Ethiopia, France sign 20 million euro grant agreement

The governments of Ethiopia and France have signed two grant agreements amounting to 20 million Euros today.

Finance Minister Ahmed Shide and Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Country Director Valerie Tehio signed the agreements.  

According to Ministry of Finance, the first 12 million Euros grant agreement will be used to partially finance phase I program of the renovation and opening of the National Palace.

The second grant agreement, amounting to 8 million Euros, will be used to support the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) MSMEs Development program, which is part of the Agriculture Commercialization Cluster (ACC) program that has been supported by other development partners, such as the Danish and Dutch Embassies and the European Union, the ministry added.

The National Palace renovation program is introduced based on the joint declaration entered between the two governments on March 12, 2019 on heritage cooperation and has three phases.

The Agriculture MSMEs development program is designed in line with the Ethiopia Homegrown Economic Reform program and the National Development Plan so as to strengthen Ethiopian Agribusiness through diversifying their economic model, developing their productivity capacity, and creating the conditions for a sustainable economic development.

The project is expected to develop productivity and revenue generation for 1.8 million small farmers and 1,340 agri-MSMEs.

This article was originally published by ENA. [Photo: AFP]