Can Ethiopia Be Africa’s Leading Manufacturing Hub?

August 24, 2017 Semonegna Business 0

With a cheap source of labor, good incentives and a growing market, Ethiopia is being seen as an alternative to Asia as a manufacturing hub.

By Alastair Leithead (BBC)

The factory workers sing Ethiopia’s national anthem in unison as one shift ends and another prepares to begin.

Outside, a fleet of passenger buses pulls into Hawassa Industrial Park, as thousands of textile workers – most of them women – switch places.

The new arrivals take up their stations behind sewing machines, ironing boards and cutting tables as the shirts and suits start taking shape.

The park, claimed to be the biggest in Africa, is 140 hectares (350 acres) of factories, with a water treatment plant and its own textile mill.

Six months after opening in southern Ethiopia, 10,000 people already work here, and at full capacity it is expected to provide 60,000 jobs.

“The pay isn’t great,” says one 20-year-old, who trained for six months to sew and cut.

“But it’s not just about money. Opportunities are being created for people like me across the country.”

There’s an optimism among the workforce that this is a good spring-board for running their own businesses in the future.

And it is just one of more than a dozen industrial parks being built across Ethiopia.

“Expanding and building world class industrial parks is a model we have chosen,” said Arkebe Oqubay, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn‘s special adviser and the architect of Ethiopia’s industrial revolution.

‘Learning from China’

With Africa’s population predicted to double by 2050, providing jobs is the key to taking advantage of a vast, and expanding young workforce.

“The population is growing by about 5% so we need to create close to one million jobs every year,” said Dr. Arkebe.

“Population growth…is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity…if it’s linked with quite rapid economic growth.”

Read the complete story at BBC Africa
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