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KEGNA BEER POURS INTO COMPETITIVE MARKET


Kegna Beverages on Saturday, June 14, 2025, uncorked its first bottles of Kegna Beer, a domestically owned, five percent ABV lager brewed in the West Shewa Zone of Oromia Regional State, marking what regional officials hailed as a fresh chapter for t...

Jun 15 , 2025


Fortune News

Fed Unleashes Record Budget as Spending Priorities Draw Fire

The federal government presented legislators with a budget proposal for the fiscal year 2025/26, marking an unprecedented shift in the country's fiscal approach. The budget bill totals 1.93 trillio...

Jun 15 , 2025

Money Market Watch

Behind Forex Stable Averages, Banks Signal a Coming Liquidity Crunch

The tightly managed currency market looked calm last week, yet beneath the surface, banks were jockeying for position in ways that unveiled deeper pressures ahead. Over the six trading days beginni...

Jun 15 , 2025

News Analysis

Siinqee Bank Accelerates Growth, Struggles to Convert Scale into Profit

Siinqee Bank has burst confidently from microfinance trenches into the competitive commercial banking industry, posting an impressive profit surge that outshone many peers. Its net profit jumped by 8...

May 11 , 2025


Latest Updates

Billions Unaccounted as Auditors Watch Recovery Rates Stall in Bureaucratic Quagmire

A three-year effort by the Audit Stakeholders Forum to restore fiscal discipline across federal inst...

Jun 15 , 2025


Environmental Authorities Turn to Water Fees as Ecological Strains Deepen

Environmental authorities have signalled a shift toward regulatory intervention, introducing a usage...

Jun 15 , 2025


Unilever Gains First-Mover Edge as Market Barriers Fall, Fears Rise

Unilever, the British-Dutch multinational, has become the first foreign company licensed to import f...

Jun 15 , 2025








Agenda

A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

Meseret Mulle rises before dawn in the crowded quarter around Golagol Tower, waking her two sons, aged 13 and eight, in the single “kebele” house they share. At 35, she cleans homes in Gerji, a two-hour walk each way when she cannot spare the far...

Jun 8 , 2025


A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

Meseret Mulle rises before dawn in the crowded quarter around Golagol Tower, waking her two sons, aged 13 and eight, in the single “kebele” house they share...

Jun 8 , 2025


Elite Schools Raise Fees Sharply as Parents Cry Foul Over Legal Wrangling

Parents at Flipper International School received a jolt on May 23, 2025, when a letter confirmed that next year's “Category 1” tuition will increase to 178...

May 31 , 2025







Editorial

Desire to March to the Sea Should Spill Reason on the Way

Yet again, the Horn of Africa is bracing for trouble. A region already frayed by wars almost every other decade in nearly 70 years, now hears a rising chorus of turmoil. Ethiopia's leaders have become vocal, arguing that a country with more than ...

Jun 14 , 2025


Where the Roof Overhead Comes with a Ceiling on Hope

Few promises shine brighter in Addis Abeba than the pledge of a roof for every family. Gleaming office blocks now punctuate horizons once defined by tin-roof shacks, yet the capital's housing gap keeps widening. More than five million people, according to t...

Jun 7 , 2025

Courting Foreign Buyers of Properties While Land Remains State-Owned

It is seldom flattering to be bracketed with North Korea and Myanmar. Ironically, Ethiopia has long shared their company on one narrow but emotive list. They are countries that forbid foreign nationals from owning bricks and mortar. That could soon change. ...

May 31 , 2025







Exclusive Interview

Germany Champions Reforms While Industrial Model Faces Global Stress Test

Jens Hanefeld, Germany's envoy in Addis Abeba, touched down last September with a resume that mixes three decades of diplomacy, a decade running Volkswagen's global lobbying shop and the trained eye of a historian. Serving as ambassador to Ethiopia and Berlin's permanent representative to the Africa...

