By RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC | Irish Times

A TRADE mission of 40 Irish lawyers and business people left for Ethiopia yesterday to develop links between the two countries and encourage investment in the African state.

The delegation is travelling as part of an initiative led by lawyer Philip Lee and businessman Brody Sweeney. It includes Minister for Food Trevor Sargent and former attorney general Harry Whelehan.

Connect Ethiopia, the group founded by Mr Lee and Mr Sweeney in 2005, sends biannual missions from Ireland to exchange expertise and harness the knowledge of Irish professionals.

This week, a group of 10 lawyers will hold training workshops for judges and anti-corruption officials, while business representatives will host an insurance seminar and attend a joint taskforce to develop tourism in Ethiopia.

Mr Sweeney, founder of O’Brien’s Irish Sandwich Bars, said Connect Ethiopia was attempting to help remedy one of the main causes of poverty – a lack of business activity. “There’s very little business being done and, because of that, there’s very little wealth being created, very few jobs being created and very little taxes being paid to the government,” he said before departing.

“We’re trying to help the business community there to upskill. We’re trying to introduce them to western ways of doing business, we’re trying to give them contacts in Ireland or Europe that they can use to help sell their products. We’re trying to encourage Irish investment there.”

Mr Sargent and Philip Lynch of One51 Charitable Foundation, an offshoot of the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society Co-op, will tomorrow launch the Hamara Digital Hub near capital Addis Ababa.

The hub is a partnership between Camara, an Irish charity that sends second-hand computers to schools and colleges in Africa, and Harambee College, an Ethiopian private third-level college. It will provide teacher-training courses and support for the schools receiving the computers.

More than 100 Irish and Ethiopians will have travelled between the two countries under the initiative by the end of the year. Last week, a group of senior Ethiopian bankers visited Dublin as guests of the Irish Bankers Federation and the Institute of Bankers.

Mr Sweeney said Connect Ethiopia would be relatively insulated from the recession because it asked donors for time rather than money.