Uruguayan Ambassador to Ethiopía Alejandro Garofali announced at a bilateral business event in Montevideo that in the next few months a technical delegation of Ethiopian Airlines will be arriving to study the local aviation market. The diplomat added that the African nation offers possibilities of developing profesional services in a wide range of sectors.

Ethiopian Airlines Executive  Director Tewolde Gebremarian pledged to Ambassador Garofali that they would be sending to Uruguay a delegation of two or three of their specialists to study the country’s market potential and the functionality of operations.

The business event was held on June 22 and organized by Uruguay XXI, the Foreign Ministry, Unión de Exportadores del Uruguay and the Uruguayan-African Chamber of Commerce.

Garofali pointed out that Ethiopian Airlines is one of the main African companies of the sector with a fleet of 101 aircraft and 91 destination, converting Addis Ababa into a world centre for transporting passengers and freight.

The ambassador recalled that since March the airline has been flying between the Ethiopian capital and Buenos Aires with a one-hour stopover in Sao Paulo, thus providing “two points of contact with the American subcontinent” and “opening up an unexplored chapter which could yield interesting results in an immediate future.” Garofali added that he was briefing authorities from the Foreign and Tourism Ministries.

In his presentation, the ambassador underlined that Ethiopia in the Horn of  Africa is a country with 102 million inhabitants who are undergoing a process of political and social stability while opening up the economy, joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) and consolidating democracy. Uruguay opened an embassy there in September, 2016, its 4th in the continent after South Africa, Egypt and Angola.

Garofali described the areas which could interest Uruguayan businessmen as providing professional services for a wide range of sectors such as agri-business, marketing, civil engineering and technology applied to financial activities among others, as well as possibly providing knowhow from the Ceibal Plan and offering national production via state purveyance.

TheStrategic Plan of Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry has identified as one of its priorities a greater insertion into Africa at the political, diplomatic and commercial levels as well as the channels of South-South technical co-operation.