Mereja.Forum

[AbyssiniaLady]

Ethiopia a title away from a terminal in Lamu port

Saturday November 23 2019

Ethiopia will own one of the terminal in Kenya’s Lamu port, and the two countries are working to speed up the issue of the title deed.

“When President Uhuru Kenyatta visited Ethiopia in March, Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy discussed with him the issue of a title deed for the land we’ve been allocated in Lamu where the terminal will sit, and he undertook to have it speeded up,” Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya Meles Alem, told The EastAfrican in Nairobi.

President Kenyatta was in Addis Ababa in early March as a head of a large business delegation, and Prime Minister Abiy presided over a two-day Kenya-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Forum in the Ethiopian capital.

Over 400 business leaders from Kenya and Ethiopia attended the investment forum.

The two leaders said at the forum that the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (Lapsset), was central to the unlocking of the economic potential not just of their two countries, but of the entire East African region.

Progress on the Lapsset Corridor project, a vast undertaking of ports, pipelines, roads, and railways serving Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan in the first phase, had been halting until the uptick in recent months.

In October, Kenya completed the first terminal of the Ksh32 billion ($320 million) Lamu Port, and construction of a second terminal is underway.

When completed, Lamu port will have 32 terminals, with Kenya betting that would give it the edge in the intense port race along the Bab el-Mandab (which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden), and the Indian Ocean lane from Mogadishu to Maputo.

Mr Meles however denied suggestions reported in The EastAfrican that Ethiopia’s recent rapprochement with erstwhile foe Eritrea, and stake and investment in several Horn of Africa ports, meant it was turning its back on Lamu and Lapsset.

Ethiopia has stakes in Doraleh, Port of Djibouti, Khartoum’s largest seaport, Port Sudan, and has invested $80 million for a 19 per cent stake in Somaliland’s port of Berbera, and is also seeking a holding in Eritrea’s Assab port.

“Ethiopia is a country of 110 million people, and the Lamu port will be particularly critical for us in serving the southern part of our country,” Mr Meles said.

“Kenya and Ethiopia have the longest standing mutual defence pact between two African countries, so our strategic interests have a long history and endure”, he said. “With a title deed, we should be able not just to invest in Lamu, but more widely in Lapsset,” Meles added.

The Kenya-Ethiopia Defence Pact was signed in 1964 between Kenya’s founding president Jomo Kenyatta, and Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie.

Kenyatta and Selassie were very close, with the former enabling the latter to get a large piece of land a spitting distance from State House Nairobi to build the Ethiopian embassy.

The Kenyan Embassy in Addis Ababa is closer to the National Palace, located next to the major bigger Embassies such as Russia and Belgium.

Security angle

Meles couldn’t be drawn to comment on the wider state of geopolitics in the Horn of Africa, but analysts say the 55-year-old defence pact, and the proliferation of foreign military bases in the Horn of Africa, mean that in the long-term, Lamu will present to Ethiopia a level of security other ports don’t.

Ethiopia is the largest landlocked country by population in the world. Within the country’s national security establishment, there is unease about the proliferation of foreign military bases in the Horn.

There are 10 military bases in the Horn of Africa, with six in Djibouti by the US, France, Italy, Japan, China and Saudi Arabia.

Eritrea hosts the United Arab Emirates base, and a Russian logistics base is also forming there. Somalia hosts a Turkish military training base, while the semi-autonomous territory of Somaliland hosts UAE’s second base.

A terminal at Lamu sitting on land that it owns, would give Ethiopia tremendous ability to hedge against strategic risk, in ways other Horn of Africa don’t.

Indeed the ongoing new foreign policy debate in Addis calls for a stake over the Red Sea and, and diplomatic sources say Ethiopia also wants to launch a naval force. Such a force could, foreseeably, be based in Lamu.

Domestic demands

Ethiopia is currently one of Africa’s fastest growing economies and, though landlocked, also has the continent’s largest state-owned shipping line.

Prime Minister Abiy’s reforms, have also opened the doors for long-pent up grievances and local nationalist demands to explode.

There are several new demands for regional autonomy, and more protests than can be counted on the finger tips. The country needs dramatic economic growth and creation of opportunities to soak up many of those demands.

