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Month: February 2026

Priced Out of Print, Book Market Starves on Scale, Scarcity

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Domestic publishers in Addis Abeba juggle tiny budgets and hedge their bets with print runs that could fit in a studio flat. Each small batch fattens the unit cost, pushing cover prices higher and locking the industry in a loop that only scale, fresh capital, or subsidy can break. Caught between readers who cannot pay and printers who cannot wait, booksellers are improvising.

Edelawt Mesfine, who runs Majories Bookstore and cofounded the Z Delulu Squad Book Club, called her shop a bridge.

“I know how expensive books are,” she said. “Many readers are shifting to e-books for that reason, but Amharic titles are still limited online.”

To stretch thin wallets, she rents the latest novels for a fraction of their purchase price, letting one copy travel through many hands while still earning its keep.

Promotional discounts show the same elasticity. When Amazon Bookstore tagged most titles at 200 Br, queues snaked through the aisles, heavy with university students. Social media is filled with pictures of triumphant stacks. In a market where an ordinary novel now averages 450 Br, that markdown did more than lop off Birr. It redrew the reader base, turning spectators into book owners overnight.

My own journey tells why crowds swell when prices fall. Childhood report cards earned a paperback wrapped in a ceremony my mother invented. I learned Amharic from a softened and second-hand copy of Abayneh Abera’s “Ye Lijoch Alem.” Owning all three volumes felt like graduation. Stories passed between cousins like borrowed light, pages gathering fingerprints and memory. The last Amharic novel I finished before adolescence was “Allewledem” by Abe Gubegna, smuggled in around Grade Eight exams because pleasure reading carried a hint of rebellion.

After that, life took a long pause from local fiction.

High school swapped scarcity for plenty. On Wattpad, teenagers my age posted English fiction chapter by chapter, refreshing with a thumb swipe on my first smartphone. Access was instant, inexhaustible and free. Paper slowly slipped from daily life. Amharic literature drifted, not from neglect but from rising friction along the path to it.

Years later, flash sales pulled me back. A book normally priced at 400 Br, cut to 100 Br, could summon queues that bent round corners. That energy refutes the lament that readers have vanished. They simply lie in wait for the right price.

For publishers, the cost of publishing has grown brutal. Inflation, stuck in double digits for years, has driven up every input, including paper, ink, electricity, transport, and rent. Printers say imported paper alone has doubled in price due to foreign-exchange shortages and pandemic-era supply snarls. A paperback that sold for 120 Br a decade ago now lands between 350 Br and 600 Br. Academic titles cruise past 800 Br. For a student whose monthly allowance must also cover food, transport, and mobile data, one novel can match a week of meals.

Veteran dealer Maruf Keder recalled selling from a tarpaulin in Mercato in 1983, gathering stock at dusk to dodge rain and municipal patrols.

“We mostly sold English fiction and academic books because space was tight and demand predictable,” he said.

Decades later, ensconced in a shop off Commercial Avenue, he tried a two-day, 100 Br promotion. Customers flooded the floor, some leaving with 15 volumes. The experiment showed how a single price cut can surface pent-up appetite. The pattern is consistent. Whenever prices temporarily dip, crowds reappear, contradicting the narrative of waning readership. The obstacle is economic, not cultural.

Digital platforms nose into that gap. Urban smartphone ownership has ballooned on the back of cheaper Android handsets and wider 4G coverage. A decade ago, legally sourcing an Amharic e-book required luck. Today, start-ups and cautious publishers are building catalogues. Platforms such as “Tuba” sell electronic editions well below print, often around 200 Br. The savings come from skipping presses, trucks, and store rent, though digital rights management and patchy payment networks add fresh headaches.

For price-sensitive readers, a 200 Br download feels possible where a 500 Br paperback does not. Yet screens alter the relationship with text.

For readers raised on paper, instant delivery dilutes ritual. Searching stalls for a coveted title stitched memory into the book. Tapping “download” cannot match that pilgrimage, even though love for classics such as “Fikir Eske Mekabir” endures.

Scarcity casts other shadows. At a recent meeting of the Rotaract Finot Book Club, Dawit Wondimagegn (MD) learned his book “Ale’Menor”, long out of print, was fetching twice its original price on second-hand stalls. He looked astonished. High resale value flatters a writer yet screens out new readers who cannot pay the premium.

Social media now doubles as a slush pile and a focus group. Hiwot Emeshaw, a rising author, built a following by posting stories on Facebook, proof of demand that persuaded a publisher to gamble on print. Even with a ready audience, price remains delicate. Set it too high and sales stall; set it too low and production costs devour returns.

