Cheshire Ethiopia (CE) announces its 60th anniversary celebratory events that comes in connection with the colorful marking of its six solid decades of life changing and impactful rehabilitation services it has been rendering uninterrupted for persons with disabilities and their families.
“Due to the successful rehabilitation, I undergone at CE, my mobility and functionality is immensely enhanced. 1 have become a strong person with big dreams,” says Solomon Mulugeta, former beneficiary who is running his own charity now.
Founded in 1962, Cheshire Ethiopia is a leading disability and development organization striving for the realization of disability inclusive society through rights-based affordable and standard rehabilitation services as well as empowerment of persons with disabilities and communities with health, educational, economic, social, and over all empowerment interventions. CE offers free comprehensive disability rehabilitation services rendered to the poorest segments of the community across seven regional states and two city administrations.

Cheshire Ethiopia was founded by the initiative of the grand children of the late Emperor Haile Selassie 60 years ago. The service that was started with small number of children with developmental impairments, later on incorporated the provision of rehabilitation services and enhancement of mobility of children affected by post-polio paralysis. The successful rehabilitation interventions have improved the mobility and functioning of over hundreds of thousands of children and youth with mobility impairments through the years. These changed the despair of children with disabilities and their equally ashamed, stigmatized and discriminated families to happiness. The hopelessness on their children also changed to hope for a new life.
These meaningful therapeutic services popularized the organization. As a result, the name Cheshire has now almost become synonymous with disability and disability with Cheshire.
CE’s strong presence in Ethiopia at the time when the global initiative to eradicate polio got underway in 1988 meant that most new polio cases have been diagnosed, properly treated and patients supported by community-based rehabilitation services.
As a parallel initiative, CE has opened branches in Hawassa, Harar, DireDawa, and later on in Addis Ababa – major urban centers in the south, east, and central parts of the country. Assistive technology production workshops and physiotherapy facilities are supplemented by training and, most recently, seed funding for income-generation aiming to draw families of persons with disabilities into commercial enterprises as a step toward ‘inclusiveness’.
In the past sixty years, Cheshire Ethiopia has undergone through series of policy and developmental changes including changing its names due to changes in strategy, dynamism of the sector, and development of international disability movement as well as national policies.

The World Food Program (WFP) receives much needed logistical boost as the DMP rail terminal launches a WFP bagged cereal delivery operations which kick stated Monday, April 17, 2023.
WFP now joins in the footsteps of the many users of the DMP rail terminal by shipping, for its first operation, and will now easily get nearly 3000 M/T of wheat destined for Ethiopia and plans to devote nearly 30 percent of its cargoes to rail transit.
WFP made the decision to combine road transport with rail transport while benefiting from DMP’s innovative operational solutions which are in high demand.
In east Africa, the rail transport presents itself as an interesting alternative to the various challenges of road transport. Its many advantages, namely: fast and secure mode of transport, low costs, large quantity transport and an ecological means of transport has made it a go to logistical means in the Horn.
The DMP, for its part, has anticipated the situation very well by equipping itself with modern and high-performance equipment for handling. Furthermore, a major investment program was set up in 2022 to meet the growing demand of its users and to be able to accommodate the latest generation ships.
There are currently five handling lines at the DMP rail terminal, three of which are for bagged goods or any other conventional goods, one loading line for vehicles and another for containers.
Today, the rail mode remains more relevant, with the densification of the goods, by combining it with maritime, road and air transport; it makes it possible to streamline the delivery of cargo to the final destination, which makes it an asset essential part of the multimodal system.
Since its launch in 2018, the Djibouti-Ethiopian railway line has relieved congestion on the Djibouti-Ethiopia road corridor and above all has enabled DMP to improve its performance and connectivity with its main hinterland.
DMP, thanks to its new lever has not only made it possible to increase the efficiency of multimodal transport but also in the participation of fulfilling the objectives of sustainable development of the region. For instance, the cargo leaving DMP is transported by an electric train from the Nagad Main Station for the significant reduction in CO2.
It is an undeniable fact that DMP is increasingly strengthening its position as an essential multimodal platform at regional and international level.
In addition, as part of the diversification of the markets served and the related income, DMP is planning on, in the very short term, the export of dry bulk to regional markets such as Sudan, Yemen and Kenya.

The March country level average inflation rate peaks at 34.2 percent up from 33.7 percent from last year’s similar period, the Central Statistics Agency reveals.
According to the monthly report of the agency, on March 2023, the overall inflation on food items stood at 34.5 percent showing a 32.8 percent increase from last year. As the report highlights, all cereals including teff, wheat, barley, maize and sorghum have shown rapid increase in their prices.
Increase in prices of most cereals, more so teff, alongside other house hold food items such as pasta and macaroni, vegetables and fruits, potatoes and other tubers, pulses, meat and milk, cheese and eggs are said as the primary contributor to inflation. As the report indicated, high price increase was registered between the months of February 2023 and March 2023 specially, exaggerated increase in prices of teff was observed in the city of Addis Ababa.
Also in the month, the country level non-food inflation rate increased by 32.5 percent in March 2023 as compared to the one observed in March 2022.
According to the report, the non-food inflation stood at 36.3 percent in March 2023. The reason for non-food inflation was mainly due to rise in the prices of clothing and footwear, housing repair and maintenance (cement and corrugated iron sheets), and energy (firewood and charcoal), furniture and home furnishings (sofa, drawers, refrigerator) and fuel, medical care, educational materials and jewelry (gold).
In February, the country level inflation was registered at 32.0 percent. However, as of March 2023, the figure has shown a slight increase of 5.7 percent while the food CPI increased by 7.0 percent as compared to the preceding month of February. During the same period, the non-food CPI registered a 3.9 percentage increase. In the non-food part, clothing and footwear, housing repair and maintenance goods, fuel, chat, jewelry and electronics goods prices showed an increase.
“One of the main reasons for the March 2023 general inflation rate increase is attributed by the increase in food prices compared to a similar month of last year. The non-food inflation rate also increased as compared to a similar month of last year,” stated the report.
Most of the components of food index showed increase as compared to similar month of last year. The continued increase in the prices of meat, cooking oil, milk, cheese and eggs, butter, spices (salt and pepper) and coffee beans during the month also contributed to an increase in the rate of inflation. Bread and cereals by (48.3 percent), meat (32.5 percent), fish and seafood by (29.5 percent), milk, cheese and eggs (36.3 percent), oil and fats (101.0 percent), fruits by (28.4 percent), vegetables and pulses, potatoes and tubers by (12.2 percent), sugar, honey and chocolate declined by (16.4 percent), other food products and spices by (35.1 percent) and non-alcoholic beverages and coffee by 40.9 percent).