Private Sector Agenda Given Great Attention at HoA Initiative Ministerial Dialogue

Addis Ababa May 25/2023(ENA):The Finance Ministerial meeting of the Horn of Africa Initiative (HoAI), held on the sidelines of the African Development Group Annual Meetings, has given great attention to the private sector agenda, according to the Ministry of Finance.

The ministerial meeting of the HoAI was held today in Egypt.

 The meeting was led by Ahmed Shide, Ethiopia's Finance Minister, and Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, the AfDB's Vice President for regional integration, who was the co-chair and host for the meeting.

 The meeting was convened in the presence of development partners, namely, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the European Union, and focused on the role of the private sector in the Horn of Africa.

  The ministers reflected on the importance of engaging with private sector actors to attract additional investments for regional projects, especially those that promote green and sustainable development, considering the challenges of debt sustainability and the risk of constrained traditional concessional financing.

 “We should strengthen collaborative actions to create an enabling environment for private sector investments in our region. When carefully managed, I believe it would not only boost our economic growth but also contribute to our peace and security," said Minister Ahmed Shide.

 In addition, Director of the Multilateral Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Finance and the current Head of the HoA Initiative Secretariat, Abebe Tadesse, gave an update on the preparation of a strategic roadmap to foster economic and social development in the borderlands of the HOA sub-region.

  He emphasized the urgency of building up on existing regional initiatives by involving national and regional stakeholders across sectors and assessing the challenges and the most promising opportunities in borderlands for scaling up effective interventions with the support of partners.

 At the meeting, the Ministers of Djibouti and Somalia signed a financing agreement with the African Development Bank to implement a transport corridor project which is key in connecting both countries as well as for regional integration in the Horn of Africa.

 The project is in its first phase. Ethiopia's Finance Minister Ahmed Shide expressed his gratitude to all the development partners who attended the meeting and asked them to provide more support by increasing their commitments to fund the HoAI's pipelines.

 The HoAI is a platform for dialogue and cooperation among member countries of finance ministers and three development partners, namely, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the European Union.