Booksellers are also reviving older habits. Rental copies circulate again, echoing the communal life of novels that once moved from cousin to neighbour. The model spreads access without undercutting revenue, but depends on trust and durability. Popular titles return dog-eared, margins scribbled with notes.

Publishers spell out an unforgiving equation. A first run for a debut novel tops 500 copies, too small for economies of scale yet large enough to swallow a family loan. If half the cartons are left on the floor, cash is frozen and the next title is delayed. Facing that risk, presses trim orders still further, triggering the cost spiral they dread.

What everyone agrees on, from printers to readers, is that Ethiopia is not short of stories. It is short of a supply chain that can move them from desk to shelf without truly bruising wallets or hopes.

Forex Overhaul Shifts Power to Banks But Leaves Stability Exposed

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The foreign exchange directive the Central Bank issued this month marks a new and uneasy stage in its efforts to reform the financial sector. A system long dominated by centralised discretion and administrative rationing is starting to hand the baton to commercial banks and market actors.

The authorities are trying to build a functioning foreign exchange market instead of merely declaring one on paper. Although the decision is deliberate, their speed carries clear risks. By decentralising execution before supervisory capability and risk-management tools are fully developed, they expose the system to liquidity gaps, regulatory arbitrage, and possible volatility in the formal and parallel markets. They are no longer moving policy levers. Instead, they are trying to rewire the market while structural weaknesses persist.

For decades, access to foreign currency depended more on permits and bureaucratic clearance than on price signals or market incentives. Companies and households lined up for approvals, while the state decided who received scarce dollars. The new directive begins to redistribute that authority. Commercial banks may now arrange external borrowing, process dividend repatriation and offer forward contracts without first seeking clearance from the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE).

This is not deregulation in the casual sense but a controlled shift toward supervised intermediation, based on the assumption that banks now have the capacity to manage liquidity, assess counterparties and process flows efficiently. The same shift, however, reveals operational gaps that earlier discretion hid, especially where capacity varies widely across institutions.

One of the most far-reaching measures is the rule that allows service exporters to retain all their foreign-exchange earnings indefinitely. In the past, strict surrender requirements pushed many firms toward informal channels and weakened the official market. Retention changes the incentive structure. Exporters are converted into active suppliers within the formal system, potentially deepening the foreign exchange pool and easing pressure on the Central Bank. This is less a simple reward than a redesign of behaviour that keeps hard currency within the banking system.

Yet this expansion comes before regulators have fully tested how the system will cope with liquidity stress. If inflows fail to match the new freedom to retain and transact, mismatches could build up on bank balance sheets.

The directive also moves at the level of households and the diaspora. Individuals can use foreign exchange accounts for tuition, medical costs and travel. Families are allowed to receive larger remittance inflows without cumbersome approvals.

The idea pins hopes on drawing routine and legitimate transactions into formal channels, narrowing the space in which the parallel market thrives. Informal exchange has long been driven not only by speculation but by unmet demand that the official system could not process in time or at scale. Bringing this demand into the system should, over time, reduce the premium on the street rate. But widening access before monitoring tools, compliance practices, and liquidity buffers are fully ready creates vulnerabilities of its own. If banks struggle to track, report, and fund these flows, the system could face pressure from the very new uses it has invited.

In parallel, the directive should be read against the backdrop of the IMF’s fourth review under the Extended Credit Facility. At this stage, the Fund is not only checking macroeconomic targets. It is also looking at whether policy behaviour has become embedded in institutions. An endorsement from the IMF shows that structural reforms are beginning to move from theory to practice. Credibility now rests on stable rules and market mechanics rather than headline announcements alone. Even so, the same reforms that earn external approval may heighten fragility if the supporting infrastructure is slow to catch up.

What sets this round of liberalisation apart from earlier efforts is its focus on the plumbing of the market. Initial reforms focused on visible indicators such as the nominal exchange rate, reserve levels, and headline interest rates. The current measures reach into the microstructure.

Who has the right to decide how liquidity circulates between banks and customers? Which actors carry operational responsibility?

These changes form the scaffolding on which a self-correcting forex market could eventually stand. Shifting decisions closer to where transactions occur is intended to increase system elasticity. That elasticity is not abstract. When participants can hedge, hold, and transact through formal channels, shocks that might otherwise build up in parallel markets can be absorbed more smoothly.

The directive also tries to bridge short-term liquidity concerns with longer-term market development. New tools such as forward contracts, bank-level foreign-currency accounts and looser rules on dividend repatriation are designed to spread risk and improve price discovery. In principle, these instruments should help deepen the market and reduce the pressure on reserves by giving businesses more options to manage exposure. In practice, they demand strong operational capacity inside banks, timely data for regulators and continuous monitoring of positions.

