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

Global Bank Board Suspends 18 as Deposit Probe Widens

Global Bank Board Suspends 18 as Deposit Probe Widens

Global Bank's Board of Directors have overhauled top management, after suspending several executives as an investigation into the Bank's deposit and liquidity practices widens. Tesfaye Boru (PhD), the Bank's president, had delegated the Chief Corp...

Jul 25 , 2026

Fortune News

Hulu Sport Wins in Court, But Stays Closed

Judges at the Federal High Court have overturned the National Lottery Administration's decision to suspend Hulu Sport, one of the country's leading sports betting operators, finding the regulator's ac...

Jul 25 , 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

Banks Push the Birr Past 160 as the Central Bank Sits Out

Commercial banks pushed the Birr (the Brewed Buck) to a fresh low against the dollar last week. The industry's average buying rate crossed 160 Br for the first time, and the Central Bank, which is mea...

Jul 25 , 2026

Latest Updates

Ethio telecom Grows, But the Towers Lag

Ethio telecom closed the first year of its "Next Horizon" roadmap with solid revenue and subscriber...

Jul 25 , 2026

ASKY Airlines Bets Expansion on a Hub Near Full

ASKY Airlines has tied the next phase of its growth to the modernisation of Lomé International Airp...

Jul 25 , 2026

Adverse Opinions Pile Up as Addis Abeba’s Budget Hits a Record

Bureaus, agencies and institutions under the Addis Abeba City Administration are sitting on billions...

Jul 19 , 2026

Airports Lack Master Plans, Title Deeds

Most airports under the Ethiopian Airlines Group (EAG) lack master plans, and some operate without l...

Jul 22 , 2026

Agenda

Shematera Weavers' Chain Meets the VAT Line

The footsteps, bargaining voices and rustle of cotton cloth that once filled Shematera in Mercato have faded. The narrow passages that used to carry customers searching for handwoven fabrics feel unusually quiet, rows of locked doors standing wher...

Jul 25 , 2026

A Sack of Cement, with the Chain No One Can See

In the Jemo area of Addis Abeba, Fikremariam Wondimu no longer trades cement so much as gambles on it. Prices move almost by the hour, and the small retailer...

Jul 19 , 2026

Production Soars While the Feed Sellers Go Under

At his stall around Ferensay Legasion, Mastewal Tekuye has decided to leave a business he has worked for years. He sells animal feed, or did, until demand colla...

Jul 12 , 2026

OPEN FOR AD

OPEN FOR AD

OPEN FOR AD

Editorial

Cost Recovery by Public Institutions Becomes a Hidden Tax

Ideally, citizens who have paid income tax all year should not have to reach for their wallet again at a public office counter. Yet, in Ethiopia, that appears to have become a routine. To obtain a birth certificate, register land, renew a business...

Jul 25 , 2026

Millions Looking for Work. Companies Cannot Find Many to Hire. A Paradox?

Pressed in Parliament on jobs and household incomes, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) offered a striking diagnosis. Jobs exist, he asserted; the workforce is missing. Ethiopians, he went on, should get used to holding two or three jobs through shift work to...

Jul 18 , 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

Funding the Lenders Who Reach the Unreached

The microfinance institutions active in the domestic market reach the people the banks miss. Every day they lend to smallholder farmers living on seasonal income, informal traders without collateral, women-owned enterprises kept off formal records and young entrepreneurs taking their first step into business. By June 2025, the sector served more than 7.1 million savers and 752,000 borrowers, wi...

Jul 26 , 2026

The Rent Law's Missing Renewal Right

When legislators enacted a law to control and administer rent, it was welcomed as a milestone reform. The law promised stable leases, tenant protection, and predictability in a volatile rental market. The Addis Abeba City Government's recent 11.5pc rent adjust...

Jul 25 , 2026

The Death of the Degree

Just as French aristocrats under the "ancien régime" could hardly imagine the abolition of their noble titles, most of today's university leaders cannot conceive of a world in which the degrees they confer become worthless pieces of paper. The former were...

Jul 25 , 2026

My Opinion

From Digitisation to Digital Transformation

Digital transformation has become one of the defining features of institutional modernisation in Ethiopia. Public entities, private firms, universities, banks and service providers increasingly rely on digital systems to automate processes, improve efficiency and modernise how they serve the public. From enterprise software procured abroad to applications built at home, organisations across the co...

Jul 25 , 2026

Let Evidence, Not Ideology, Settle the AI Debate

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant promise. It is reshaping economies, professions and institutions across the world. The question facing Ethiopia is not whether AI will transform society, but how the country should govern that transformati...

Jul 18 , 2026

A Service Fee That Amounts to a Second Tax

Ethiopians are being asked to pay twice for the same thing. The cost of basic government services has climbed steeply in recent months, piling onto an already high cost of living. If the purpose of taxation is to secure public services in the first place, s...

Jul 11 , 2026

Featured

Chasing Excellence in the Summer, Raising Questions Over Who It Leaves Behind

For as long as her daughter had been in school, the summer break belonged to the family. Every year, the mother, who lives in Addis Abeba's Lemi Kura District and asked for anonymity for her and her daughter's identities for fear of reprisal, packed the holiday with visits to extended relatives. This year, for the first time, the ritual collapsed. Her daughter, now in Grade 12 at a private school, was told to report for summer tutorials, and the condition left no room to argue. “The Scho...

