Ethiopia Diaspora Trust Fund Advisory Council formed - Borkena

As the response to Ethiopia Diaspora Trust Fund project turns promising, Prime minister Abiy Ahmed announced today the formation of an advisory council to oversee the project.

Borkena
August 9,2018

The office of the prime minister of Ethiopia announced today the formation of Ethiopian Diaspora Trust Fund Advisory Council.

Fitsum Arega

✔@fitsumaregaa

HE Prime Minister Dr Abiy Ahmed announces the formation of the Ethiopian Diaspora Trust Fund Advisory Council and its members. He thanks and encourages all individuals and groups who have taken initiatives to cooperate with the Council.

Diverse in all its forms, the volunteer-based council draws its fifteen members from academicians, business leaders, and human rights activists, among others. California State University Professor Alemayehu Gebremariam, Tamagne Beyene, a former comedian- currently an activist, and Obang Metho, Executive Director of Solidarity Movement for New Ethiopia are among the names included in the advisory council. (Check out the full list from the attached picture below)

Abiy Ahmed’s administration seems to be entrenching the culture of forming an advisory as a best practice so as to promote accountability and transparency.

It was last month that prime minister that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the formation of Diaspora Trust Fund to help fund development efforts in Ethiopia.

Abiy Ahmed is counting on an estimated three million Ethiopians in the Diaspora and he is challenging them to contribute a dollar a day with the aim to raise a million dollar a day for Ethiopia.

The statement issued by the office of the prime minister stated that Abiy Ahmed’s challenge to Ethiopian Diaspora “has been accepted enthusiastically throughout the Ethiopian Diaspora”

Apart from funding development efforts, the prime minister goal in initiating the program is to engage Ethiopians in the Diaspora in the socio-economic and political development of Ethiopia, according to the statement.

The relation between Ethiopians in the Diaspora and the Ethiopian government has mostly been hostile in the last twenty-seven years. And the prime minister attained a remarkable success in terms of changing that relation to a positive one.

He visited, along with some members of his cabinet and president of Oromo region of Ethiopia, three cities in the United States last month where he met with hundreds of thousands of euphoric crowd who consider him as his prime minister, unprecedented to his predecessors.