The Ethiopian government will reportedly send more than $90 million to the Tigrayan capital to help restart banking services in the country, reported Africa News.
On Twitter, Prime Minister Abiy’s national security advisor, Redwan Hussein, announced that the National Bank had started to send the money to the capital Mekele for distribution from Monday.
On Friday, the Ethiopian prime minister met for the first time with Tigrayan leaders since a peace agreement was signed in Pretoria in November after a two-year-long war between the federal government and the Tigrayan rebels.
According to the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, Prime Minister Abiy and Tigrayan leaders evaluated actions carried out on the implementation of the Pretoria and Nairobi peace agreements so far and discussed issues that need further attention. The meeting was held at a resort in southern Ethiopia.
Started in November 2020, the war has so far killed thousands of people, displaced more than two million people and put hundreds of thousands in near-starvation conditions, according to the United Nations (UN).
The conflict first erupted in Tigray but slowly spread into several neighboring regions including Amhara and Afar.
As per the terms and conditions of the peace deal signed in November last year, the rebels agreed to give up their arms and re-establish the federal government authority in return for the restoration of aid and humanitarian access to Tigray.
Since the signing of the deal, fighting between the two factions has stopped and aid deliveries to Tigray have resumed, as the region has long faced severe shortages of food, fuel, cash, and medicine.
Some of the basic services including banking, electricity, and communications, are being slowly restored to the conflict-hit region of six million people. Ethiopia’s national carrier Ethiopian Airlines also resumed commercial flights between Addis Ababa and Tigray’s capital Mekele last month.