Ethiopians with a sense of history will also be mindful that the domestic price for disruption in the Bab el-Mandab, and further north, can be high.

Scholars have noted that the 1967-75 Suez Canal closure, during the Egypt-Israel conflict had far reaching impact on world trade with a major increase in shipping costs from the Middle East, Asia and East Africa to Europe, and hit Ethiopia hard.

The resulting economic downturn contributed to unrest and the 1974 revolution that ousted Emperor Selassie. And that was at a time when Eritrea was still part of Ethiopia and it had a port. Now it doesn’t.

Owning a small slice of terminal in Lamu port, even in a foreign land, would likely be a better deal for Ethiopia in the long term, than being a paying tenant at the mercy of a landlord in a vast port anywhere else.


https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/busine ... index.html


While he makes Isaias Afwerki giggle like a three years old boy, he's turning his back on Eritrea.

[Cigar]

Atti chenawit, hasad agame, you think when PMAA approached PIA, he has a favor to do to Eritrea or its people?
He was looking to broaden the advantage of your country specially to the northern (less tigray) and your central country.
Ethiopia using our ports is more advantageous to Ethiopia than what Eritrea will get out of it.
Aye hasadat agames, you just have to make nothing out nothing just to make feel better.
More power to PMAA and to the ethiopian people.
We don't have too many mouths to feed. We can be the best country in the region if not in Africa with out leaning to any other country.

[AbyssiniaLady]

Business

Berbera expansion to consume additional USD 270mln

23 November 2019
By Birhanu Fikade

Ethiopia has secured a 19 percent stake and is expected to outlay USD 110 million for the Berbera Corridor.

https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/art ... usd-270mln

[Digital Weyane]

I respectfully disagree with my Weyane boss eden aka AbyssiniaLady for reasons that, Kenya's Lamu Port is closer to Oromia and Southern regions, but very very far away from our country Tigray. Therefore we Weyane have no reason to celebrate this project since it doesn't serve our Tigray's national interest.

It does however help our anti Eritrea smear campaign by lending credence to our sensational story about the imaginary rift between Abiy and Issayas. Who said imagination is greater than knowledge?

[Temt]

Aye Agamiewlady,
No matter how you spin it Eritrea has never asked Ethiopia to use any of our ports. We didn't do it during your Meles Chenawis reign and will not do it for any reigning government. It is strictly a business decision and of course, Ethiopia is welcome to use them if she wants to. Why is that so hard to understand to the Agame scumbags? Amazing!

[EthioRedSea]

Eritrean ports are too far Oromo and Southern regions. Addis Ababa is 1778km away from Massawa.
Distance from Addis Ababa to Lamu is 1279 KM, which is somewhat cheaper.
Distance from Addis Ababa to Port Sudan is 1829km, which a bit more expensive than Massawa.
Masswa is close to Mekelle, thus could by used by Tigray and adjacent regions or provinces like Wollo, Gondar.
But Port Sudan is also a good alternative to use.

This shows in a way the Eritrean ports are not that attractive to the Ethiopian business communities. Besides is Eritrea is a hostile country as it has been tryng to carry out subversive activities against Ethiopia, specially Tigray. Thus the government of Ethiopia should refrain from using the Eritrean ports until Eritrea is behaving according to International law. Attacking Tigray is attacking Ethiopia even Ethiopians seem not to be concerned ( believe me Ethiopians are angry about Eritrea's behaviour against Tigray and TPLF)

[Cigar]

Atta sahsah agame what part of we the Eritreans are not let alone to let you use our ports but to set your ugly foot in our territories?
And we are not begging Ethiopia to use our ports either.
If it wants fine. As long as the roads do not pass through your filthy tigray.
Why the f**k are you saying Massawa is closer to tigray.
Who gives a damn?
You ain't using it
We are going to suffocate you dirty [deleted].
We are even working that Ethiopia too block the roads which connects it with your dirty baren land tigray.
And you know what that means.
Fenced like a rat with no connection to the outside world.
You won't even have planes come and go from and to tigray.
You won't be allowed to fly over the skies you made enemies with.