If some institutions implement them well while others do not, the result could be pockets of weakness rather than a broad cushion. Gaps in regulation, uneven compliance or poor reporting can quickly translate into liquidity stress or local spikes in volatility, undermining the stability the reforms seek to promote.

By showing that foreign exchange can be held, transacted and repatriated under predictable rules, the Central Bank is trying to speak to exporters, diaspora investors and multinational companies at once. The message is that they intend to move away from case-by-case exceptions and toward rule-based management of scarce currency. But credibility in such a system is easily lost. If the regime appears liberal in principle yet remains inconsistent in practice, confidence can erode, and actors may return to informal channels. That, in turn, would keep the parallel-market premium alive and weaken one of the reform’s core targets.

The pace and sequence of the changes thus carry as much weight as the content of the measures themselves. Slow movement risks stalling the process, while fast movement without safeguards risks instability.

The macroeconomic context makes these choices even more delicate. Foreign-exchange reserves remain limited relative to import bills and external financing needs, making careful management of liquidity essential. A more flexible and deeper market should, in theory, reduce the strain on reserves by allowing hedging, retention and other formal mechanisms to handle shocks. At the same time, the reforms explicitly expand the channels through which foreign currency can leave banks.

Export retention, higher remittance-funded spending and wider use of household accounts all increase potential outflows. If those outflows rise faster than inflows from exports, investment or concessional finance, banks could feel the squeeze. Shortages, even if temporary, can fuel expectations of depreciation and encourage speculative behaviour in the official and informal markets.

The directive, therefore, portrays a Central Bank in mid-transition. It is trying to move from being a direct allocator of scarce foreign exchange to acting as the architect and supervisor of a market that operates with more autonomy but within clear rules. Allocation regimes lean on discretion, while regulatory regimes lean on credibility and consistent enforcement. The current reforms point toward the latter model, but the shock absorbers such a regime requires remain uneven and only partly tested.

Instruments exist on paper, but their use and oversight vary. Institutions have been given new responsibilities, but their readiness differs. Practices intended to limit instability have yet to prove themselves through a full stress cycle.

Policymakers are, in effect, working on market architecture while the market is already in motion. They are trying to build an ecosystem that can generate reliable price signals, maintain investor confidence, and remain stable without heavy day-to-day rationing from the centre. Whether that effort succeeds will depend less on the directives’ ambition than on consistent follow-through. The discipline with which rules are applied, the quality of supervision and the speed with which gaps are identified and closed. It will also depend on how well policymakers manage the political economy of change, including resistance from constituencies that benefited from the old allocation system and anxiety among new actors who are now asked to bear more risk.

Central Bank Makes Policy in Catch-Up Mode

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Over the past few years, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has issued a steady stream of directives, in quick succession, reshaping banking operations, foreign exchange rules, capital requirements and market conduct.

On paper, the agenda looks ambitious. It claims to adopt international standards, liberalise the forex regime, strengthen supervision, and modernise a long-controlled financial system. In practice, the economic payoff remains unclear and largely unproven.

The latest round of monetary policy reform feels familiar to many observers. Each new directive arrives with the language of urgency and inevitability, billed as a bold correction to years of distortion. Yet for an economy battered by inflation, forex shortages, and falling private-sector confidence, these measures look less like decisive leadership and more like belated admissions that earlier policies failed to deliver.

The problem is not the reform itself. The economy needs financial policy reforms. It is the timing, sequencing and credibility that is the source of the troubles. Many of the decisions now presented as breakthroughs are reforms that should have been in place years ago, before distortions hardened into crises.

Liberalising foreign exchange after years of rationing did not create dollars. It simply exposed how deep the shortage had become. Tightening banking regulations after inflation eroded balance sheets did not restore confidence. It may instead raise compliance costs for institutions, banks and borrowers already struggling to lend productively.

Supporters of the agenda argue that impact takes time and patience. That is true. But patience is a luxury for businesses facing daily liquidity constraints and households watching their purchasing power eroded day after day. For them, the question is not whether reforms are theoretically sound, but whether they are working now in the real economy. So far, the evidence is flimsy. The cost of living remains stubbornly high, even though official government data on inflation says otherwise. Credit to productive sectors is constrained. Access to foreign currency still determines who survives and who exits the market.

What makes this more troubling is the policy’s reactive nature. Many directives seem to respond to pressures that have already spun out of control rather than anticipating them. Interest rate moves come after inflation has surged. Forex measures follow years of widening parallel market premiums. Prudential rules are tightened once risks are already embedded in balance sheets. The pattern is of an institution chasing events instead of shaping them.

