PM Lawrence Wong at the Joint Press Conference with Ethiopia PM Abiy Ahmed Ali (Nov 2025)

Thank you very much, Prime Minister Abiy.
Excellencies and distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Once again, I am very grateful to my friend, Prime Minister Abiy, for the warm welcome that has been extended to me and my delegation.

Last year, the Prime Minister visited Singapore to celebrate 55 years of diplomatic ties between our two countries. He invited me to visit Ethiopia and so I am very happy to be able to reciprocate his visit now – on my first Official Visit to Ethiopia, but also, in fact my first bilateral visit to the African continent, and it is here in Ethiopia.

Prime Minister Abiy said just now that Ethiopia is stepping up its engagements with developed countries, to match Ethiopia’s needs and demands with the resources and capabilities of developed countries. To be clear, Singapore is not a developed country. We see ourselves as a tiny little island; always vulnerable, exposed to so many external challenges and always trying to keep ahead. On the other hand, we see Ethiopia as an ancient civilisation with a long and proud history, a diverse people and tremendous potential to do much more going forward.

So this is not about us teaching Ethiopia at all or offering lessons. It is a partnership of equals. It is a partnership of us working together closely for win-win partnership. That is how we see this relationship going forward.

In fact, when Prime Minister Abiy visited Singapore earlier, it already injected positive momentum to our bilateral relationship and today we are continuing that positive momentum and that positive trajectory going forward as we had the two MOUs just now.

We will be strengthening our cooperation in skills development. 

We will also deepen collaboration in sustainability, particularly in carbon credits, so that both countries can help meet our respective climate targets. And also, this is timely because Ethiopia will be hosting COP32 in 2027 – an endeavour which Singapore fully supports. And of course, earlier in our delegation meeting, we also discussed other areas of cooperation, including in trade and investments, as well as digital transformation and digital connectivity.

Essentially both Prime Minister Abiy and I agreed that there is still much more that Ethiopia and Singapore can do together. There is clear potential to grow our bilateral cooperation. Beyond that, there are many opportunities to bridge and connect our two regions. As hubs in our respective parts of the world, Singapore and Ethiopia can catalyse more trade and investment flows between Southeast Asia and Africa.

And it is in this spirit that Singapore has decided to establish an Embassy in Addis Ababa. 

This will be our first Embassy in East Africa, and our third in Africa.

It is a tangible demonstration of Singapore’s commitment to our partnership with Ethiopia, and our belief in Ethiopia’s strategic importance and potential.

Our Embassy will also enable Singapore to strengthen our ties with Africa as a whole. Because being here in Addis Ababa will allow us to better engage the African Union, deepen our understanding of Africa, and explore new areas of cooperation. 

I have shared these plans with Prime Minister Abiy earlier today and look forward to the support of your government as we move ahead on these plans. 

Singapore is committed to doing more with Africa. That is why we are also launching the Singapore-Africa Partnership Leading to Growth and Sustainability package – it is a very long phrase but the short form is SAPLINGS, because we want to see these as green shoots which we are planting, which can grow into big, sturdy, strong trees, just like the saplings we planted early this morning. And through this initiative, Singapore aims to make a small but meaningful contribution to growth and development in Africa.  

Under this SAPLINGS package, we will offer African officials customised study visits to Singapore, as well as executive education programmes and postgraduate scholarships in Singapore universities – so that they can learn about the aspects of our development journey which are most relevant to their respective countries. We are happy to share and as I said just now, this is always going to be a two-way exchange. Just as they learn from us, we also will learn from them. 

I encourage our Ethiopian friends and African partners to full maximise and make use of this SAPLINGS package, and I hope that you will gain useful experiences, and make many new friends in Singapore.

In this rapidly changing and uncertain world, partnerships between like-minded countries are more important than before. And I am confident that with Prime Minister Abiy’s support, Singapore-Ethiopia relations will continue to grow from strength to strength, and I look forward to working closely with Prime Minister Abiy to take our relations to even greater heights. Thank you very much.