Ethiopia Working On Launching Carrier Rocket
The Ministry of Science and Technology said Ethiopia is building a medium sized satellite launching rocket that would come to fruition within the next three years. Ministry Public Relations Director Wondwosen Andualem said a prototype of the carrier rocket was prepared as a launch pad for the actual work. "Efforts are underway to launch a medium sized rocket into space within the next three years,"said the director. He said satellite building capacity has also been growing owing to knowledge and technological exchanges with development partners.
Ethiopia has been implementing ambitious and successive five-year growth and transformation plans, which enabled it to register a double digit economic growth for more than a decade now. The growth overwhelmingly relies on the agricultural sector which is an essential ingredient for the national goal of alleviating poverty. The nation aspires to transform the basis of the economy - gradually from agriculture to agro-processing and then to industry in the long run. In the process, it is understood per se that the final goal of the industrialization process would be urbanization.
During the past two decades, Ethiopia's ambitious economic initiatives to become middle income country managed to progressively grow and develop its economy. The country has given ample focus to sectors like tourism increasing their GDP contribution to the entire economic key factors. Addressing the country development shortfalls and poverty reduction initiatives has grabbed the nation attention working on better policies improving infrastructural constraints. Among other sectors tourism received ample attention preserving historical sights and developing infrastructure which has been the biggest setback of the industry.
In 2007, Meles Zenawi (now late), Ethiopia’s Prime Minister at the time, invited Pierre Castel, founder of French beverage giant Castel, to assess the opportunities for vineyards in the country. It was not an entirely new idea. Awash Winery – which was privatised in 2013 and is now run by the private-equity firm 8 Miles LLP and local entrepreneur Mulugeta Tesfakiros – manages about 100 hectares of vineyards. But 10 years ago, Zenawi’s vision for a purely commercial operation in Ethiopia was still relatively unique, and Castel bought in. A year later the company (which already had a brewery in Ethiopia) imported different grape varieties and began setting up its vineyard in Ziway, 163km south from the capital, Addis Ababa.