There is also reform by proclamation. Frequent directives may signal activism, but they also create uncertainty and doubt. Businesses struggle to plan when rules change faster than contracts can be written. Banks hesitate to innovate when regulatory interpretations shift midstream. Investors, domestic and foreign, read inconsistency as risk. Reform fatigue follows, not because change is unwelcome, but because it feels endless and unsettled for many market participants.

Equally worrying is the growing gap between official narratives and daily economic reality. Policymakers talk about meeting global standards, yet standards alone do not generate growth. They point to liberalisation, yet markets cannot function when trust is weak and institutions overstretched. They speak of resilience, while ordinary businesses quietly downsize or close. Reform becomes a performance, measured by the number of directives issued rather than by outcomes achieved on the ground.

None of this argues for a reversal of course. But it does argue for a serious rethink, with fewer directives and better timing. Policymakers need to have more data-driven evaluations and less rhetorical celebration. Above all, a clear recognition that reform delayed is reform diminished. When policies arrive after the damage is done, they may stabilise the wreckage, but they rarely unlock growth or renewed confidence.

The economy does not need another wave of announcements to show that change is happening. It needs evidence that change is working. Until that shows up plainly in prices, credit access and confidence, the financial policy reform story will remain what it increasingly appears to be. It is too little, too late and far too uncertain for an economy that cannot afford long experiments.

Financing the Global South’s Infrastructure Boom

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With infrastructure now seen as the leading engine of growth across the Global South, governments are under pressure to build, and fast. But for most, fiscal space is limited; development aid is thinning; and long-promised climate financing remains elusive.

Countries are now turning to private capital and reviving an old idea, public-private partnerships (PPPs), but with renewed urgency.

According to the World Bank, in 2024, low- and middle-income countries received 100 billion dollars in private participation in infrastructure (PPI) investment, an impressive 20pc increase from the five-year (2019-23) annual average of 83.7 billion dollars. Yet history recommends caution. While the logic of mobilising private finance is often compelling, the record is mixed. Too often, emerging markets have relied on models proselytised by global development finance institutions without paying adequate attention to local institutional constraints.

The bankability of some types of infrastructure projects, meaning a strong risk-return profile, tends to be limited, even in advanced economies. For example, very few highways have been developed by the private sector, which, for obvious reasons, is less inclined to supply non-remunerative public goods and services. This is even more the case with infrastructure projects, which typically come with a heavy burden of long-term debt.

India’s experience is instructive. In the early 2000s, the country launched one of the world’s largest PPP infrastructure programs, hoping to close massive gaps in ports, airports, highways, power, telecoms, and urban services. But the results have been mixed, partly because the expansion occurred as India’s development finance institutions (DFIs) were being wound down, following financial-sector reforms in the 1990s.

With the government favouring PPPs in the absence of a mature bond market or DFIs, India leaned heavily on public-sector banks to fund long-gestation projects. But these institutions were not equipped to provide longer-term capital, assess risk, or appraise and monitor complex, risky infrastructure ventures. As PPP activity accelerated and private investment in infrastructure surged between 2007 and 2014, so did bank lending to the sector.

The share of infrastructure in non-food bank credit jumped from 3.6pc in 2007 to over 15pc by 2015. Nominal bank credit to infrastructure increased more than sixfold, from around 15.4 billion dollars.

By the mid-2010s, structural weaknesses had become evident. Many road and power projects ran into land-acquisition issues, execution delays, and overoptimistic demand projections. Revenues underperformed, costs escalated, and developers defaulted. The fallout was severe. By 2018, Indian banks’ gross non-performing asset ratio had climbed to 11.2pc, among the highest for major economies.

Public-sector banks, which had financed most of these projects, bore a disproportionate share of the stress, with NPAs of 14.6pc, compared to 4.8pc for private banks. Nearly 44.1 billion dollars in public money was then spent on recapitalising banks. However, India is not an outlier.

Spain’s toll-road PPPs faced a similar reckoning. In the four years from 2010, nine of 10 radial road projects defaulted after traffic volumes collapsed, prompting government intervention. Even the United Kingdom (UK), often cited as a PPP pioneer, ultimately scaled back its Private Finance Initiative (PFI), citing high long-term costs and opaque contracts. It has since begun the process of nationalising its rail network, three decades after privatising it.

Despite these failures, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have continued to promote PPPs indiscriminately. But it is time to ask why these projects fail, and what countries should do differently. The answer is not to reject PPPs, but to understand where they are viable and where they are not. Then we can focus on the institutional scaffolding that supports viable programs.

