Ethiopia is in the midst of a sustained growth surge that is becoming increasingly broad-based, building on major improvements in educational attainment, improved health outcomes, and infrastructure capacity in terms of access to power, transportation and telecommunications. The Government’s Growth and Transformation Plan sets ambitious targets for further improvements in these areas, together with significant reforms aiming to improve trade logistics, including through the roll-out of the authorized economic operator program across the growing number of export-oriented industry parks and a major improvement in the main export corridor to Djibouti. This industrialization push is taking place at a time when global trends are coming together to provide Ethiopia an opportunity to integrate its economy into the modern “Made in the World” system of production, including by attracting some of the labor-intensive production that is currently migrating out of China and other East Asian economies as wage rates rise in those regions.

The Government of Swaziland, through the Ministry of Finance and the Swaziland Investment Promotion Authority (SIPA) and with the support of the ACP Business Climate Facility (BizClim) organised a one-week event on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), consisting of a one-day conference and a four-day intensive training programme, from July 16 to 20, 2012.

These workshop proceedings summarise the presentations and discussions.

Public infrastructure development has been recognised by many as crucial to economic growth and prosperity on the African continent in general and in the East African Community in particular. The OECD underlines the substantial benefits Africa could achieve through the development of its infrastructure, measuring the potential impact as lying around 2% GDP. The positive impact in the East African region would be even greater than in most other parts of the continent.

This study was initiated by the Federation of West African Employers Associations (FOPAO / FWAEA), in partnership with the Employers’ National Council of Guinea (CNPG / ENCG), and prepared with the support of the ACP Business Climate Facility (BizClim), a programme of the ACP Secretariat funded by the European Union (EU) through the 10th European Development Fund (EDF). The objective of the study is "the Elaboration of an Action Plan for the Implementation of Measures and Actions in Favour of the Reduction of the Informal Economy in Guinea"

Study after study shows that Ethiopia's industry is not internationally competitive. A conclusion often derived from this it that it needs to be protected against international competitors.

In a commentary published by AddisFortune we argue that tariff protection has not worked. Rather, what Ethiopia needs is a vastly greater variety of businesses. It needs a veritable eco-system of firms interacting in each other’s supply chains. The Government could facilitate the development of such an eco-system by streamlining business registration and licensing, devising an efficient financing scheme for start-ups, and reducing the cost of trade through trade facilitation.

BKP Development evaluated the EU’s trade defence instruments (TDI) as practiced over the period 2005 to 2010. The evaluation covered:

1. a description of current practice in the field of trade defence instruments;
2. an economic analysis of the arguments for trade defence instruments and their application in the international legal and economic context;
3. a review of the relevant regulations in the light of administrative practice, the judgments of the Court of Justice and the recommendations of the World Trade Organisation's Dispute Settlement Body;
4. an assessment of EU policy and practice compared to certain trading partners; and
5. an evaluation of the performance, methods, use and effectiveness of the current system in achieving its objectives.