Our Divisions
Each division runs as its own business with its own leadership and P&L. They share back-office infrastructure, a common standard for delivery, and decades of relationships in the Ethiopian market.
Carcon Capital
Strategy, policy, and investment advisory on the EU-Africa corridor.
Carcon Capital provides strategic advisory, policy research, and investment structuring for institutions and private clients working in Ethiopia and across East Africa. We are led by senior consultants with over fifteen years of direct experience inside the Ethiopian market and established relationships with the multilateral, bilateral, and private-sector actors shaping it.
What We Do
Policy and development advisory. Team-lead and technical-expert engagements on private-sector development, labour markets, entrepreneurship ecosystems, and trade policy, usually commissioned by multilateral or bilateral donors and delivered alongside government counterparts.
Market entry and investment structuring. For European and Middle Eastern clients investigating Ethiopian opportunities, and for Ethiopian firms seeking external capital. We have supported private-equity feasibility assessments, due-diligence market research, and PPP engagements.
Institutional and family-office advisory. Strategy, governance, and succession support, grounded in our own experience as a second-generation family business in transition.
How We Engage
Our preferred engagement model is secondment and consortium, we bring our expertise into client teams or join consortia alongside other consulting firms and implementation partners. Smaller, direct engagements (family-office, succession, targeted market entry) are handled in-house.
Selected Engagements
€300M Budget Support to Ethiopia
Team lead on the comprehensive SOE and financial-sector assessment and the policy trigger matrix for AFD’s bilateral budget support disbursement to the Ethiopian Government.
Investment Guide to Ethiopia for EU Businesses
Prepared under the EU Delegation and Ethiopian Investment Commission, plus two major policy briefs on vertical integration and facilitating EU SME investment.
National Trade Policy Framework
Supervised the team preparing Ethiopia’s Trade Policy Framework, policy statement, and implementation plan, commissioned by UNDP.
Ethiopian Entrepreneurship Fund
Structured the fund facility, financial model, investment and risk management strategy, and fund-manager prospectus, following a nationwide mapping of 200+ start-ups and high-growth SMEs.
Value Chains across Ethiopia & Tanzania
M4P value-chain and livelihoods analysis across 12 sectors and 1,500 interviews, with intervention plans projected to impact 200,000 farmers and workers.
10-Year Review of Private-Sector Development
Reviewed a decade of Ethiopian government and stakeholder efforts in private-sector development, with a synthesis of the policy and regulatory drivers of growth.
Institutional Clients
Group Financial Holdings
The Group is a founding shareholder of Awash Bank, with continued strategic shareholdings in United Bank, Enat Bank, Abyssinia Bank, and Awash Insurance, reflecting a long-term commitment to Ethiopia’s financial sector.
Geographic Footprint
Based in Addis Ababa with partners in Athens and London. Delivered engagements across Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Togo, the UAE, Malaysia, and the Maldives.
Carcon Construction
General contracting across Ethiopia since 1985.
Carcon Construction is the founding business of the Group. Legally registered as Geom. Antonio Carnevale Construction Company, we build residential, commercial, religious, institutional, and industrial structures across Ethiopia, including some of the country’s most recognized landmarks: the Egyptian Embassy Residence in Addis Ababa, Kidane Mihret Cathedral in Meki, the Boeing Engine Testing Cell for Ethiopian Airlines, and the Salesians of Don Bosco Regional House.
We operate from a 3,200 m² facility at Megenagna in Addis Ababa, hold BC-3 contractor registration, and run a directly-employed team of approximately 150 with up to 600 contract labourers on active projects.
What We Build
Mixed-use and residential towers. Most recent: Agober 2B+G+13, Olympia 1B+G+9, Cathedral G+4.
Religious and institutional buildings for Catholic dioceses, congregations, hospitals, and embassies, our longest-standing client relationships.
Industrial facilities for aviation, agro-processing, and logistics.
How We Work
Carcon Construction works primarily on a direct-negotiated basis with repeat private clients, the Catholic Church in Ethiopia, and diplomatic missions, not through public tenders. What brings clients back is consistency: quality of workmanship, delivery discipline, and long-term site stewardship.
Equipment Fleet
8 trucks, 2 excavators, 2 dozers, 2 backhoe loaders, 2 chain loaders, 6 concrete mixers, asphalt plant, crusher, and specialized finishing equipment.
