Algeria Working to Further Scale Up its Amicable Relations with Ethiopia: Ambassador

Algeria is working to further enhance its friendly and brotherly relationship with Ethiopia in various fields, according to the country’s ambassador in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia and Algeria have enjoyed long-standing relations for many years and they have steadily been strengthening their relationship based on shared interests, it was indicated

In an exclusive interview with ENA, Algerian Ambassador to Ethiopia, Elhamdi Salah said his country is keen to further strengthen the bilateral and multifaceted cooperation in different sectors.

Algeria opened its Embassy in Addis Ababa in 1976 and Ethiopia opened its Embassy in Algiers, in 2016 which the ambassador said crucial to establish strong and amicable relation and translate it to people to people relation.

“We are enjoying very important friendly, brotherly relationship with Ethiopia since our independence in 1962. But, even before, when we were struggling for our independence, we found Ethiopia standing up with us and we never forget that. From that time on we started to have very important and brotherly relationship and we are working to build up on this and make those relations better and better in all fields.”

However, the current trade and investment relation of the two countries is not encouraging, the ambassador said  stressing the need to improve the sectors in the future as there are opportunities to realize that.

But first of all the two countries must connect themselves with infrastructures including air transportation so as to facilitate the movement of business people of the nations, he underlined.

According to him, the two countries have been working to sign agreement in order to commence flights between the countries “to allow our business man to travel and know each other and start dealing and enhance trade relations between the countries.”

Elhamdi further stressed the need for Ethiopia and Algeria to expand their bilateral relations by exploiting the existing potentials in the two countries as they have a lot of things to share.

Trade, industry and agriculture are among the potential areas that the two countries can enhance their existing bilateral ties, according to the ambassador.

“We have created a joint committee in 2014 which is in charge of developing the relations in the field of trade, development, industry, culture, agriculture and all fields and will have the fourth session of that join committee. During the meeting we will sign certain number of MoU between the two countries to increase, develop and achieve some goals of our common positions and desire to build very important partnership between our two countries,” he elaborated.

Algerian investors have been showing interest to work in Ethiopia; the ambassador said adding that some are conducting visits to see possibility to invest in the country.

For instance, few months ago, a private company specialized in the electricity power installation settlement visited Ethiopia, he stated.

“We know that Ethiopia is demanding a lot of power and we are ready to help and bring our experience and expertise to make things move in the right way,” he underlined.

Algeria is one of the key strategic partners of Ethiopia. So far the two countries have signed more than 20 cooperation agreements in different fields including, Trade, Investment Protection and Promotion, Avoidance of Double Taxation.

In addition to this, they have also agreed to cooperate in the areas of science, culture and technical fields.

The two countries have also been working together concerning regional and international agendas particularly in the fight against terrorism as it is one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.

Source: Ethiopia News Agency