UK Sees Potential of Ethiopia as Real Partner, Keen to Strengthen Cooperation: Ambassador Teferi

The UK sees Ethiopia as a real partner in East Africa and is keen to further strengthen cooperation with the country, Ethiopia’s Ambassador to the UK said.

Ambassador Teferi Melesse told ENA that the UK has a new foreign policy after they have left EU and the country is building relationships with different countries globally.

“With Africa, they have identified five countries. Two in eastern Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya. So, they have already recognized the potential of Ethiopia as a real partner to benefit their national interest,” he stated.

According to the ambassador, Ethiopia has a unique position in Africa because of the AU, the ECA, and the wide network of Ethiopian Airlines in Africa.

During the COVID-19 period, the Ethiopian Airlines has been transporting COVID-19 materials throughout Africa and also Latin America, so we could be the logistic hub of Africa, Ambassador Teferi said.

There are also more than 50 African embassies in Addis Ababa. Therefore, any potential partners do not need to go to 54 African countries, if they invest in Ethiopia.

He further noted that Ethiopia is privatizing and opening up the economy. Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia is one of the telecom service providers that won the bid to operate in Ethiopia and the UK Vodafone group is part of the Safaricom group. The group has already started investing and expanding services in Ethiopia.

“I hope we are going to open up the financial sector as well; and UK is one of the countries that is positioning itself to participate in the financial sector. But, on top of that, we are trying to encourage them to invest in pharmaceutical, energy and manufacturing sectors.”

Recently, we had an exhibition of coffee import and export at the Embassy in London where coffee exporters and importers met each other, the ambassador revealed.

Ethiopia’s coffee comes to UK through third countries and efforts are underway to cut that channel and try to export directly from Ethiopia .

In addition, Ambassador Teferi said Ethiopia is opening up new tourist destinations and building Koysha, Gorgora and Wenchi, on top of what has been done in Addis Ababa. Attempts are thus being made to promote these new tourist destinations.

The ambassador further stated that the embassy is trying to use the media in UK, which is the center of international media outlets such as BBC, Channel 4, the Guardian, and the Economist.

Also, the embassy is trying to use the media outlets to promote the potential of Ethiopia and also to establish closer relations.

The ambassador explained that as UK has a lot of universities and well known research centers and globally known centers of excellence in education, we are trying to twin up our universities and research centers with UK counterparts.

Moreover, London is also one of the financial centers in the world and we are working to show them the opportunity that Ethiopia has in terms of investment, business, and tourism promotion he added.

Source: Ethiopia News Agency

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