Technical Assistance to Ethiopia’s Transport and Logistics Sectors: First Sixth Monthly Report

Published: DT Global, September 2021

The Inception Phase lasted one month, and the activities and outputs of this phase were reported on in the Inception Phase Report and in the inception meeting which was held virtually, as planned, on 4th March 2021.

The Ethiopia Transport and Logistics Support Programme (ETLSP) started on 22nd February 2021 with the mobilisation of the Team Leader and Logistics Expert (Mark Pearson) and the Senior Transport Expert (Mohammed Jemal). The Team Leader and Logistics Expert (TL-LE) has been allocated an office in the Ethiopia Maritime Affairs Authority (EMAA) while the Senior Logistics Expert (SLE) has been allocated office space in the Ministry of Transport.

Implementation is taking place as per the schedule outlined in Table 1. The inception phase activities were all implemented in the first month of the project, and reported on in the inception report, with the exception of a paper on the logistics reform process. This is an on-going activity which will report on implementation of the National Logistics Strategy so it will be a monitoring mechanism for the NLS. This will be worked on, and the first draft will be presented, in the second half of the first year of implementation, meaning from September 2021 to February 2022.

In general, the Technical Assistance Team is of the opinion that good progress has been made in implementing the Project work plan in the first six months of the project. There have been some delays in implementation caused by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the parliamentary elections and insecurity in some parts of the country. These factors have reduced the ability of the TAT to travel in Ethiopia, but the TAT has been able to adjust how the Project is implemented so largely mitigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, elections and insecurity in parts of the country through a combination of rearranging activities, using ZOOM/TEAMS/WHATSAPP and compensating for the lack of fieldwork through desk studies and virtual meetings.

This report focusses on the planned activities of the first year of implementation, which are the activities labelled A1 to A7 in Table 1. The Report addresses implementation, challenges faced in implementation and planned activities over the coming 6 months for Activities A1 to A7. Progress on achieving Results 1 to 5 is also reported on.