Addis Alemayehu

Addis Alemayehu

An Ethiopian from the Diaspora back home to assist in the development of a vibrant private sector.

Addis Alemayehu, Chief of Party at VEGA Ethiopia AGOA+

By Simegnish Yekoye (Lily)

The Ethiopian Diaspora in North America is estimated to number over one million strong. Although Diaspora Ethiopians are occupied with their day-to-day activities, making a living in their adopted country, their attachment to their homeland is still intact.

It is this integral affection that brings Ethiopian Diasporans like Addis Alemayehu back home after years of absence. Now chief of party at VEGA Ethiopia, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded NGO engaged in the promotion of Ethiopia’s export sector under the AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) program, Addis lived abroad for more than 25 years before returning home.

Addis left Ethiopia at the age of 8 and lived in Kenya for 10 years. After completing his secondary education, he moved to Canada to study marketing and business administration. “My passion has always been the private sector,” he says. “I have always been interested in business and I wanted to be engaged with my own thing independently.”

Like his compatriots in the Diaspora, Addis has always wanted to come back to Ethiopia and invest in his own country. His dream of returning home was realized in 1998, when he was invited by the pan African telecommunication network to travel to Ethiopia and assess the market for their telecom services.

“That was the first time my eyes opened up to the tremendous opportunities that existed in Ethiopia,” Addis says. But unfortunately, their idea of providing telecom services couldn’t be realized due to a regulation that prohibited private investment in the Ethiopian telecom sector, a regulation that is still in place. So Addis decided to work in other markets around the region. From his base in Addis Ababa, he explored opportunities in other African countries and began to study trends in the African telecommunications market. Soon his dream of entering the private sector would become a reality. Addis, who started investing in real estate in Canada at a very young age, joined the private sector for the first time when he and a couple of friends started their own company to market telecom services in the lucrative African telecommunication sector.

“Africa was becoming the new telecom opportunity for the world in the 1990s where mobile and Internet services were expanding. So I figured out that opportunity is much bigger in Africa than it was in the west.” Addis say looking back.


Addis also attempted to crack the Ethiopian media market three years ago when he applied for an FM radio license, competing for one of the first two radio licenses offered to the private sector by the Government in the country’s history. But he wasn’t able to get one. “We are still hoping to try next year and the Ethiopian broadcasting agency will come back to us,” Addis says.

For the moment, Addis is focused on leading Ethiopia’s VEGA AGOA+ program, a two year export promotion initiative that supports Ethiopia’s export market development to the United States and other international markets. AGOA is a US Government program which was signed into law by US President Bill Clinton on May 18, 2000 with the aim of helping African countries grow by providing their products duty free and quota free access to the U.S market.

VEGA’s AGOA+ program informs the public on what kinds of products are eligible for export and the qualifications. After identifying the companies that have competent products for export under AGOA, the program will help them create market in the US as they have already done so with 25 companies.

“We have consultants coming from the US to help the companies get prepared in terms of pricing, production, packaging and what ever thing they need,” Addis says.

In addition, the program works closely with the Diaspora trying to create business link between Ethiopian Americans and Ethiopian business people.

Leading this program since January 2005, after USAID started funding AGOA, Addis’ efforts have doubled the amount of products exported to the US compared with that of the previous year.

“Total export to the US has grown by 35 million this year,” Addis says and adds it is a good result to see Ethiopian products entering the US market. “We see flowers, garments, honey…etc being exported and a lot more Diaspora is coming and asking us about importing from Ethiopia.”

However VEGA’s program will stay for two more years only and Addis will need to move on to other opportunities in the private sector. He says telecom and media will always remain his passion. But for now both markets are closed for private sector investment.

For now until the opportunities open up he will have to do something else selecting from the tremendous prospects available in the country. One thing he is sure right now is that he doesn’t want to leave Ethiopia again and he will definitely stay in the private sector.

“I don’t think I will ever live anywhere else. I am very happy on where I am and what I am doing. I feel like I belong here,” he says.

Until the day comes when he will be moving to his own business, Addis is using his current job as a means of discovering what the Ethiopian private sector is like and what the challenge would be.

He is using the opportunity to see and meet various government offices and ministries for identifying who is responsible for what.

“My job is currently a big class room for me,” he says. “Not only I am working with Ethiopia's biggest exporters, but also it [my job] gives me a great opportunity to build up a good network with them.”

Coming back home was a big step for Addis. Now catching up with what he has been away from for more than 25 years will keep him busy for the next 25 years of his life. And he is doing his best to contribute his share in the development of Ethiopia’s private sector and invites others in the Diaspora to do the same. He is living his dream.

Lily Yekoye is a journalist and writes for the Sub-Saharan Informer. She resides in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.