Jul 25 , 2026

Commentaries

The Central Bank Bets on Signals Over Ceilings

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has set aside the tools that governed its money for decades, the credit caps, surrender rules and directed lending of an era of financial repression, in favour of market signals. This month, it scrapped its temporary credit cap, raised the policy rate by one percentage point to 16pc and introduced a targeted reserve-requirement framework. This is no cautious tweak but a deliberate break with financial repression. However, its promise will be decided less by...

Jul 25 , 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

6

The number of graduates from colleges of teachers' education in 2024/25, 92.8pc lower than that of those who graduated in 2018/19. The colleges produced one diploma graduate for every 14 they had six years earlier. Some colleges have stopped registering first-year diploma students as they upgrade their programmes to degree level.

Jul 25 , 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

"Ethiopia has the right to development; we have the right to life."

Badr Abdelatty, Egypt's foreign minister, told the Middle East Online (MEO) last week that his country opposes "any measure taken without agreement" between countries sharing the Nile River. Talks between Ethiopia and Egypt over the issue of the Nile Basin, including water flow managment through the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), have been stalled for a few years now, unable to agree on how much water Ethiopia should release from the reservoir during multi-year dry periods.

View From Arada

Modern Pressures Send Gender Debates Back to Old Certainties

A recent exchange on an Addis Abeba dating show captured a debate that is resurfacing far beyond entertainment. A 22-year-old man feels cleaning the house was a woman's r...

Jul 25 , 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

A Celebration of Love Where Tradition Met Presence

In an age when weddings are often planned as much for the camera as for the couple, I attended a ceremony over the weekend that felt like a quiet departure from the norm. There were no photographers weaving between tables, no guests holding phones above their heads, no livestreams for relatives abroad, and no carefully choreographed moments designed for social media. Instead, there was somethin...

Jul 25 , 2026

A Consultation Worth Less Than Bread

Imagine spending seven years studying medicine, completing demanding clinical rotations, carrying the responsibility of patients' lives, and then earning less from a medical consultation than the price of a loaf of bread. For some young Ethiopian doctors who h...

Jul 18 , 2026

A Body Trapped in Tomorrow

A medical doctor friend recently shared an area of research that had captured her attention. "Our bodies can't always tell the difference," she said, "between something that's happening now and something we're simply worried might happen." We had been ta...

Jul 11 , 2026

Life Matters

Parents Dreams Meet the Reality of the Classroom

I suppose I should not be surprised by the immense value our society places on education. It is reflected in the sayings we hear throughout our lives, phrases so deeply woven into everyday conversation that they shape how we think about success, opportunity, and even character. Take, for instance, “yetemare yigdlegn,” which loosely translates to “better to be killed by an educated man.�...

Jul 25 , 2026

The Doors That Speak

It feels like a lifetime ago since I wore a high school uniform. Memory can be a fickle thing, and perhaps time has softened the edges of the past, but when I look back on my school days, I genuinely do not remember seeing graphic graffiti plastered across toi...

Jul 18 , 2026

Borrowing From Tomorrow to Survive Today

The other day, I was having coffee with a friend, let's call her Maya: when she confessed something that caught me completely off guard. She had been reviewing her finances and realised how casually borrowing money had become an ingrained part of her daily lif...

Jul 11 , 2026

Radar

Coffee Export Platform Links Ethiopian Roasters with Overseas Consumers

Ethiopian coffee roasters have gained a direct route to international consumers through a multi-brand e-commerce export platform launched by DHL Express Ethiopia and EXM Global PLC. The companies say it is the first platform of its kind in Ethiopia. Bringing together 10 Ethiopian coffee brands in a single digital marketplace, the platform enables overseas customers to order freshly roasted coff...

Jul 25 , 2026

Coffee Export Platform Links Ethiopian Roasters with Overseas Consumers

Ethiopian coffee roasters have gained a direct route to international consumers through a multi-brand e-commerce export platform launched by DHL Express Ethiopia and EXM Global PLC. The companies say it is the first platform of its kind in Ethiopia. Bringing together 10 Ethiopian coffee brands in a single digital marketplace, the platform enables overseas customers to order freshly roasted coff...

Jul 25 , 2026

In Picture

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

At the entrance of Ambassador Theatre on Taitu Street, a book vendor has laid out a collection for passersby seeking stories that unfold through words rather than screens. Once perceived as rivals, with cinema often accused of drawing audiences away from books, the two industries now find themselves confronting a common adversary. Platforms such as TikTok shrink attention spans and reshape habits...

Jul 25 , 2026

HIDDEN PIONEER

Along Pushkin Avenue near Kera Abattoir, a mural on the backside of Worke's Promise building quietly stands as one of Addis Ababa's early examples of public art shaping urban spaces. Long before murals and beautification projects became a defining feature of the city's landscape, this hidden canvas carried a vision of transforming ordinary walls into spaces of storytelling. The artwork depicts a g...

Jul 25 , 2026