Addisfortune-The Largest English Weekly in Ethiopia

Our subscribers to the print edition are entitled to get a bonus in a form of early access to our digital edition for just 4,000 ETB.

Subscribe Now Login

FORTUNE+ VIDEO SPONSORED CONTENTS ADVERTORIALS FORTUNE AUDIO Fortune Careers TRADE AFRICA Election 2026 New

Prosecutors Charge Seven Alleging Amhara Bank's Credit Controls Bend for One Borrower

Prosecutors Charge Seven Alleging Amhara Bank's Credit Controls Bend for One Borrower

Federal prosecutors have charged seven defendants over a set of foreign-trade deals they allege drained more than 137 million Br from Amhara Bank, opening one of the most serious governance cases yet against a private commercial bank only four years...

Aug 15 , 2026

Fortune News

Ethio-post Turns Branches into Banks as Banks Close Theirs

Ethio-post is preparing to turn its thousands of branches into banking agents, allowing customers to deposit and withdraw cash, pay utility bills, and access accounts held at any commercial bank. I...

Aug 15 , 2026

News Analysis

Central Bank Reforms Under Pressure as Import Bills Climb

Ethiopia's external accounts are under renewed pressure as the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) moves to unwind its premium-based role in the artisanal gold market. It has also locked in an interest-ra...

Jul 19 , 2026

Money Market Watch

Forex Market Quietly Crossed the 160 Br Line

The Birr, the "Brewed Buck," spent another week performing an increasingly familiar trick. It looked placid in the aggregate while the foreign exchange market beneath it changed shape. The National...

Aug 16 , 2026

Latest Updates

Central Bank Buys Gold High, Sells It Lower

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) bought far more gold than it managed to sell for during the past...

Aug 16 , 2026

Nine Universities Near Autonomy Have a Ministry Freezing Their Assets

Federal education authorities have frozen the hands of nine public universities in the final stage o...

Aug 16 , 2026

National Bank Forces Anbesa Bank Board Re-run, All Incumbents Out

Anbesa Bank has elected an entirely new board of directors, nine months after the Board it replaces...

Aug 9 , 2026

The Hotel That Housed the OAU Meets the Wrecking Ball

Ethiopia Hotel, one of the country's oldest hospitality establishments and a landmark on Yohannes St...

Agenda

Addis Abeba Builds Over Its Waterways. Now the Floods Find a Way Back

Floodwater had erased the edges of the road when Simon Nahom left Sunday school in the Jemo 3 neighbourhood. The 11-year-old was walking home from St. Gabriel Church with a younger friend on July 22, 2026, as heavy rain swept through the neighbourhoo...

Aug 15 , 2026

The Storm Passed, the Freight Bill Did Not

A year after a violent storm tore through one of Ethiopia's major flower-growing clusters, Vegpro Flower Farm Plc has clawed its way back from the wreckage, onl...

Aug 9 , 2026

Tax Bills Outrun the Metre, Stalling Taxi-hailing Drivers

Elbeletel Tilahun was among the ride-hailing drivers startled by this year's tax assessment. Behind the wheel of a Vitz, he was told to settle 93,000 Br in i...

Aug 1 , 2026

OPEN FOR AD

OPEN FOR AD

OPEN FOR AD

Editorial

Listen to the Poets Before Bulldozers Narrow Addis Abeba's Memory

Aschalew Fetene, known as “Ardi” and admired for his poetic depth, has built a time capsule for a rapidly changing Addis Abeba. The song “Woyzero Tesseru,” a standout on his album “Aschale,” released two years ago, is an elegy for the...

Aug 14 , 2026

In Going Digital, the State Designs for the Citizen It Wants to Have

The World Bank asks readers to picture a mother in rural Ethiopia who has never held a bank account, now able to borrow to start a small business. It also asks them to envision a homeless, internally displaced person in Addis Abeba, stripped of every paper doc...

Aug 8 , 2026

OPEN FOR AD

Exclusive Interview

Africa's Open Skies Fail If Governments Keep Taxing Travellers Off the Runway

Fortune: The African Union has made SAATM a priority for next year. Are you happy with the way the project is being handled by the AU and AFCAC? Kamil Al-Awadhi: The AU is talking about SAATM as a priority, but I do not think it will work the way it is being handled now. The AU nominated the proj...

Jun 7 , 2026

Britain Wants Ethiopia to Stop Being an Aid Case and Become a Climate Power

Fortune: Given the United Kingdom's long history with Ethiopia, is there a change of view about its role in East Africa's economic and climate future? McLoughlin: We are recalibrating our approach in recognition of Ethiopia's increased importance, particula...

