The British and German Governments in supporting the Ethiopian Transformation Agenda for Sustainable Industrial Clusters (S.I.C.) project. They are supporting Ethiopia’s journey to industrialization by implementing a joint project called. The project is funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (the United Kingdom and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) According to the joint financial agreement, the project will be completed in It will be implemented by GIZ from July 2021 to March 2025.
Sustainable Industrial Clusters (S.I.C.) is a project aimed at promoting Ethiopia’s manufacturing industry growth and environmental sustainability. Since 2000, the Industrial Parks Development Corporation has been working to make Ethiopia a major manufacturing hub by 2025 and one of the middle-income countries.
One of Ethiopia’s long-term plans is to support industrial parks by reducing the country’s dependence on imports and contributing 20% to the GDP and 50 percent to the manufacturing sector by 2025.
There are 24 industrial parks in Ethiopia, which have different stages of formation and operation. Thirteen are managed by the Industrial Parks Development Corporation, four are run by state governments, and the remaining seven are privately owned.
The purpose of the project is to record sustainable growth in the Ethiopian manufacturing sector through the industrial cluster and is expected to have three main outcomes. The first is to strengthen staff support in four industrial clusters, strengthen the management of industrial parks in Ethiopia, and strengthen environmental sustainability in industrial parks.
The development of the pilot clusters is expected to create jobs, strengthen MSEs and offer lessons for subsequent cluster development initiatives in Ethiopia.
The clusters also enable knowledge spillover, collaboration, specialization, and multi-faceted innovation that could be created through horizontal and vertical linkages and competition among enterprises.
The first phase of the project will be implemented in three clusters: Hawassa, Adama, Debre Berhan, and Kombolcha Industrial Parks, which will help test the overall implementation of the project.
