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The Ethiopia Commodities Exchanges signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of the United States. The US government signed the agreement through the agency of the Unites States Agency for International Development.

The agreement is intended to allow collaboration towards enhancing the quality, marketing and traceability of Ethiopian coffee.

The agreement facilitates a partnership between the Agricultural Growth Program-Agricultural Market Development Project of the USAID with the exchange to enable sellers and buyers to track the origin of coffee through electronic coding and marking. The collaborative efforts will also include certifying laboratories and quality graders as well as enhancing the efficiency of the ECX warehouse system and increasing the number of farmer’s cooperatives.

The Ethiopian Commodities Exchange (ECX) is to review a proposal for trading in chickpeas and sorghum. The exchange announced plans to introduce the two commodities alongside Teff at its fourth national forum.

An industry study has already been done for chickpeas and sorghum said Bemnet Aschenaki chief strategy officer for the ECX. The study was done on samples collected by the ECX quality and product development team as per suggestions outlined by a technical advisory board explained Bemnet.

The trade value of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange has reached 21 billion birr in the current financial year while its trading volume has increased to 601,000 tons announced the ECX.

The trading value of the Exchange increased by 21% while its trading value showed an increase of 23% noted the company press release.

The increase in trading volume included the 52% increase in the trade in white pea beans, which reached 64,000 metric tons and a 38% growth in sesame trade to 303,000 metric tons.

Ethiopian Airlines is pleased to announce the completion of a Turnkey contract Agreement for construction of its cargo terminal 2 and apron ,with Unitechnik Systems GmbH of Germany, and Varnero Construction on January 10, 2014. The total cost of the Cargo Terminal project is 107 million EURO.

Ethiopian Airlines, the fastest growing airline in Africa, is pleased to announce the start of four weekly services to Niamey, the Republic of Niger, as of 20 November 2013. These new flights will operate with Ethiopian’s Boeing 757-200 aircraft with 16 seats in Ethiopian’s Cloud Nine business class and 151 seats in economy class.

This new routing further solidifies Ethiopian's presence in Africa. Niger becomes the 47th Ethiopian destination in Africa. With its partner ASKY in West Africa, Ethiopian has service to 34 countries in Africa. No airline connects Africa to the world, as does Ethiopian.