Remunerative sectors like ports, airports, telecoms, and power should be viable, in principle, but highways, municipal infrastructure, and railways typically are not. Infrastructure projects are inherently long-term, risk-intensive, and exposed to regulatory uncertainty, whereas medium-term financing is typically the best available. Such projects also require deep financial markets, strong contract enforcement, and competent public oversight.

Absent these conditions, PPPs tend to socialise losses while privatising gains, increasing the likelihood of delays, renegotiations, and eventual bailouts.

There is a growing need to revive DFIs at the national level to supplement multilateral development banks. National institutions have a unique role to play in developing expertise in infrastructure financing, offering long-term loans, conducting project due diligence, and crowding in private capital through guarantees and co-lending structures.

For example, Helios Towers (an independent builder of cell phone towers) combined modest DFI funding with large-scale private investment to expand telecom infrastructure profitably and sustainably in Africa. India, too, has recognised this gap. In 2021, the government established the National Bank for Financing Infrastructure & Development (NBFID) to act as a catalyst for infrastructure finance and to support projects throughout their life cycle.

But how can DFIs attract long-term funds?

The key is to tap domestic savings, particularly from pension funds and the insurance industry, which in turn calls for greater efforts to promote long-term savings through these instruments. It is also important to develop domestic bond markets, as countries like South Korea and Malaysia have done. But these markets do have limitations, owing to the risks associated with private entities’ variable longevity. That is why the most successful bond instruments for infrastructure financing are municipal bonds in the US and Pfandbriefe in Germany. The borrowers in these cases are essentially public agencies supported by an elaborate institutional structure.

Finally, governments need robust project-preparation facilities, realistic demand forecasts, and regulatory capacity, not only legal contracts with private partners. The stakes could not be higher. The OECD estimates global infrastructure needs at 6.9 trillion dollars annually through 2030, with developing countries facing the widest deficits. The climate crisis adds additional urgency. Without resilient transportation, energy, and water systems, emerging economies will remain vulnerable.

India’s experience offers a cautionary tale. Without institutional capacity and financial depth, PPPs can backfire, creating a vicious spiral of debt, delays, and disillusionment. For the Global South, the challenge is not only to build more infrastructure quickly, but to build it right.

AI Fever No Substitute for Sound Governance

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In a speech before Parliament, the Ethiopian Prime Minister announced (or reiterated) the ambitious plan to open an ‘AI University’ within months. A putative AI enthusiast himself, he further flagged the plan to “train five million coders” as quickly as possible.

This is a more recent iteration of the AI hype. In the wake of recent advances in generative AI, the global AI hype is becoming increasingly palpable in Ethiopia. The government has been at the centre of this AI fanfare. Officials tend to portray AI as the silver bullet for longstanding and complex problems. Of course, policymakers have long recognised the potential of information and communication technologies in fuelling developmental ambitions. Successive national ICT policies and digital transformation strategies highlighted the importance of harnessing new and emerging technologies for development.

But the advent of AI appears to be driving them into an unprecedented level of hype. That should be a cause for concern. Such unchecked technoenthusiasm would distract from a clear-eyed view of emerging technologies and their widely recognised risks, and would also divert the government’s attention from its principal role in regulating those technologies in the public interest.

The decision to open an AI university is staggering on many levels. The announcement came not long after the government’s abrupt and largely unpersuasive decision not to open new universities. It is unclear why it sought to walk back this decision by establishing a higher learning institution dedicated to AI. But one cannot think of a sensible reason.

Many public universities already provide the foundational training needed for AI research and development. In the unlikely event that existing university curricula do not provide state-of-the-art higher education training, the most sensible approach would be to adapt them.

One should also add that the Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute (EAII), a federal agency accountable to the Prime Minister, has a statutory mandate for AI research and training. The Institute is tasked by its establishment legislation, among other things, to “facilitate the development of manpower in the sector in collaboration with domestic and foreign education institutions”. While it has other broader mandates, the Institute is also envisioned as a public institution of AI research and training. This would thus complicate the decision to invest limited and hard-earned public funds in establishing an AI university.

But that is not the only concern. The decision appears to be driven by the assumption that university education is indispensable in making Ethiopia a regional AI hub or to achieving success in AI research, development, and deployment. But none of the countries that have thus far taken meaningful steps in the AI domain has sought to make establishing a dedicated university a priority. In fact, many of the major AI companies based in the US are either founded or staffed largely by technologists with little or no higher-education credentials. There is little evidence that higher education in emerging technologies leads to success in this field.