Long-standing Clients
Portfolio
See the full project catalog
Filterable by sector, commercial, residential, religious, diplomatic, industrial, interiors.
Light Manufacturing
In-house wood and metal workshops for construction and fit-out.
Our manufacturing division supplies fit-out elements for Group construction projects and for external clients. Two specialized workshops operate from the 3,200 m² Megenagna facility alongside the construction fleet, staffed by long-tenured craftsmen trained on our own sites.
Wood Workshop
Doors, in-home furniture, kitchen cabinetry, and finish carpentry. The wood shop produced the interior fit-out for the Salesians Don Bosco Regional House, Kidane Mihret Cathedral, Yegna Apartments, and multiple recent residential towers. Standard doors and custom joinery both.
Metal Workshop
Steel windows, door fixtures, balustrades, railings, and custom metalwork for commercial and residential buildings. Heavier fabrication on the Group’s record includes structural elements for the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing Engine Testing Cell.
Why It Exists
Vertical integration gives Carcon Construction quality control over finishing, usually the weakest link on Ethiopian construction sites. For external clients it means a domestic supplier for components that would otherwise be imported at materially higher cost and longer lead times.
Working With Us
We accept external orders for doors, fixtures, built-in furniture, and custom metalwork, subject to workshop capacity. Contractors and architects can reach the workshop lead via the Group’s construction line.
Alessandro Import Export
Specialist trade in construction materials and technical inputs.
Alessandro Import Export is the Group’s trade division. It continues a commercial track record that began in 1995 with AMCAST PLC, an import-export business the Group operated until 2009, handling construction machinery, ceramics, tools, and high-end Italian goods with annual turnover around USD 1M.
Construction Materials
Waterproofing systems, finishing materials, concrete admixtures, and specialist construction inputs sourced from European and Middle Eastern suppliers. Product lines are selected for projects we have seen underperform because lower-cost substitutes were used, which means the materials we import are specified first for our own construction work, and sold to other Ethiopian contractors on the same basis.
How We Work
Long-term supplier relationships over transactional trading. Our family’s thirty-year trade history, combined with the Group’s construction insight, means we know which products actually perform in Ethiopian site conditions and which do not. We carry the full import cycle ourselves: supplier negotiation, licensing, forex, customs clearance, and local distribution.
Working With Us
European and Middle Eastern suppliers seeking a reliable Ethiopian import partner are welcome to reach out. Contractors and projects needing specialist finishing materials, the same. Contact: partnerships@carconcapital.com.
Carcon Tech
Digital ventures in workforce development and e-commerce.
Carcon Tech houses two digital ventures built to address problems we see firsthand in the Ethiopian market, not to chase digital trends. The division grew out of NICAD Services (2012), the Group’s early development-consultancy arm, and is led by second-generation Group members with deep development-economics and ICT4D experience.
MOSERA, Workforce Development
MOSERA is a mobile workforce platform that connects job seekers to opportunities via USSD, IVR, and SMS, reaching feature-phone users who are excluded from smartphone-based platforms. The system was designed over 15 months on the basis of surveys covering 6,000 job seekers and employers, and built in partnership with Betec Technology Solutions. It targets a structural gap in the Ethiopian labour market: the information asymmetry between available work and available workers, particularly outside major cities.
BUCHILA, E-Commerce
BUCHILA is a curated e-commerce platform serving Ethiopian consumers, currently in early commercial stage. Product categories are being refined against buyer-behaviour patterns observed in the first trading year, with an emphasis on categories where supply fragmentation and last-mile logistics have kept legitimate sellers out of the market.
Partners & Investors
We are selectively open to partners and investors focused on workforce infrastructure, fintech for informal workers, last-mile logistics, or inclusion-focused digital services in East Africa. The Group brings Ethiopian operational insight; we look for partners who bring technical depth, capital, or complementary distribution. Contact: partnerships@carconcapital.com.
Talk to the right division.
Each division has its own lead and P&L. Tell us which one you want to work with, construction, manufacturing, trade, advisory, or tech, and we’ll introduce you directly.
Contact UsAddis Ababa, Ethiopia
Group Headquarters
Nicosia, Cyprus
European Operations