Ethiopia

The lesson of the current US tariffs crisis roiling the trade world is this: you cannot keep relying on one country as your export destination. From now on it has to be ‘US Plus One’.

The death-knell of Somerset-based leather manufacturer, Pittards had been sounded much earlier but when it finally closed shop last September, the story of a worldwide brand known for producing gloves for the Royal Family, is one that has lessons for entrepreneurs of all hues.

There’s an urgent need for Ethiopia to yank off from a never-ending cycle of low productivity and high labour turnover if the country wants to remain an attractive location for the global textile industry in spite of rising labour costs.

Ethiopia, China, and Germany have renewed their commitment to scale up their triangular cooperation aiming at improving the environmental, social, and labour standards in the textile sector in Ethiopia and beyond. texfash.com reports.

Ethiopia's showcase textile project—Hawassa Industrial Park—is facing huge job losses in the wake of factory closures following the US announcement that the former would no longer benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act's (AGOA) duty-free access to its markets from 1 January this year.

The Ethiopian government and the investors creating employment have a long way to go to offer women what the International Labour Organisation terms decent work. A recent research shows that the main actors determining labour conditions in Ethiopian factories have little concern for the potential damage that poor working conditions can have on their reputations.