MCI launches new investment guide, Focus on Mekelle

by Bruno Rigonatti Mendes

The Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) is pleased to launch today, April 8th, our fourth investment guide, this time focused on the city of Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Region. Since its founding in 2006, the MCI has researched high-growth sectors in 11 sub-Saharan cities, with the goal of assisting these “Millennium Cities” in their outreach to prospective foreign and domestic investors, as they showcase specific investment opportunities as well as promising sectors and spell out some of the constraints and challenges their cities face. The Mekelle Guide is a key component of a larger development strategy framework developed by the MCI to help this thriving regional capital reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), achieve sustained growth and foster domestic enterprise. This, in turn, will contribute to the global dialogue on the importance of increasing the inflows of sustainable investment to the sub-national level.

The MCI City Investment Guides offer brief descriptions of investment opportunities in each city, supplemented by analyses of the investment climate, the broader context in their respective countries and regions and the challenges potential investors face when operating in such relatively untested venues as the Millennium Cities.

Over the last 20 years the city of Mekelle, population approximately 215,600, has undergone rapid development, including the expansion and internationalization of the existing airport and the development of Mekelle University and medical school. Some of Mekelle’s most promising growth sectors, such as tourism, agricultural exports (in particular, the region’s signature white honey), are showcased in the Guide, which MCI hopes will help to expedite the influx of domestic and foreign direct investment in Mekelle, ultimately increasing the regional competitiveness necessary to foster sustained growth.

The other Millennium Cities where MCI has published Investment Guides are Kisumu, Kenya (2007); Kumasi, Ghana (2008); and Blantyre, Malawi (2011). An Investment Guide to the city of Tabora, Tanzania, is currently slated for publication this summer.

Invest in Ethiopia: Focus Mekelle was funded by the Government of Finland, with support as well from the City itself,  in the context of the Regional Partnership to Promote Trade and Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa, a three-city, two-year, Finnish funded effort by MCI to spur economic development across the continent. The Mekelle Guide is one in a line of publications published by MCI on Mekelle, all of which can be found on the MCI website.