[Digital Weyane]

I feel sorry for our Weyane merchants who have to travel from Tigray all the way to Kenya and back to carryout trading activities, which means a significant increase in transportation costs that could effectively put them out of business. May be this is one of the plots devised by both Issayas and Abiy to chock off supplies going to Tigray.

It really feels like the Game is Over.

[EthioRedSea]

To all Eri bekentus!
Mekelle to Djoubiti almost same distance as travelling to Asseb. Mekelle to Assab is 778 km and Mekelle to Djoubiti is 796km. Mekelle to Masswa is 397km, which could be much cheaper for Tigray. But as Eritrea is hostile to Tigray, using Massawa will be more expensive or dangerous (goods could be stolen or not delivered on time).

[Temt]

To all Eri bekentus!
Mekelle to Djoubiti almost same distance as travelling to Asseb. Mekelle to Assab is 778 km and Mekelle to Djoubiti is 796km. Mekelle to Masswa is 397km, which could be much cheaper for Tigray. But as Eritrea is hostile to Tigray, using Massawa will be more expensive or dangerous (goods could be stolen or not delivered on time).

Wrong Agame boy. You won't have a chance, any chance, of touching any of our ports and our Red Sea! ከም ጡብ ኣዴኻ ቅበጾ! ወዲዛ ገለመለ!

[Cigar]

Temt, this guy is nuts.
Sometimes he try to sweet talk us and when he get kicked in his qondaf agame, 20,000 miles port in the USA is closer than Massawa to tigray. As if he have a choice of Massawa.
Hey you filthy agame you will not have any outside be it road, sea or air connections to the outside world, if you declare your DIRT (Dirty Independent Rpublic of Tigray)
And if f you accept your ethiopianism then you got to do what the ethio govt signed to do, out of which when it comes to Eritrea, no stuff unloaded in our ports will pass through tigray.
Try to be honest for once.
Say what really you have in mind.
Say that you f**led up specially when it comes to your master Eritreans and for once admit your grave mistakes and apologize for the sake of your future snotty little tigray generation.
As of now, Eritrea will not have mercy to the dirty tegarus who are over 18 years olds.

[Halafi Mengedi]

Sad???

Lamu was the cleanest ocean in this planet, I was there and stayed for a while and the ocean clearness can be described as when you look to the water you see your whole body or face like mirror and the sand is pure white sand. You swim in the ocean and lay down on the sand and when your body dries up your body does not have a trace of any dusty sand or sand. Now I hear ships are landing to destroy the ecology is very sad, one of the biggest tourist destination. I love Mombassa, Malendi and Lamu beaches and the traveling from Nairobi across the Somali ethnic regions to Mombassa, Malendi and Lamu. I had good time with my ex girlfriend from Amsterdam.

[Temt]

Temt, this guy is nuts.
Sometimes he try to sweet talk us and when he get kicked in his qondaf agame, 20,000 miles port in the USA is closer than Massawa to tigray. As if he have a choice of Massawa.
Hey you filthy agame you will not have any outside be it road, sea or air connections to the outside world, if you declare your DIRT (Dirty Independent Rpublic of Tigray)
And if f you accept your ethiopianism then you got to do what the ethio govt signed to do, out of which when it comes to Eritrea, no stuff unloaded in our ports will pass through tigray.
Try to be honest for once.
Say what really you have in mind.
Say that you f**led up specially when it comes to your master Eritreans and for once admit your grave mistakes and apologize for the sake of your future snotty little tigray generation.
As of now, Eritrea will not have mercy to the dirty tegarus who are over 18 years olds.

Yes, brother Cigar. This guy who also used many other nicks like "Tigrai People" etc is confused and he has no idea what to make of the current situation in our Horn. As usual, he is playing the "Ethiopia" card as the Chiwawa did before him when he convinced many Ethiopians that Ethiopia was being "Invaded by Eritrea for it "Occupied Badme". Of course, that was an oxymoron for a country could not "Occupy" its own territory. And this jerk cries foul to get some attention by shamelessly creating a fictional history that is not supported by international laws. Little does he know that we hate Agames including their King Yohannes and Ra'esi Alula who have done so much damage to our peasants back then.
I swear to God, I wish I can meet this clown in person to tell him what a big hallucinator that he was, and that he would NEVER get any parts of Eritrea come rain or sunshine.

