00:00Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has secured another term in office after his prosperity
00:05party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
00:10The result gives the Ethiopian leader a fresh mandate to pursue economic reforms.
00:15But he still faces a daunting list of challenges.
00:19Our chief Africa correspondent Jennifer Zapisaja joins us from Johannesburg.
00:24Jen talk to us about the biggest challenges that Abiy Ahmed is facing in his new term.
00:33Well if you just start politically clearly Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is firmly in control politically
00:39especially as you mentioned he did secure this landslide victory. But as you also mentioned there's
00:45quite a long list of issues and really tensions that the Prime Minister has been dealing with
00:51domestically and also regionally. Some of which are stemming from some political tensions within Ethiopia
00:57but then also ongoing ethnic tensions that continue to sort of bog down any sort of progress in parts of
01:03the country.
01:04We saw voting postponed in parts of the country due to some security concerns in the Tigray and Amhara regions.
01:11Of course we know that has been long a concern since the two year civil war. There's also concern for
01:18Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
01:19with Somalia and Eritrea given he has tried to gain more access to the Red Sea. And we should
01:25remember early last year the opening of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam angered or frustrated I guess is a better
01:34word to say Egypt. There's also concern about accusations of what and who Ethiopia has been supporting in Sudan's ongoing
01:43conflict. And so the Prime Minister is dealing with quite a bit of tensions and frustrations with a number of
01:49regional partners but also economically investors are going to want to get some insure assurances that he's going to be
01:55able to quell and stem some of the ongoing security issues and actually move forward with some of the economic
02:01reforms that he had started previously in the past few years. So speaking of those economic reforms Jen what are
02:10the key priorities
02:11now for Ethiopia when it comes to debt restructuring and and IMF support.
02:19Well we know that's very high on the list for Ethiopia especially if you consider what we saw early on
02:26with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed when we saw
02:28Ethiopia we had seen him when he first came into power really trying to open up the economy. We saw
02:34a number of reforms in terms of helping to
02:37instate the first stock exchange and then also trying to at least throw support behind the Ethiopian Burr. And so
02:45a lot of that is going
02:46to be continuing on in this next term. There are some positive signs though from the IMF. The IMF is
02:53still expecting Ethiopia to be one of the
02:55fastest growing economies in the world. Still authorities there in Ethiopia still expect the economy to grow north of nine
03:04percent. I
03:04think some of the estimates suggest about 10 percent. We are seeing reserves increase and we are seeing a bit
03:10of stabilization. But still as you
03:12were alluding to there there is still a bit of concern about how Ethiopia is going to be restructuring some
03:18of its debt. It's thrown in billions of
03:21dollars behind supporting the Burr. And still it is struggling a bit there. And so there is quite a bit
03:28that the IMF is looking for in terms
03:30of economic support and stability for Ethiopia in order to really throw their weight behind what we see as progress.
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