Ethiopia’s population growth is among the highest in Africa, reaching 8.2% last year, and the government has been working to attract foreign investment to help fuel its plan for the country to reach middle-income status by the year 2025. This year the French beverage company Castel has bottled its first Ethiopian wine produced from its vineyards south of Addis Ababa claiming that Ethiopia is an ideal place to grow wine grapes with its sandy soil, short rainy season, inexpensive land and abundant labor force. Castel has been in Ethiopia since 1998 with the purchase of the St. George brewery and in 2008 invested $27 million to establish the country’s first foreign-owned vineyards. This year’s production totaled 1.2 million bottles of which half will be sold domestically and the remaining half will be sold across North America, Europe, and Eastern Africa, although a Chinese buyer has bought 24,000 bottles.
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