Mohammed Garad
Senior Consultant
Mohammed Garad possesses diverse and extensive know-how in international trade promotion and investment in development projects in developing countries. He started his career in international trade at the Ethiopian Customs in 1973 where he gained rapid promotions from tax attorney to chief prosecutor, manager of customs import-export operations, and deputy commissioner. He was elected and served as President of the African Tax Administrators’ Association (ATAA) in 1982 under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. In 1983 he was elected vice chairman of the Permanent Technical Committee at the Customs Cooperation Council (CCC) in Brussels, Belgium where he was one of the pioneers among international customs officers engaged in drafting the Harmonized System, which today has become the standard tariff nomenclature adapted by all countries.
He is an attorney whose legal career ranges from the prosecution of illicit traders in Ethiopia to teaching legal research in the United States and working as general counsel on major investment acquisitions in the Middle East. Mohammed is also a trade consultant who has been intimately connected to the coffee industry for years. He was closely involved in the determination and collection of the Ethiopian coffee surtax. In 1996, he played a pivotal role in convincing and organizing the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association to shift its booth from an obscure small stand to a large and visible promotional pavilion during every annual SCAA conference. He was managing Coffee Originals, a company in Alexandria, VA engaged in importing coffee from Ethiopia until he joined Light Years IP.
Mohammed served as Ethiopia’s Trade and Investment Counselor in Washington DC from 1993 to 2001, during which time he actively lobbied for the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) by providing vital trade facts and preparing testimonies to be presented before the US Congress and the Clinton Administration. During his diplomatic tenure, Mohammed played a major role in promoting Ethiopia’s exports to the United States and convincing many American business executives and Ethio-American entrepreneurs to invest in Ethiopia. He co-founded the Ethio-American Trade and Investment Counsel (EATIC) to create a unique public private enterprise to reach out and advocate for active bilateral trade and investment participation.
Educated in law at Haile Sellasie 1st University and Harvard Law Schools, Mohammed dedicated most of his professional life to international trade and investment activity, with a passion for the promotion of Ethiopian coffee.
