Some remain sceptical, but at least for now Ethiopians are breathing a sigh of relief. It remains to be seen if the government is now willing to loosen its grip on foreign exchange access and the exchange rate itself. On Thursday, Abiy’s newly appointed central bank governor, Yinager Dessie, pledged to meet the business community regularly and pledged that their main concerns - scant access to credit and foreign exchange - were government priorities.īusinesses in the capital said their letters of credit, which banks had declined to honour for months, were finally being approved. “From the African Development Bank, we are looking for how we are going to make investments to support that, so that we can turn the new engagement that they have into one in which they will benefit from dividends of peace between those two countries,” Adesina told Reuters in Nairobi.

The rapprochement between the neighbours should also allow for better economic relations, which are critical for the economic growth of the two countries, African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina said on Friday. His moves to liberalise the economy by opening up lucrative state-owned assets to foreign investment have been cheered by his people as well as outside investors keen to enter one of Africa’s last untapped markets.īesides his stated desire to attract foreign capital into one of Africa’s most closed states, Abiy has brokered peace with Eritrea, with whom Ethiopia fought a border war two decades ago. Since taking office in April, Abiy has turned politics and the economy on its head in the nation of 100 million people.

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