[Abdelaziz]

smelly Gefih Meakrom terewaeeti Hamashenay wendagereds: Cigarella and Temit MetAr, kkkkk why do you booshtiewhamasens deny the cursedarteran tra'nny identity of Abyssinialady? Trust me, she does not qualify to be Tigrean even if she gets born and reborn 4000 times; she is a filthy Hamasenite tra'nny like you guys. Calling everyone you do not agree with an Agame is proof of your inferiority and fear towards Tigraway president wedimedhin, your life-time molester . You know more than I do the fact that Abyssinialady of Hamasenho'mos is the number one hater of Tigray next to the smelly 80-years old [ deleted ] gayprostitute cigarela aka Asmerom Legesse.

[AbyssiniaLady]

I don't think Ethiopia will ever use Lamu port, but why do you morons keep saying "Our port"? Don't you have any shame? your land is landlocked region.

Assab/Massawa doesn't belong to you midgets tigrinya speakers, It belongs to Tigre & Afar and you will be kicked out very soon, Croyez moi!

[Digital Weyane]

I don't think Ethiopia will ever use Lamu port, but why do you morons keep saying "Our port"? Don't you have any shame? your land is landlocked region.

Assab/Massawa doesn't belong to you midgets tigrinya speakers, It belongs to Tigre & Afar and you will be kicked out very soon, Croyez moi!

eden, I agree with you cento per cento. Thanks boss!

[Degnet]

Ethiopia a title away from a terminal in Lamu port

Saturday November 23 2019

Ethiopia will own one of the terminal in Kenya’s Lamu port, and the two countries are working to speed up the issue of the title deed.

“When President Uhuru Kenyatta visited Ethiopia in March, Prime Minister Ahmed Abiy discussed with him the issue of a title deed for the land we’ve been allocated in Lamu where the terminal will sit, and he undertook to have it speeded up,” Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya Meles Alem, told The EastAfrican in Nairobi.

President Kenyatta was in Addis Ababa in early March as a head of a large business delegation, and Prime Minister Abiy presided over a two-day Kenya-Ethiopia Trade and Investment Forum in the Ethiopian capital.

Over 400 business leaders from Kenya and Ethiopia attended the investment forum.

The two leaders said at the forum that the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (Lapsset), was central to the unlocking of the economic potential not just of their two countries, but of the entire East African region.

Progress on the Lapsset Corridor project, a vast undertaking of ports, pipelines, roads, and railways serving Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Sudan in the first phase, had been halting until the uptick in recent months.

In October, Kenya completed the first terminal of the Ksh32 billion ($320 million) Lamu Port, and construction of a second terminal is underway.

When completed, Lamu port will have 32 terminals, with Kenya betting that would give it the edge in the intense port race along the Bab el-Mandab (which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden), and the Indian Ocean lane from Mogadishu to Maputo.

Mr Meles however denied suggestions reported in The EastAfrican that Ethiopia’s recent rapprochement with erstwhile foe Eritrea, and stake and investment in several Horn of Africa ports, meant it was turning its back on Lamu and Lapsset.

Ethiopia has stakes in Doraleh, Port of Djibouti, Khartoum’s largest seaport, Port Sudan, and has invested $80 million for a 19 per cent stake in Somaliland’s port of Berbera, and is also seeking a holding in Eritrea’s Assab port.

“Ethiopia is a country of 110 million people, and the Lamu port will be particularly critical for us in serving the southern part of our country,” Mr Meles said.

“Kenya and Ethiopia have the longest standing mutual defence pact between two African countries, so our strategic interests have a long history and endure”, he said. “With a title deed, we should be able not just to invest in Lamu, but more widely in Lapsset,” Meles added.

The Kenya-Ethiopia Defence Pact was signed in 1964 between Kenya’s founding president Jomo Kenyatta, and Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie.