May 3 , 2026

EZEMA'S New Leader on Elections, Youth Apathy and the Constitution

Fortune: Have you voted before? Eyob Mesafint: Yes. I have voted since I was 18. Q: How does the current electoral climate compared with the past? Under the EPRDF, except in 2005, elections were largely nominal and predictable. Opposition leaders expe...

Apr 10 , 2026

OPEN FOR AD

OPEN FOR AD

Viewpoint

Price Belongs to the Present, Value to Posterity

Nothing is more characteristic of markets than their power to persuade that what is traded is, therefore, what it is worth. Few propositions are more seductive, or more deceptive. As Ethiopia's Securities Exchange (ESX) begins its journey, public attention has gravitated to the daily movement of share prices. Gains are celebrated, declines invite concern, while each quotation is taken as a verd...

Aug 16 , 2026

Bab-el-Mandeb Should Not Wait for a Catastrophe

There are places where geography becomes destiny. Bab-el-Mandeb, a.k.a. the “Gate of Tears," is one of them. Barely 26Km separate the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula at its narrowest point. Through this chokepoint passes more than half of all tr...

Aug 14 , 2026

The Sea the Instrument, the Position the Prize

Ethiopia's renewed pursuit of maritime access has pulled the Red Sea back to the centre of regional and domestic debate. Yet the debate keeps circling the wrong question. It is framed by historical entitlement, sovereignty, nationalism, and access to a port. ...

Aug 8 , 2026

My Opinion

Ethiopia Digitises Its Money, Not Its Factories

For the fast-growing digital audience in Ethiopia, the promise of a “digital economy” tends to conjure images of fintech apps, mobile connectivity and platform-based services. Beneath that visible layer, though, lies a quieter and more consequential frontier. The country has made notable strides in digital infrastructure and financial services. However, manufacturing has yet to fully draw o...

Aug 14 , 2026

The Hidden Dollar Bill Behind Every App

Digital transformation is gaining pace here. New startups are emerging, public services are moving online, and businesses are reaching for technology-driven tools. Yet beneath the excitement over innovation sits a structural problem that draws little attent...

Aug 8 , 2026

Ethiopia Built the Rooms. Now Fund the Startups

Supporting startups has become fashionable. Public institutions host them, universities are opening innovation hubs, and private companies are giving over office space to entrepreneurs. The Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute (EAII) has handed a fiv...

Jul 31 , 2026

Featured

SMALL-NOTES SQUEEZE WORN, TORN, NEVER RETURNED

For Hirut Ayalew, a small shop owner around Ferensay Legasiyon, the shortage of usable small-denomination notes has become a daily headache. She sometimes turns customers away, or lets them take goods on informal credit, simply because she cannot make change. The torn and faded 10 Br notes moving through shops, taxis, bars and street markets are more than a sign of careless handling. They are inflation made physical, the residue of money that changes hands far too fast, and of a banking syste...

Aug 1 , 2026

Commentaries

Europe Needs the Plot, Ethiopia Needs the Price

Ethiopia has built new eyes for its most valuable export. The question is what it will look at after the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority took technical handover of the Ethiopian Coffee Traceability & Management System (ECTMS) in March this year. It is a platform designed to follow coffee from the farm to the export gate. Developed with support from GIZ, the German development cooperation agency, and built by Vulcan ICT, the system can collect farm geodata, document the flow of goods...

Aug 14 , 2026

News Analysis

Central Bank Reforms Under Pressure as Import Bills Climb

Ethiopia's external accounts are under renewed pressure as the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) moves to unwind its premium-based role in the artisanal gold market. It has also locked in an interest-rate-anchored monetary regime, even as the war in the Middle East lifts fuel and fertiliser import bills and keeps foreign-exchange backlogs high. The balance-of-payments position weakened throughout the 2025/26 fiscal year, and policymakers are now leaning on tighter monetary policy, gold-market r...

Jul 19 , 2026

Delicate Number

2

The financing gap, in dollars, of Ethiopia's estimated green finance market for the coffee sector. Access to finance is identified as the top business challenge for nearly 90pc of enterprises surveyed by the World Bank.

Aug 14 , 2026

Fineline

Leaders of the National . . .

Leaders of the National Election Board are in a charm offensive mood, of a sort. Last week, they organised a rare tour for members of the media, showcasing what polling stations will look like during the upcoming national elections; and they took the...

Oct 3 , 2020

Verbatim

"A strong nation and people cannot be built through rhetoric or mere wishes."

Beker Shale (PhD), director general of the Ethiopian Statistics Service (ESS), turned to Facebook late last week with an appeal for national cohesion. Building a "united and peaceful society," he stated, rests on "solidarity, sincere tolerance, respect, empathy and trust-based unity."

View From Arada

The Old Brew Finds a New Room

On a Saturday evening in a Chichinya neighbourhood, off Mickey Leland St., Sello Tella Bet comes alive to the melody of the “kerar”, its notes followed by catchy lyrics woven into storie...

