Issue 175: Dairy Investment & Fintech Rush

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In the past week, Ethiopia’s sovereign wealth fund has partnered with UK-based Asset Green on a $600 million dairy project. Meanwhile, fintech giants Flutterwave and pawaPay are racing to tap into Ethiopia’s financial sector following a liberalizing financial act.

Additionally, a report by VISA has found that digital payment adoption has soared, with over 80% of SMEs now embracing cashless transactions, while Alibaba is scheduled to integrate local payments starting today, February 24, 2025. Our news roundup also includes visuals by AKOFADA, features into a new ai data set and a list of opportunities.

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Ethiopia’s sovereign wealth fund has signed a shareholder agreement with UK private equity firm Asset Green for a $600 million dairy farming and processing project in the Horn of Africa nation. Read more.

Fintech giants pawaPay, Zuri Health and Flutterwave are gearing up to enter Ethiopia this year, eyeing strategic acquisitions or organic growth as market liberalization sparks competition. Read more.

Researchers in Ethiopia are turning to traditional medicine to explore potential solutions, with guava leaf tea emerging as a promising natural remedy. Read more.

E-commerce Chinese giant AliExpress plans to accept Birr for transactions on its platform. The service, scheduled to launch on February 24, 2025, will also be available in Morocco, Egypt, Tanzania, Algeria, and South Africa. Read more.

iCog has debuted Leyu Ai, an open-source voice dataset that includes Amharic, Afaan Oromo, Tigrinya, Af-Somali, and Sidama languages. Read more.

Digital Financial Services is serving the agricultural sector by providing credit, insurance, and payment solutions through key players from the private sector, government, and development partners. However, given the agriculture sector's major contribution to the economy, there is still a need for further expansion and enhancement to better support the sector. Check out the latest visual by AKOFADA (Advancing Knowledge on Financial Accessibility and DFS Adoption), our initiative for bolstering the accessibility of information on DFS (digital financial services) in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s Immigration and Citizenship Service (ICS) announced it will start producing electronic passports locally starting October 2025. This will end the trend of ordering passport printing abroad. Read more.

Dashen Bank has partnered with global nonprofit Accion and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth to build an innovation hub focusing on women-owned MSMEs. Read more.  

Over 80pc of surveyed small- and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) have started accepting digital payments in the last two years, according to a new Visa report titled, ‘Value of Acceptance: Understanding the Digital Payment Landscape in Ethiopia’. Read more.

1. Win ETB 500,000! Apply for Bruh-Enat Business Competition 2025. Click here for more info. 

2. African Fintech Startups Apply for Visa Accelerator Program. Click here for more info.

3.  $225K Grant + Market Access: i3 Africa Accelerator for Health-tech Startups. Click here for more info