Ethiopia Commodity Exchange
The February 27 edition of the Wall Street Journal brought news of the imminent opening of the new Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECEX) in Addis Ababa.
Creation of a mechanism that, in theory, enables farmers to time their sales in light of knowledge of global market prices that has heretofore been inaccessible to them, is an encouraging innovation for a region that has suffered from recurrent instability in production and heartbreaking famines.
At the same time, it seems important to note an aspect of the story that does not appear in Roger Thurow's WSJ article, namely the potential for ECEX transactions to be skewed by corporations with market power that are tied to the Ethiopian government. See, for example, this reaction to the creation of ECEX. The government is the 100% owner of ECEX.
Since this political level of the story is something which I, so far, understand only superficially, I'm now looking to learn more once ECEX is actually up and running.
Labels: Africa, Business acumen
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:01 PM
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