Aug 14 , 2026

Films Review

Nope

Few would have imagined that the Peele in Key & Peele, a show on MTV's Comedy Central, would become a world-class director reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher. There is a sketch from Key & Peele, titled Town Hall Audience Member, one of the funniest outputs of the show, where Jordan Peele shows some promise as he acts entirely with his eyes to peak comedic effect. Other than that, at least to this author's eyes, there is nothing to indicate cinematic genius or even a great...

Sep 17 , 2022

RRR: PEAK OF BOLLYWOOD, FOR BETTER OR WORSE

Bollywood has finally peaked. The sentimentalism, chirpy musical numbers, physics-defying fight scenes and aggressively cheesy romantic plots have all come into their own in RRR, one of the biggest Bollywood hits in recent memory to gain an international audience. I would normally object to individual elements of the movie, including its ludicrous storyline and plot holes. But the way they have come together is strangely fascinating. RRR, which is short for “Rise, Roar, Revolt" and must be...

Sep 10 , 2022

Stay Connected With Addis Fortune

[xs_social_counter provider='facebook,twitter,instagram' class='custom-class']

Sunday With Eden

The Plate on the Screen Isn't the Plate on the Table

Last week, I listened to Dr Berry Dubiso, a podcast named after an Ethiopian doctor and nutrition consultant whose health writings I have found useful on social media. However, a few minutes into the podcast, he made an admission that caught me off guard. The food photographs he regularly shares online are not pictures of his own meals. They are sent to him by clients living abroad, and he uses...

Aug 14 , 2026

Ten Years at the Gate, a Dream That Never Stood Still

Last Sunday, my family gathered for what was meant to be a simple farewell. There was food on the table, laughter filling the room, and a decorated cake waiting to be cut. But this was no ordinary goodbye. We were celebrating Saber Adem, a man who had spent...

Aug 8 , 2026

What Every Parent Really Asks in Children Education

Every parent shares the dream of seeing their children grow into knowledgeable, responsible and successful adults. Education is the foundation of that dream. Yet for many families across Addis Abeba today, choosing the right school has become one of the mos...

Jul 31 , 2026

Life Matters

A Body Learns Itself from the Inside

Some experiences resist explanation. One can read volumes, hear them described, or watch them on screen, and still hold only a shadow of the truth until living the moment. Pregnancy sits squarely there. It is one thing to understand the biology of human creation on paper, another to live through the slow, daily transformation of one's own body. Pregnancy is rarely the serene and glowing journey...

Aug 14 , 2026

Children Fall. Some Parents Detonate

As an overprotective mother, I know that sudden and cold knot in the stomach all too well. It is the feeling that hits the second I realise a child is hurt, when I hear the sharp cry. My mind races through every worst case. Worse still is the waiting when t...

Aug 8 , 2026

The Fear I Learn to Let Go Of

Every time a sudden loud noise comes from our living room, my heart stops. I drop whatever I am doing and run, certain someone is crying or has broken a bone. But there are never any tears. My husband is on the floor, my son is jumping on his back, and my d...

Jul 31 , 2026

Radar

Addis Ababa Enterprises Tap 3.8b Br in Loans

More than 16,000 enterprises benefited from market linkages worth over 20 billion Br generated by Addis Abeba's Enterprise & Technology Development sector during the 2026-2027 fiscal year. Financing support reached nearly 8,000 enterprises, which accessed more than 3.8 billion Br in loans. Enterprises also generated six billion Birr in savings. More than 14,000 enterprises received indus...

Aug 16 , 2026

Addis Ababa Enterprises Tap 3.8b Br in Loans

More than 16,000 enterprises benefited from market linkages worth over 20 billion Br generated by Addis Abeba's Enterprise & Technology Development sector during the 2026-2027 fiscal year. Financing support reached nearly 8,000 enterprises, which accessed more than 3.8 billion Br in loans. Enterprises also generated six billion Birr in savings. More than 14,000 enterprises received indus...

Aug 16 , 2026

In Picture

LIBRARY MILESTONE

Ervin Massinga (left), U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, and Kora Tushune (right), State Minister of Education, during the 60th anniversary celebration of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at Addis Abeba University last week. The event highlighted the flagship library's enduring legacy as the university's primary academic hub, continuing to provide thousands of students with a welcoming, state-of-th...

Aug 16 , 2026

PAW PATROL

A line of young volunteers, barely into their teenage years, hold hands at a zebra crossing near the “Sidist Kilo” roundabout along Algeria Street, keeping pedestrians from crossing while the traffic light is green for vehicles. The children are spending their summer volunteering to help keep traffic moving, taking on a responsibility usually left to adults. What is meant to be a moment when p...

Aug 16 , 2026