Ethiopia seeks to be Africa's top car manufacturer With Chinese help

Tigrai Online, Ethiopian News, June 4, 2016

ADDIS ABABA -- Ethiopia has grand ambitions for its tiny auto industry, seeking to transform a handful of assemblers that bolt together imported kits into a network of factories that can make the country Africa's biggest car manufacturer over the next two decades.

Plans are taking shape in industrial zones around Addis Ababa and the northern city of Mekelle, where Ethiopian firms and Chinese partners assemble the vehicle kits. "There is a lot of potential for growth," said Ma Qun, deputy manager of China's Lifan auto group in Ethiopia, which has the capacity to assemble 5,000 cars a year but whose output is less than a fifth of that. "We want to start exporting from Ethiopia by 2018, or a year later," he said.

Source Europe Auto News Please read more