The logic behind the decision is also unsound. Should one rush to establish a university every time a particular technology emerges, especially when a suite of technologies whose trajectory is not yet fully clear?

Not only is AI’s trajectory, but also its capabilities, yet to be fully grasped. As much of the world is mesmerised over the capabilities (or odd hallucinations) of ChatGPT, the nudification of women by Grok, or the discriminatory outcomes of Amazon’s hiring AI tool, quantum technologies are on the horizon. The logic behind the AI university might, as a result, mean that a dedicated ‘quantum university’ will have to be installed in the next decade or so. That would be a slippery slope of policymaking.

Policy decisions should not be driven by hype and rosy pictures portrayed by actors with a stake in the outcome. Importantly, the government should focus on what it has the mandate, duty, and perhaps the capacity: i.e. governance.

Early deployments of AI across various jurisdictions have exposed a range of risks. From the blatant discriminatory use of AI in policing and employment to infringements of personal privacy, AI tools pose serious risks to the enjoyment of basic human rights and dignity, as well as to the natural environment. To overcome such risks, policymakers have taken a series of governance measures in recent years.

What I call the ‘AI governance rush’ began in 2018 in Europe and has since proliferated globally. African states are slowly turning attention from hype to governance. This took mainly the form of national AI strategies and policies. In the past few years, over a dozen African states have launched such policies. But studies on emergent AI governance initiatives in Africa have shown that the focus remains on the opportunities AI offers rather than the attendant risks.

Ethiopia, too, has taken some governance initiatives. A national AI policy was launched in June 2024, with a sequential AI strategy reportedly underway. As with other African initiatives, much more hope is placed in AI’s benefits than in its risks in formative policy initiatives. That is consistent with the overall incautiously optimistic view of AI among policymakers. Nowhere in his speech did the Prime Minister, for instance, mention the risks of AI.

However, the Institute is reportedly developing legislation that is inspired largely by the European Union’s AI Act. And, to a degree, the draft legislation recognises AI risks and places the Institute at the forefront of addressing them. But much remains lacking in AI governance.

The AI bill envisions the Institute as the primary regulator with a broad range of functions. It is envisioned as a centre of AI research and training and as an entity for developing and deploying AI tools necessary for the country’s development. It is also tasked with initiating AI policies and legislation as well as regulating the sector. This all-encompassing mandate of the Institute raises several concerns. One relates to the question of institutional independence. An entity accountable to the Prime Minister can hardly discharge its regulatory function autonomously while still being involved in AI development and deployment.

The question of whether the Institute is the right entity to regulate AI remains unaddressed. Indeed, hype and the overall technoptimism that animates the present government appear to have played a role in the Institute’s creation. The Institute was established only two years after the creation of the former ‘AI Centre’, which it ultimately replaced and assumed its expansive mandate, including in AI regulation. But under Ethiopian law, institutes are not conceived as regulatory bodies.

According to the law that defines the powers and functions of the executive bodies of the federal government, an institute is defined as “focuses on training, study, research and consulting services”. And such entities would ordinarily be accountable to relevant ministries. A good case in point is the now-defunct Technology & Innovation Institute, which had no regulatory function.

A similar approach should have been followed in establishing the AI Institute, with regulatory functions delegated to other and more appropriate entities. Created amid hype, policymakers charged the AI Institute with extensive mandates that it lacks the capacity and institutional independence to fulfil. Since its establishment, the Institute has been largely opaque, with limited access for stakeholders, including experts in the field.

It is against this backdrop that, the decision to create an AI university should be considered. Channelling resources towards establishing a university rather than putting in place a robust regulatory framework for a technology with serious risks is ill-advised. The effort to support innovation in emerging technologies should not distract one from the urgency of preparing for those risks through meaningful governance arrangements.

Taken together, the policy approach towards emerging technologies should not be driven by hype but informed by local contexts, global realities, and, of course, expertise. More importantly, the government should focus on governance and leave AI development to the private sector. This will be key not only in envisioning a governance approach that supports innovation but also in effectively responding to the risks associated with emerging technologies like AI.

That way, the government can turn its attention and resources towards addressing pressing problems that continue to plague the country.

Marriage Before the Wedding

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A wedding lasts a day. A marriage is meant to last a lifetime. When the music fades and the guests leave, what remains is the daily devotion of loving, forgiving, adjusting, and standing beside one another through seasons no one can predict.

Last week, my husband Mike and I read a report that the government plans to introduce premarital training. The aim is to address rising divorce rates and strengthen families before they begin to fracture. Some call it intrusion. We see intention.

