Overview

How to build national competitiveness through better investment climate and an effective industrial strategy in Ethiopia?  To help Ethiopia to identify and overcome the key constraints in its investment climate and to define the long-term industrial strategy, the WBIFP's Investment Climate Program, in partnership with AFTPS, delivered a two-day conference on Investment Climate and Competitiveness Strategy for Ethiopia in June 2007 in Addis, which was attended by around 300 participants from the government (including three ministers), private sector, think tanks, international communities, donor groups, and NGOs.

The achieved results of the Conference exceeded its original expectations, in that it not only made substantial progresses on the issues of investment climate and industrial strategy, etc., but also achieved a number of specific gains in the policy agenda owing to a reception granted to the Conference by the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on the 28th. Due to the high relevancy of the topics, the PM invited the entire conference to his office for an almost 3-hour closing session, which achieved great results – ranging from breakthroughs to requests for more analyses or support in the areas of investment climate, Diaspora, cluster development, financial sector capacity building, etc.