Policies & Documents

Ethiopia is implementing an ambitious five-year Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), which aims to rapidly transform Ethiopia into a middle income country. The first GTP was implemented between 2010 and 2015, and achieved outstanding success in a number of areas, such as boosting GDP and exports. The second GTP cycle began in 2016, and it aims to build on its predecessor’s successes.

More narrowly, Ethiopia is also working from a ten year strategic plan for developing its mineral sector. The methodology and approach to the plan is spelled out below.

Ethiopia’s strengths

Ethiopia has a number of crucial strengths that its mineral sector can build on. These are:

• A unique geological profile;
• Occurrences of wide variety of minerals;
• A strong emerging economy with double-digit growth for the last 10 years.

Current challenges

There are however a few areas that are calling out for improvement before Ethiopia can be a global force in mining. These are:

• A lack of top quality geosciences data, with only 20-30% of Ethiopia’s mineral currently known.
• Shortages of capital and investment in the sector.
• Limited understanding amongst Ethiopia’s citizens and other stakeholders of the sector’s important role in socio-economic development.
• Insufficient focus on value addition and export substitution.

Building an inclusive strategy

The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum (MoMP) has carefully developed and is developing an evidence-based strategy for the mineral sector, to build on these strengths while addressing any shortcomings. Its planning was and continues to be highly consultative and participatory (both bottom-up and top-down).

The planning is led by a Steering Team, and drafted by a separate Technical Team, who work in collaboration with knowledgeable consultants. In addition, regional offices, heads and other subject experts are regularly consulted, as are donors, education and research institutions and other economic institutions with valuable mining sector experience.

Our African Minerals Vision

Our vision of Ethiopian mining is of the transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development.

Bringing about the African Minerals Vision is essential to realising the National Vision for Ethiopia as a whole. Our ultimate National Vision for Ethiopia is to:

• Join the ranks of lower-middle income countries by 2030
• Engage in Resilient Green Economic Growth, and
• Increase industrialization

Objectives and goals of the 10-year strategic plan

Our 10-year strategic plan for the mining and petroleum sector has the following five objectives:

• Increase internal and foreign exchange earnings
• Increase investment in the sector
• Enable the possibility of value addition and facilitate the industrialization of the economy
• Create opportunities for direct and indirect quality jobs in the extractives sector
• Build the organizational and technical capacity of institutions

Areas we are focussing on

The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum (MoMP) has identified the following areas as crucial to achieving our objectives. These are the areas we are working to address as a matter of priority:

• Institutional competences and technology
• Legislation and Policies
• Human Resources competencies
• Research and innovation
• Political stability and Investment Protection
• Stakeholders’ cooperation
• Monitoring and evaluation