We have watched people we know walk through divorce. Some did not reach their first anniversary. What began with celebration ended in separation that affected not just two individuals but entire circles, children, relatives, friends, workplaces. Divorce rarely stops with the couple. It travels.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed participants for over 80 years, found that the quality of close relationships strongly predicts long-term health and happiness. Supportive marriages protect mental and physical well-being. Chronic conflict and isolation raise stress and increase health risks. Marriage is not only emotional. It is structural. It shapes lives.

Yet many couples prepare more thoroughly for the ceremony than for the covenant. We were no different. We imported our wedding outfits, booked luxury cars, secured the Sheraton for our ceremony, hired top decorators and a sought-after makeup artist. We curated beauty. We invested in photographs. We planned the day.

Then, about a year before the wedding, something shifted.

We began reading Ready to Wed. The stories inside were not romantic fantasies. They spoke of betrayal, financial strain, grief, silence, and slow emotional distance. The book presented marriage as work, serious, demanding, intentional. It also offered hope. Many crises are preventable when couples are equipped. Skills matter. Perspective matters. Shared values matter.

We enrolled in premarital training at our church. No topic was avoided. We discussed faith, finances, extended family boundaries, friendships, parenting, work pressure, health. We learned how to disagree without dismantling one another. We spoke honestly about expectations, intimacy, personal ambitions. For months, we prepared not for a celebration but for a lifetime.

Research on marital stability shows that couples who complete structured premarital education often report higher satisfaction and lower conflict in early marriage. Communication skills and realistic expectations increase resilience. Conflict, handled constructively, becomes a problem to solve, not a threat to survive.

Our preparation was tested sooner than we imagined.

Four months before the wedding, my father passed away unexpectedly. Grief arrived without warning. Planning stopped feeling important. I was overwhelmed. My fiancé was grieving too, while trying to hold space for me.

What we had learned became our anchor.

Mike did not retreat. He did not rush my healing. He enrolled in trauma-healing courses to better support someone navigating deep loss. Because we had already spoken about hardship, we did not mistake grief for relational failure. We understood it as a season to endure side by side.

Marriage is not sustained by romance alone. It is sustained by presence. It is choosing steadiness when emotions are raw. It is wisdom in moments when life shifts abruptly.

The proposed policy raises practical questions. Who will design the curriculum? Who will facilitate the sessions? What standards will guide the process? Content matters. Character matters.

The couples who mentored us had been married for decades. They had faced financial pressure, illness, infertility, loss,  and remained committed. Their authority came from experience.

Studies indicate that many divorces do not stem from dramatic betrayal but from patterns: unresolved conflict, unmet expectations, emotional drift. Premarital education does not remove hardship. It reduces preventable breakdown.

Researchers also note the role of community. Couples surrounded by supportive networks that value commitment tend to fare better than those left to navigate difficulties alone. Structured training can introduce that support early.

If the government’s program is practical and grounded in lived reality, it could shift trajectories. It could encourage difficult conversations before vows are exchanged. It could transform naive optimism into informed commitment.

When Mike and I reflect on our journey, we are grateful for the preparation we received. It did not eliminate storms. It prepared us to stand through them.

If launched premarital training offers that foundation to couples across the country. It will be an investment, in healthier families, steadier homes, and a stronger society.

Ghosts Don’t Belong in the Present

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It happened one afternoon. I was deep in conversation with a close friend who began recounting a story about a mutual acquaintance, a friend of a friend. This is the kind of man people look at and assume has life sorted. Married for over a decade, devoted to his children, steady in his career. Stable. Grounded. Settled.

Then the phone rang.

It was not work. Not an emergency. It was a voice from twelve years ago, a woman he had once loved with the intensity reserved for early adulthood. He later admitted that during that twenty-minute call, the last ten years of his life felt as though they were receding into the background. He found himself wrestling with an irrational urge to abandon the peace he had built, all to chase a feeling he had not experienced in a decade.

He did not act on it. He did not cheat. Yet what lingered was not disloyalty, but the force of memory. Not a lack of love for his wife, but the gravitational pull of a recollection.

It unsettled me.

How can someone who has not been part of your daily life for a third of it suddenly make everything you have now feel secondary? How fragile is our sense of the present if a single voice can distort it?

That question led me to think about what memories actually are. We like to imagine the brain as an orderly filing cabinet. A memory from 2012 sits neatly in a folder, intact and untouched, waiting to be retrieved. But neuroscience tells a different story.

When we remember something, we are not pulling out an original record. Research shows that the brain reconstructs a memory each time it is recalled. It is closer to a game of telephone than a storage archive. Each recollection forms a new neural pathway. We are not remembering the event itself; we are remembering the last time we remembered it.

