More than 40 municipal and civil society actors from the four German-Ethiopian municipal partnerships between Addis Ababa and Leipzig, Adwa and Gotha, Alem Katema and Vaterstetten, and Mekele and Witten, attended an expert conference hosted in the Ethiopian capital by the project 'The 2030 Agenda – Local governance exchange with African partners'.
The guests were welcomed by Mesfin Assefa, State Minister of Urban Development and Construction of the Federal Government of Ethiopia, Abraham Asrat Beser, Director for International Relations in the Office of the Mayor, Addis Ababa City Administration, Laura Schmidt, Head of Cooperation at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ethiopia, and Jessica Baier, Department Head at the Service Agency Communities in One World of Engagement Global.
Denise Spaull, Project Manager of the Service Agency's 'Local governance exchange with African partners' project, presented the agenda and the aims of the conference. She explained: 'We want to provide the representatives of the German-Ethiopian municipal partnerships with a platform for knowledge exchange and peer learning. At the same time, we would like to explore ways of integrating the 2030 Agenda into the work of the municipal partnerships and show how their joint projects contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals’.