May 17 , 2025


Legacy Businesses in a Liminal Era

At first light in Addis Abeba's Qality District, the smell of freshly roasted Yirgacheffe beans drifts into the yeasty haze from Shoa Bakery's ovens, a blend that sums up Ethiopia's family firms. Such outfits are scarce everywhere, yet in Ethiopia, roughly 40p...

Apr 19 , 2025

The Roast of Resilience Brews in Bloodline

When her father died suddenly in 2008, Heleanna Georgalis found herself at the helm of Moplaco Trading Plc, a venerable coffee company founded in 1897 during Emperor Menelik's reign. Thrust into leadership amid profound grief, she had to steer the uncharted...

Apr 19 , 2025







Viewpoint

As Donor Dollars Dry Up Africa Confronts the Cost of Outsourced Development

In 2021, I was working on a DFID-funded program in Ethiopia when the cuts came. Overnight, a 21 million pound sterling program was slashed to a mere three million. Staff were laid off, projects cancelled, and promises to communities broken. What stuck with me was beyond the chaos. It was how easily systems collapsed when external financing dried up. I came to realise that development is not cha...

Jun 15 , 2025


How to Build a Network Effortlessly

I once picked up a book that promised the secret to “getting things effortlessly.” I laughed, closed it, and went back to the grind. In those days, I believed the only honest path ran through sweat and late nights. Years have sanded that certainty. Some...

Jun 14 , 2025

The Global South Should Rewrite Climate Script on Its Terms

When climate change is framed as a global problem requiring collective regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions, developing-country governments see little reason to prioritise the issue over others. After all, the rich, industrialised countries that contributed...

Jun 7 , 2025


My Opinion

Tracks in the Sky Hopes on the Ground

The electric-blue trains that once glided across Addis Abeba's skyline promised a leap into the future. I remember standing on the platform as a university student when the first two-carriage Light Rail Transit (LRT) rolled in, its doors hissing open like something lifted from a glossy brochure for world capitals. For a moment, the minibus chaos felt distant, replaced by the hum of a system that l...

Jun 14 , 2025


The Gig Economy's Serfdom with WiFi

When a muggy Tuesday dawns in Addis Abeba, a young driver unlocks a ride-hailing app and hopes, silently, for steady passengers and a generous surge. The compact sedan feels like his own, although the bank holds the title. He sets his hours, or thinks he does...

Jun 7 , 2025

Addis Abeba's Urban Facelift Paves Over Its Informal Soul

At dawn, a typical pedestrian in Addis Abeba begins what locals call “the sidewalk slalom.” She skirts an open manhole, hops a fresh trench, threads between scaffold poles and bargains with a fruit-cart vendor. Pavement here is less a right-of-way than an...

May 31 , 2025






Featured

Digital Credit Surges as Mobile Lending Bakes Opportunity, Brews Risk

Hana Surafel spent years behind the counter of her uncle's traditional cloth stall in Merkato, listening to customers haggle over fabric patterns. The 29-year-old mother of three earned a "respectable wage," yet each long day ended with the same unfulfilled wish. She was adamant to open a neighbourhood bakery in Gulele, near Addisu Gebeya, where the scent of fresh bread would rise with the morning sun. Lacking a property, a vehicle, or any other conventional collateral, she relegated the drea...

Jun 15 , 2025


Commentaries

Aid Retreat Signals a Broader Collapse of Global Compassion

In 2015, the United Kingdom's (UK) then-prime minister, David Cameron, stood before the United Nations General Assembly and challenged other donor countries to follow the UK's lead and back the newly minted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for eradicating poverty with their aid money. "We haven't just achieved the UN's 0.7pc [aid-to-GNI spending] target, we've enshrined it in law," he declared. That was then. As heir to an extraordinary bipartisan consensus forged under the post-1997 L...

Jun 14 , 2025


News Analysis

Siinqee Bank Accelerates Growth, Struggles to Convert Scale into Profit

Siinqee Bank has burst confidently from microfinance trenches into the competitive commercial banking industry, posting an impressive profit surge that outshone many peers. Its net profit jumped by 82.7pc during the financial year ending June 30, 2024, displaying a rapid growth trajectory that few of its generational counterparts could match. Nevertheless, while its deposit base grew explosively, Siinqee Bank's lending operations faced substantial limitations, mainly due to the National Bank...

