Up and coming at ADD
Fiata director general breaking new ground. In July the Ethiopian Freight Forwarders and Shipping Agents Association (Effsaa) welcomed a Fiata director general to its home country for the first time. Stéphane Graber took the opportunity to get to know a country with an up-and-coming economy.
Dawit Woubishet of Fiata’s member association Effsaa is simultaneously also the chairman of Fiata’s Airfreight Institute (AFI). When a delegation of the ‘Iata-Fiata Consultative Council’ (IFCC), led by Stéphane Graber, visited Ethiopia recently, he took the opportunity to show them around. There was a lot to see for Graber on the first visit of a Fiata director general to Ethiopia – especially in the country’s booming airfreight sector.
Directly after landing at Addis Ababa Airport (ADD) Graber was given an impression of the modern cargo terminal operated by Ethiopian Cargo. He appreciatively called it “a great example of innovation and digitalisation.”
Bisrat G. Mariyam, the manager in charge of pharmaceutical, special and express services at Ethiopian Airlines, the country’s national airline, underlined the role that these qualities enabled the airport to play as a regional distribution centre for vaccines during the outbreak of Covid-19.
Presenting Ethiopia to the world
Graber attended the first ever workshop of the ‘Fiata Global Air Cargo Programme’, which was organised by AFI and which has made great progress from which all Fiata regions can benefit, according to chairman Woubishet.
The AFI chairman is convinced that such meetings help to underline Ethiopia’s potential for airfreight activities. He and Effsaa expressed their hope that the country will host a Fiata World Congress “in the near future.”