After ten years, that memory is no longer a reliable account. It becomes a copy of a copy of a copy. And because we are human, we edit. We smooth the rough edges. We forget the arguments, the incompatibility, the reasons it ended. What remains is a curated highlight reel, one no real, living partner can compete with.

The woman my friend’s acquaintance longed for no longer exists in her original form. She is a reconstruction, shaped by his neural networks over years of selective reminiscing. A fictional character built from fragments.

It made me wonder what life would be without memory. On one hand, we would be free from “what-ifs.” No sharp sting of nostalgia when a certain song plays. We would live fully in the present, valuing our partners for who they are today without comparison to ghosts from youth.

Yet without memory, we would also lose identity. We are the accumulation of our experiences. The heartbreaks we survived are the very lessons that enabled us to build stable lives. The issue is not memory itself. The issue is the trust we place in it. Nostalgia feels truthful. In reality, it is a persuasive distortion, the brain softening the past until it seems safer than the present.

Then there is the matter of fate, or divine design. I have often found comfort in believing that when people exit our lives, it serves a purpose. We frame endings as tragedy. Perhaps they are protection.

Some individuals are chapters, not entire books. Had that woman remained twelve years ago, he might never have met the woman he married. The excitement of youth may have eventually turned into limitation or pain. When we feel the urge to return, we signal doubt in the path already taken. We elevate fantasy over growth.

There is emotional and professional maturity in acknowledging that the one who left did so for a reason. If they were meant to stay, they would be present in the ordinary rhythms of life, discussing school fees, deciding dinner, navigating responsibilities. Not appearing as a distant voice once a decade.

The struggle my friend described is not romance. It is a clash between romanticized neural pathways and the reality of a present life that sometimes feels routine. If he had abandoned everything for a reunion, he would likely have discovered that familiarity dissolves quickly. Shared history does not guarantee shared compatibility. The illusion would fade, leaving regret in its place.

Memory is powerful. It is also an editor, not a historian. It reshapes. It rearranges. It persuades.

Looking back is human. Smiling at who we once were is natural. Letting those ghosts dictate present choices is reckless.

The life built with real responsibilities, real affection, and real people who show up daily is the only one that exists. Everything else is neural residue, old circuits firing long after the story has moved forward.

Ministry Inaugurates Coal Processing Plant to Cut Import Costs

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The Ministry of Mines announced the inauguration of the ‘Arjo’ coal processing plant, which is expected to eliminate the country’s reliance on imported coal. Previously, the ministry spent over 300 million dollars annually on coal imports, but domestic production will now meet the nation’s annual demand of 2.3 million tonnes, according to Engineer Habtamu Tegegne. The minister noted that recent reforms in the mining sector aim to ensure a reliable supply of cement and prevent shortages. Plans are also underway to launch a large plant to produce ceramic products domestically in the coming months.

Awash Insurance Secures Ethiopian Airlines Passenger Health Cover Deal

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Awash Insurance has won the bid to provide health insurance coverage to passengers of Ethiopian Airlines, formalising the partnership at a signing ceremony held last week at the Skylight Hotel. Travellers will be able to purchase coverage directly through the Ethiopian Airlines mobile application, with protection valid during flight time. The agreement marks the second collaboration between the two companies, following their COVID-19 insurance partnership during the pandemic.

Lemma Yadecha, chief Commercial Officer of Ethiopian Airlines, said Awash Insurance secured the deal through a competitive bidding process. He noted that the national carrier currently works with insurance providers in the UK and Europe for international health coverage, resulting in premium payments flowing abroad. He urged Awash Insurance to ensure the new arrangement helps retain premium revenues in the country.

Ethio telecom Unveils teleStream Internet TV Platform

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Ethio telecom has launched a new internet television platform, teleStream, betting that the future of Ethiopia’s entertainment industry will be delivered through fibre-optic cables rather than satellite dishes.

The state-owned operator is offering more than 60 live channels and 350 on-demand titles via fibre and mobile data. Chief Executive Officer Frehiwot Tamiru said teleStream introduces a modern viewing experience while creating economic value by enabling local broadcasters to bypass the foreign currency costs tied to satellite leases.

The platform is designed with inclusivity in mind, incorporating technology that converts conventional televisions into smart TVs, widening access across income groups. With mobile data subscribers now reaching 49 million, teleStream signals a shift from traditional voice-driven revenues toward a broader digital services portfolio. To accelerate uptake, the company is offering a 33pc discount on annual subscription packages.