The government has finished preparing for seven applied universities to commence education next year, PM Abiy Ahmed says.
The newly developed Education Roadmap for 2018-2030 showed a need to open applied universities to link theories with practice and engage more in scientific research.
Applied universities go by many names – polytechnic university, university of applied sciences, vocational university, applied for technological university – according to what countries think best describes their context, according to Wendwossen Tamrat.
According to the draft educational road map documents, the majority of universities in Ethiopia have concentrated on teaching, and are not participating actively in research, community services, and development endeavors of the country as expected. Universities have side-lined research and more importantly, community services as secondary tasks, focusing on teaching, and neglecting the realm of research and scholarly interactions among scientists, technology/knowledge generation and transfer, university-industry linkages and community service.
“The road map differentiates universities to engage in focus areas to solve their communities’ problems and help to organize resources, both in human resources and inputs used for laboratories and machines,” said Tirusew Tefera, one of the architects of the new road map.
Currently, there are 44 government higher institutions all teaching the same disciplines except the Adama Science and Technology and the Addis Ababa Science and Technology Universities.
“Applied universities can offer high-level professional and practical degrees different from what has so far been provided by comprehensive universities,” Wendwossen adds.
“As the road map begins to be implemented next year, the curriculum for the first phase is already completed in which the new entries will stay for four years and will select their respective department after the completion of freshman courses which are focused on history, psychology, and entrepreneurship,” Tirusew adds.
The ministry is categorizing public universities based on their potential, resources to specialize in certain areas and provide quality of education up to post graduate levels.
Applied universities to start next year
CBE profits 17.9 billion birr
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) has reversed course and is back in the black. During the 2018/19 fiscal year, the bank’s gross profits were 17.9 billion birr. This is an increase of almost seven billion birr compared with the 2017/18 performance.
According to the bank’s annual report, they had increases of 102.9 percent and 163.6 percent in gross profit, compared with the year’s target and preceding period respectively.
In 2017/18 CBE’s gross profit stood at 10.4 billion birr. This was a reduction of 4.3 billion birr compared with the 2016/17 performance of 14.7 billion birr.
Before the 2017/18 financial year the bank’s earnings were rising around 10 percent every year but in the 2017/18 financial year they declined. The ended year performance has a growth almost 65 percent compared with the preceding period.
The devaluation and hard currency revenue is what caused the banks’ earnings to decline.
During the year CBE secured close to USD 4 billion in the just ended financial year from money transfers, while the export of hard currency earning was about only quarter billion USD.
In his report the recently assigned president Bacha Gina, said that the remittance earnings in the past financial year was USD 3.9 billion, while export earnings were USD 269 million. The bank has also secured USD 2.1 billion in transfers from the National Bank of Ethiopia, Central Bank.
Early this week Bacha said that his bank provided USD 2 billion to the private sector, while in his report on Friday he stated that CBE provided USD 1.5 billion to private importers.
According to the report of CBE at the end of last financial year the bank added 145 billion birr as incremental assets and its total assets have now climbed to 712 billion birr. The assets increased by 44 billion birr more than the target.
In the 2018/19 year, CBE has amassed an additional 89.4 billion birr as deposits with a 102pct performance compared with the target and similar percentage compared with the preceding year.
The private deposit mobilization has registered a growth of 134 percent compared with the preceding year and stood at 67.9 billion birr, which is also higher than the target.
The total deposit mobilization of the bank has stood at 541 billion birr and the private sector saving has taken the lion’s share by 368 billion birr.
Regarding non performing loan (NPL) the bank registered significant improvement and its NPL has shrunk to 1.8 percent from 3.5 percent a year ago. For the year CBE, which is also major finance provider for government owned projects, has provided 129 billion birr in loans and advances. Of which the private sector secured 22.2 billion birr, which is almost one sixth of the total loan disbursement.
Diaper, sanitary pad company re-starts
Sanitary napkin and baby diaper maker Lilac has restarted operations after years of inactivity.
The company invested 100 million birr in machines.
Lilac, began manufacturing personal care and hygienic products 20 years ago. They make Maclean diapers and Lilac sanitary napkins. They are the first to produce these products locally.
The factory imported its raw materials from four countries: USA, Japan, Hong Kong.
The price of Maclean diapers fails between 450-750 birr depending on the number of pieces, which makes the cost of the product competitive according to the representatives of the company.
Currently, Lilac has the capacity of producing 74 million pieces of Maclean Diapers and 86 million pieces of sanitary napkins per year. If they increased shifts they could produce half of what the country needs. 
“Lack of hard currency comes at the top of our challenge to manufacture in full capacity,” said Mohammed Yusuf manager and owner of the factory.
He says they are saving some foreign currency and substituting imports but it is not enough.
“The incentives given to local and international manufacturers are not the same, local manufacturers also need more support and attention as we create job opportunities,” Mohammed adds.
The factory employs 50 people, 40 of which are women.
As part of discharging corporate social responsibilities, the company has been supporting local non – governmental organizations by providing sanitary napkins and diapers.
Last Tuesday at the factory, the owners delivered products worth over 2 million birr to Abebech Gobena Children’s Care and Development Association, Gergesenon Association for supporting people with mental disorders, Sile Enat, and Abadir Schools.
According to Mohammed, the company has a plan to export its product to the international market if they can get enough foreign currency to work in three shifts.
Studies show a demand for more than one billion pieces of sanitary napkins and diapers in Ethiopia.
Half of soap on the market below standard
A recent inspection by the Ministry of Trade indicates that over half the soap on the market is below standard.
Iyasu Simon, who directs imports and exports at the Ministry told Capital that 1044.92 metric tons of soap samples have been studied. They also inspect detergents and soaps being sold at shops. This includes liquid and powder detergents as well as solid soaps. Over half of all of these were below the standards.
“Most of the soap and detergents products fail to meet the standards”, said the import and export director.
Some of the parameters are total fatty content, total active matter and foam testing parameters.
Lack of awareness about national standards and misuse, wrong labeling limitation capacity of the testing laboratory are some of the reasons. According to Iyasu, using unknown raw materials which are untraceable are the other big challenges.
In Ethiopia, there are more than 70 soap and detergent factories and more than 80 percent of them are found in Addis Ababa.
Soap is also produced by small scale manufacturers; there are more than 600 small scale soap manufactures in Ethiopia which makes quality regulation difficult.
In Ethiopia soap and detergent per capita consumption is less than 2 kg which is less than the average compared to other countries which show the huge gap in demand and supply of the products.
In the production of soap and detergent, 80-90 percent input is water while the main challenge is chemicals imported to use as an ingredient. According to the data from chemical development institute, Ethiopia imported over 21 billions of tones of chemicals for the last eight years that cost that country more than six billion birr.
Lack of technology transfer, lack of expert in the field, shortage of working capital; supply of raw materials the challenge that local manufacturers raise.
Though, Ethiopia attempt to earn foreign currency from exportation of soap and detergent by the combined effort of Shemu plc, Unilever Manufacturing P.L.C, Bekas chemicals plc, and Qingninchen soap factories are able to attract less than 500 thousand USD for the past three years.
