connectivity technologies by to the Ethiopian government and local companies can help build a strong technology industry.  In turn this generates economic growth and sees innovative solutions that can make a positive impact in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia and Vietnam discussed collaboration on Ethiopia’s accession to the World Trade Organization when Le Luong Minh made a visit to Ethiopia this week.

A team of technical experts from Ethiopia had previously visited Vietnam for advice on World Trade negotiations. The team also discussed ways to enhance trade in agriculture and textiles.

There are many potential areas for cooperation between the two countries noted Le Luong.

Ethiopia was selected to host the “Origin Africa’ textile exhibition because of its conducive investment and trade policy according to Rajeev Arora, Director of the African Cotton and Textile Industries Federation.

The exhibition will be held in Addis Ababa from April 25-28 2012.

Ethiopia should enhance the competitiveness of its textile and garments sector on the international market said Arora.

Ethiopian Airlines, Ethiopia’s flag carrier, has trained eight pilots to operate the 787 Dreamliner at the Boeing Flight Services campus at Gatwick, London. The airline is training additional batches of trainees to qualify for the Dreamliner at the same facility.

Ethiopian Airlines pilots are the first African pilots to qualify to fly the Dreamliner making this a milestone in the history of the airline said Capitan Desta Zeru, Senior Vice President of Flight Operations with Ethiopian.

Guangdong Chuanhui Group, a Chinese company, is expecting final approval to take charge of 41,000m2 to construct a 58 Storey five star hotel in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

The building is expected to be one of the five tallest buildings in Africa.

GCG submitted a request for land for the project two years ago one of five proposals from domestic and international investors according to the city administration.

M2M Group, a Moroccan based information technology, has offered the lowest bid of 8 million US dollars for the supply of 420 Units of Automated Teller Machine and 37 Million birr for the supply of 4000 point of sales machines to the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.                                              

The letter awarding the contract is yet to be issued by the bank and the bank declined to comment on the process until the vendor has officially been announced.

Some other competitors have lodged complaints with the bank alleging that the price quoted by M2M did not include VAT according to sources.

M2M denies any such allegations as baseless according to a senior manager with the company.

Ethiopia’s national Electronic Fund Transfers has seen interest from a dozen international information technology companies and their domestic partners.

The switch system for the national EFT is a technology that will allow customers to transact money from nearby ATMs with payment cards from any bank that is part of the system by centralizing the card payment system of all banks linked to the national payment system of the central bank explained Bizuneh Bekele, General Manager of EthSwitch SC.  

EthSwitch was established last year with an initial capital of 80 million birr equally contributed by all banks operating in Ethiopia. The board of the company is chaired by Berhanu Bekele, General Manager of United Bank.