By Dawit Endeshaw
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia said on Friday it had issued its first investment banking licenses to two local companies, the latest effort by the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to open up the economy of more than 100 million people to private capital.
State-run regulator Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECA) awarded the licenses to units of lenders CBE Capital and Wegagen Capital Investment Bank, a statement issued by ECA said.
CBE, a state-run enterprise, is Ethiopia’s largest lender, while Wegagen was recently listed on the country’s stock market.
The two licenses are “pivotal to the creation of a more diversified and robust capital market in Ethiopia,” the statement added.
Since coming to power in 2018, Abiy has been trying to liberalise Ethiopia’s hitherto tightly controlled economy.
Those efforts have drawn interest from foreign companies, including Kenya’s Safaricom, which won Ethiopia’s first private telecoms licence in 2021.
ECA also said it had granted an advisory and brokerage permit to three firms – Ethio-Fidelity Securities, HST Investment Advisory Services, and Equation Securities Investment Advisor.
As part of the liberalisation, Ethiopia has floated its local birr currency and also opened up other sectors such as financial services.
(Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Hereward Holland and Shounak Dasgupta)
