Ethiopia plans next year to join an exclusive club of African nations: those with their own national satellites. The company now hopes to scale up such "index-based" insurance to other parts of the country, and develop other micro-insurance products that rely on satellite technology, Temsgen said. However, the Ethiopian government seeks to modernise its agriculture sector, with satellite data playing an important role in the country's modernisation drive," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Tessema, however, says richer countries from the United States to China - as well as some of its African neighbours - have used satellite technology to develop their economies. "Many governments view (satellite technology) as crucial to their economic development," he said, arguing that Ethiopia is too late, rather than too early, to the game.

Source: Ethiopian News December 05, 2018 11:20 UTC