Ahmed Shide
Ahmed Shide or Ahmed Shidde (), is an Ethiopian politician and the regional speaker of parliament of the Somali regional state. He is a member of the Somali regional parliament and a member of the ruling party Ethiopian Somali People's Democratic Party (ESPDP). He has also been serving as Minister of Finance in the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed since 2018. Early life and education. Shide holds a Masters of Arts in Participation, Development and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom, Post-Graduate Diploma in Managing Rural Resources and Resource  Conflicts from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, the Netherlands, and MBA from Greenwich University, London, United Kingdom. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Ethiopian Civil Service College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Career. Before assuming office as minister of finance, Shide served as Minister of Transport and also as Minister of Government Communication Affairs of Ethiopia. Even before that he served as state minister of the ministry of finance and economic development for more than eight years, where he led the countries economic cooperation and regional development and integration agenda. He was the one who championed  and spearheaded the economic reform of Ethiopia and contributed to the significant development achievements of the country recorded over the past decades. At the moment he is the one leading the economic reform, which aims at boosting private participation and better economic efficiency. He also served the government at regional state level. Shide assumed the office of Minister of Finance on 16 October 2018, replacing Abraham Tekeste. By mid-2019, he proposed to parliament 386.9 billion birr ($13.48 billion) in government spending for the 2019/2020 budget. Also during his time in office, Ethiopia announced plans to split its state telecoms  provider Ethio telecom into two business units along infrastructure and service sector lines before it is privatized. In late 2020, he oversaw negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on a $2.9 billion programme, one of the biggest in the fund’s history in Africa. In addition to his role in government, Shide has been a member of the World Bank Group’s (WBG) Advisory Council on Gender and Development.