ETHIOPIA: Rent Law & more – 4th Apr 2024

Salaam salaam from BA! This is the Rorshok Ethiopia Update from the 4th of April twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Ethiopia.

The House of People’s Representatives approved a new law set to regulate landlords and tenants. A government representative said that the executive has to control landlords, since they are taking advantage of housing shortages to increase rent prices. During the session, the Ministry of Justice announced that a regulatory entity will fix a price this upcoming June that will be effective for a year. The price will depend on location, size, among other relevant factors. The Minister of Justice explained that the minimum length for new rent contracts will be two years.

But that wasn’t the only law that has been in the works for a while now. The House is also deliberating on a bill that determines and regulates holidays. Public discussion over the proposed bill kicked off on Monday the 1st in the presence of scholars and religious leaders.

A representative from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church proposed that the day before and after Epiphany should be considered holidays under the new bill and people shouldn’t work. Another representative from the Islamic Affairs Supreme Council asked for a provision that considers Friday prayers (Jummah) as official holidays during which businesses should be closed, stressing the importance of the Friday prayer in Islam. The last proposal came from a government officer, who suggested that the 20th of February be designated a national holiday - with no work - commemorating martyrs who have fallen for their country.

Do you recall that the government established the National Dialogue Commission a while back to resolve long-standing disputes in a civil manner? Well, The Commission has begun its work but it hasn’t managed to escape scrutiny. The latest installment of criticisms came from the opposition party Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice or Ezema on Tuesday the 2nd of April when opposition parties had a discussion with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Members of Ezema said that cadres of the ruling Prosperity Party are the only ones participating in dialogues and that this affects the effectiveness of the works of the Commission. The Prime Minister replied that he didn’t understand these remarks because even though the Commission has started working on preparing dialogues, they have yet to begin, and it hasn't been announced when. He still said that opposition parties are free to weigh in.

Last week, we told you that two private insurance companies had purchased shares in the Ethiopian Securities Exchange. This week, the Exchange managed to pen its biggest-ever deal as the Amhara Bank purchased ten percent of the shares of the exchange for more than ninety million birr or one million and a half US dollars. The exchange said this amount is important in strengthening the country’s capital markets. Lion, another private insurance company, bought shares worth ten million birr or almost two hundred thousand US dollars, making it the third private insurance company to have bought shares in the exchange.

In related news, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation handed over its former headquarters, a building located in the heart of Addis Ababa, to the Securities Exchange, the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority, and the Ethiopian Investment Holdings. The building is set to serve as a trading floor for the Exchange and as headquarters for both the Capital Market Authority and the Investment Holdings.

In more business updates, on Thursday the 28th of March, the Ministry of Mines signed agreements and issued licenses to four mining companies, two of which are domestic. After the signing, the Ministry of Mines said in a statement that the companies have the requisite financial and technical resources to begin development. The two foreign companies are from Jordan and China. Combined, they have a capital of three billion birr or more than fifty million US dollars and are set to produce gold, bromine, granite, and coal.

In news from court, Christian Tadele, a member of parliament who has been under arrest for over the past seven months over terrorism charges, appeared before the Federal High Court on Friday the 29th of March along with a member of the Amhara regional council and another one from the Addis Ababa City Council.

The hearing was suddenly closed to the public, so the family members and lawyers of Tadele didn't know that the hearing would take place on Friday the 5th of April.

And even though the prosecution asked the defendants to be relocated to another facility, the court declined. Recall that the defendants hail from the Amhara region and are accused of inciting violence and dissent in the region.

Speaking of the Amhara region, reports of a showdown near the region’s border with Tigray have surfaced, though there is no official number on the casualties and the extent of the damage hasn’t been identified yet.

Apparently, there was a violent confrontation last week between the Amhara and Tigray regions over disputed areas.

Officials from the Tigray region were irritated after seeing images of disputed areas included within the Amhara region’s administrative boundary in educational maps and curricula. Amhara regional officials thought that this expression of dissatisfaction was ‘aggressive.’ The federal government has proposed a referendum to resolve the issue peacefully but it seems that the parties involved are not on board with this plan.

More news on the Tigray interim administration as the Federal government still hasn’t granted the incumbent party of the regional administration, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (or TPLF), official recognition as a political party. What’s more, the Ministry of Justice and the National Electoral Board have both said that there’s no legal basis to grant recognition to the TPLF as it has participated in violent activities.

Recall that the federal government had agreed that the TPLF would receive recognition under the Pretoria agreement, which ended their two-year-long war. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, on the other hand, says the issue will be resolved soon, and the TPLF will be granted recognition. Officials of the TPLF are urging the federal government to register the party as soon as possible.

But that wasn’t all. A Prosperity Party delegate that the Party’s vice president led headed to Tigray’s capital Mekelle on Tuesday the 2nd to discuss the implementation of the Pretoria Agreement with officials of the TPLF. Specifics of the trip haven’t been revealed but some speculate that the officials have discussed issues on which the federal government and the TPLF are at discord, like transitional justice (ensuring accountability for war crimes committed during the war) and disputed areas between the Amhara and Tigray regions.

Outside of Tigray, coffee exporters are distressed over a defamation campaign from foreign purchasers. The exporters said that coffee buyers from Taiwan, Japan and Hungary have been taking to social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to tarnish the reputation of the exporters, saying that they have sent the buyers subpar coffee. Ethiopia’s coffee exporters association and the Coffee and Tea Authority have managed to identify the companies in question and are monitoring the situation. The exporters had more to complain about as they said Chinese companies weren’t making payments in a timely manner.

And for our final update…Ethiopia’s capital Addis is undergoing reconstruction with buildings on the side of main roads being demolished and historic, nostalgic places being taken down to carry out what the government is calling the Addis Corridor project. The executive says it will beautify the city, make it more livable for residents and attractive to foreign investment. If you take a stroll around the city, you’ll see a lot of heavy machinery tearing down the sidewalks and almost all the more popular roads in the city. Residents aren’t happy but the city administration land development and administration bureau said that it has given expropriated residents enough compensation, having allocated one and a half billion birr or more than twenty-five million US dollars.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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