NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, February 13, 2006

Filagot Sileshi

Zewdu, having secured his patent right from the Science and Technology Commission four years ago, has now become one of the leading technology inventors in the industry and, in this regard, he has shown a tremendous improvement since then.

The machines that he makes are different from those imported. According to Zewdu, electric baking with one oven consumes a power of 3kw compared to the imported ones of 5.7kw. Moreover, the electric baking machines which have two and three oven produced locally by Zewdu consume 4.5kw and 17.1kw respectively compared with the ones imported, which consume 11.4kw and 17.1kw respectively.

(…) The enterprise has so far created job opportunity for 18 people. He said that since he hasn’t got enough space to produce the machines and due to lack of other inputs it has become difficult for him to diversify his enterprise and, as such, forced to hold some pipeline plans. Zewdu said he had some master plans of introducing other machines that are not produced in the country. For instance, he intends to produce agricultural machineries which will substitute the imported ones and thereby stop the drain in foreign exchange.

Since agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, producing these machines locally is important in order to increase productivity and become profitable. In general, the benefit of producing the machines locally will reduce the cost of maintenance and will also curtail those machines from being sent for maintenance abroad.

For the full article click here.