Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Prime Consulting and Business Group designs and delivers employment programmes in Ethiopia — training people for jobs that actually exist, placing them with real employers, and staying with them until the work holds.
How we think about poverty
Ethiopia has no shortage of goodwill directed at poverty. What is scarcer is work that is designed so it does not quietly make people more dependent than it found them. These five commitments shape everything we build.
It shows up as closed doors, thin networks and lost confidence as much as an empty pocket. A programme that only moves cash treats the symptom. We design for capability and connection, because those are what hold once the funding stops.
Doing too much carries its own message: that a person's situation is beyond them. Our job is to clear the obstacle — a missing skill, an employer who will not take the risk, a bus fare — not to carry the person past it.
Relief stops the bleeding and should be brief. Development takes years and requires the person's own effort at every step. Most of the harm done in this field comes from applying relief long after development was what the situation needed.
Every community we work in already holds skills, employers, family networks and ambition. We begin by finding those assets and building on them, rather than arriving with a plan that treats the place as empty.
Attendance is not an outcome, and neither is a certificate. We report the things that tell you whether a life moved: how many people were placed, how many were still in the job at six months, and whether the employer would hire from the same programme again. Where a number is disappointing, we would rather publish it and fix the design.
What we do
Everything we offer exists to put more Ethiopians into work they can hold and build on. Some of it is programme design, some of it is teaching, and some of it is helping employers become places where a first job can lead somewhere.
End-to-end pathways from recruitment to a job that lasts.
Competency-based training taught to real industry standards and assessed on the job.
For the many who will earn their living outside a payroll.
Advisory from people who have opened and run hotels for the world's largest brands.
Why hospitality, why now
We are sector-agnostic in principle and focused on hospitality in practice. Three numbers explain why.
Across 34 hotels — the fifth largest pipeline in Africa, with roughly four-fifths already under construction. Every one of those rooms needs staff before it opens.
Addis Ababa hosts the climate conference in 2027, with the country targeting a step change in bed capacity. Conferences of that size hire cooks, servers, housekeepers, drivers and guides by the thousand.
Home to the African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Addis runs a permanent calendar of summits and delegations. That demand does not switch off between tourist seasons.
Who we work with
Development agencies, government bodies and training institutions running funded skills and employment work. We design to the results framework rather than around it, and we measure placement and retention instead of attendance.
A screened, trained and supervised pipeline at no recruitment cost, plus consulting on pre-opening, operations and service standards. Take someone on placement, see them work, then decide.
Training in kitchen, front office, housekeeping, food and beverage service and guiding — taught in Amharic and English, assessed in a working hotel, with support into a job once you qualify.
Our people
Between them, our senior team has spent more than eighty-five years in hospitality and education — opening hotels, running operations across four continents, and teaching the people who do the same work here.
Two decades leading community and employment organisations, currently as chief executive of a multicultural agency in Western Sydney. Works between Sydney and Addis Ababa, and sets the group’s strategy and institutional partnerships.
Runs the business day to day — operations, contracts, staffing and the delivery capacity behind every engagement.
Over twenty years in hospitality, including five-star operations, and a lecturer in business, management, events, tourism and hospitality. Heads LB Academy and directs delivery, assessment and learner outcomes.
Handles the money and the paperwork — budgets, procurement, contracts and the financial reporting that funded programmes are held to.
More than fifty years in global hospitality. Supervised 24 hotels and convention centres for InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton International across four continents, and opened four international luxury hotels. Lifetime Achievement Award, Addis Ababa Hotel Professional Association.
Eighteen years in hospitality education and former Dean of the college at Capital Hotel and Spa. Builds the occupational standards, curriculum and assessment our certification rests on.
Hotel-side commercial experience from Lewi Resort, where she was marketing manager. Runs delivery across the Bole and Gurd Shola sites — cohort scheduling, trainer rosters and facilities.
Owns the evidence — enrolment and completion records, workplace assessment tracking, and the graduate follow-up at three and six months that turns a placement claim into a measured result.
Contact