Kenyatta and Selassie were very close, with the former enabling the latter to get a large piece of land a spitting distance from State House Nairobi to build the Ethiopian embassy.

The Kenyan Embassy in Addis Ababa is closer to the National Palace, located next to the major bigger Embassies such as Russia and Belgium.

Security angle

Meles couldn’t be drawn to comment on the wider state of geopolitics in the Horn of Africa, but analysts say the 55-year-old defence pact, and the proliferation of foreign military bases in the Horn of Africa, mean that in the long-term, Lamu will present to Ethiopia a level of security other ports don’t.

Ethiopia is the largest landlocked country by population in the world. Within the country’s national security establishment, there is unease about the proliferation of foreign military bases in the Horn.

There are 10 military bases in the Horn of Africa, with six in Djibouti by the US, France, Italy, Japan, China and Saudi Arabia.

Eritrea hosts the United Arab Emirates base, and a Russian logistics base is also forming there. Somalia hosts a Turkish military training base, while the semi-autonomous territory of Somaliland hosts UAE’s second base.

A terminal at Lamu sitting on land that it owns, would give Ethiopia tremendous ability to hedge against strategic risk, in ways other Horn of Africa don’t.

Indeed the ongoing new foreign policy debate in Addis calls for a stake over the Red Sea and, and diplomatic sources say Ethiopia also wants to launch a naval force. Such a force could, foreseeably, be based in Lamu.

Domestic demands

Ethiopia is currently one of Africa’s fastest growing economies and, though landlocked, also has the continent’s largest state-owned shipping line.

Prime Minister Abiy’s reforms, have also opened the doors for long-pent up grievances and local nationalist demands to explode.

There are several new demands for regional autonomy, and more protests than can be counted on the finger tips. The country needs dramatic economic growth and creation of opportunities to soak up many of those demands.

Ethiopians with a sense of history will also be mindful that the domestic price for disruption in the Bab el-Mandab, and further north, can be high.

Scholars have noted that the 1967-75 Suez Canal closure, during the Egypt-Israel conflict had far reaching impact on world trade with a major increase in shipping costs from the Middle East, Asia and East Africa to Europe, and hit Ethiopia hard.

The resulting economic downturn contributed to unrest and the 1974 revolution that ousted Emperor Selassie. And that was at a time when Eritrea was still part of Ethiopia and it had a port. Now it doesn’t.

Owning a small slice of terminal in Lamu port, even in a foreign land, would likely be a better deal for Ethiopia in the long term, than being a paying tenant at the mercy of a landlord in a vast port anywhere else.


https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/busine ... index.html


While he makes Isaias Afwerki giggle like a three years old boy, he's turning his back on Eritrea.

You are real stupid,who cares about you.We need only deplomacy with Addis Abeba.

[Degnet]

I don't think Ethiopia will ever use Lamu port, but why do you morons keep saying "Our port"? Don't you have any shame? your land is landlocked region.

Assab/Massawa doesn't belong to you midgets tigrinya speakers, It belongs to Tigre & Afar and you will be kicked out very soon, Croyez moi!

You are a real monkey,a shameless monkey/kemalam denkoro,why do you use this nickname then?This is a tenbatam [deleted]/tsewiqka tselei/znjero,we are a proud people.Disgusting [ deleted ]

[AbyssiniaLady]

I don't think Ethiopia will ever use Lamu port, but why do you morons keep saying "Our port"? Don't you have any shame? your land is landlocked region.

Assab/Massawa doesn't belong to you midgets tigrinya speakers, It belongs to Tigre & Afar and you will be kicked out very soon, Croyez moi!

eden, I agree with you cento per cento. Thanks boss!

Your land is a landlocked region, It's an island of christians in an ocean of Muslims!

[Hameddibewoyane]

I don't think Ethiopia will ever use Lamu port, but why do you morons keep saying "Our port"? Don't you have any shame? your land is landlocked region.

Assab/Massawa doesn't belong to you midgets tigrinya speakers, It belongs to Tigre & Afar and you will be kicked out very soon, Croyez moi!

eden, I agree with you cento per cento. Thanks boss!

Your land is a landlocked region, It's an island of christians in an ocean of Muslims!