May 11 , 2025


Delicate Number

40

The value in Birr of the pension fund moblised from 2.5 million employees hired by the private sector in the fiscal year 2024/25.

Jun 14 , 2025


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

"I regret it profoundly."

In a four-part interview on state broadcaster EBC, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) said that how Ethiopia became a landlocked country ranks high among his regrets.






Fortune Video




Sunday With Eden

Before Help Can Be Summoned

Over the weekend, a parent shared the story of a friend's teenage son who died after unknowingly taking pills laced with fentanyl. “He wasn't a problem child,” she recalled. “He had dreams. He had a future.” A single moment of curiosity, likely shaped by peer pressure, led to a tragic and irreversible mistake. Several of his friends who took the same pills survived, thanks only to swift in...

Jun 14 , 2025


Tainted Trust Behind White Lies

Milk has long symbolized nourishment, growth especially for young children. In many families, including mine, it is more than a dietary staple; it is a cornerstone of early childhood nutrition. So, when my husband and I recently transitioned our daughter from...

Jun 7 , 2025

A Dream Taxed to Death

Six years ago, a dear friend took a leap. He poured his life savings into building a business not for quick profits, but to create something enduring. He hired twenty young people, many fresh from rural villages, with no homes in the city. So, he gave them she...

May 31 , 2025


Life Matters

The Curious Case of Barking Dogs

On multiple occasions, I have found myself watching the garbage collectors on their morning route, a subtle unease settling in. There is a somber reality to their work, a reminder that in a world of vast opportunity, some find their roles confined to clearing away what others discard. It is the kind of observation that opens a corridor of reflection on the infrastructures that quietly shape daily...

Jun 14 , 2025


A Dangerous Beam in a Childs Hand

It was during an ordinary errand, shopping for socks, that an unexpected discovery occurred. A gleaming green beam drew my attention to a curious device: a sleek, stick-shaped pointer with a clip and flower-shaped tip. The shopkeeper described it as a laser to...

Jun 7 , 2025

The Dangers We Brew

It is unsettling how often news surfaces of everyday household items leading to accidents, some unexpected, others devastating. A recent report about a moka pot explosion struck a familiar chord, stirring memories of TikTok clips that documented similar incide...

May 31 , 2025





Radar

Berhan Bank Launches Fuel Payment App

Berhan Bank Launches Fuel Payment App Berhan Bank announces the launch of its digital fuel payment system, developed with the Ministry of Transport & Logistics. The 'Fuel Aggregator' app advances fuel transaction digitalisation, improving security and process. The system allows Berhan Bank's customers to buy fuel from their accounts using a mobile banking password. It removes the need fo...

Jun 15 , 2025


Fresh Push to Help Farmers Get Covered & Cash In

The Ministry of Agriculture has established the Rural Finance Service Unit (RFSU) to coordinate and expand agricultural insurance nationwide. Announced on Tuesday at the 2025 UNDP Financial Resilience in Agriculture Community of Practice forum (held at the UN Economic Commission for Africa headquarters), the RFSU is supported by UNDP, JICA, and other partners with funding from the Bill & Melin...

Jun 15 , 2025

In Picture

TECH TALK

Young innovators took centre stage at the Sheraton Addis last week, captivating an audience that included Prof. Kindeya Gebrehiwot, former president of Mekelle University, and Innovation & Technology Minister Belete Molla. The event, organised through a partnership between Reach for Change and the Mastercard Foundation, showcased fresh ideas and bold thinking from Ethiopia's emerging tech tale...

Jun 15 , 2025


OUT DOORS

Old gates that once guarded home entrances are now lined up for resale in a neighbourhood around Bulgaria, removed due to relocation, rust, or renovations. Painted in various colours and shapes, they lean in the shade, awaiting a new purpose. Nearby, a toppled light post, damaged at its base but with cables intact, lies waiting for repair or replacement. In areas yet to benefit from corridor devel...

Jun 15 , 2025