At around 8:00pm last week, Saba Aschalew stood beside her frying pan near the Gotera junction, a place that usually hums with taxis, buses and late commuters. The potatoes were ready, the oil was hot, and the plastic bags were stacked. What was missing were the customers.

For years, Saba has earned a modest living selling potato chips and “Irtib,” a cold vegetable sandwich known mainly for being cheap. Lately, even cheap food has become expensive.

The problem sat in the pan in front of her. Cooking oil, the single most important input in her business, has surged in price over the past weeks. A five-litre bottle that recently sold for 1,700 to 1,800 Br costs as much as 2,400 Br. Saba went through one bottle roughly every two weeks.

“I can’t afford to spend this much money on oil,” she said. “It’s more than I can handle.”

She raised prices reluctantly. Chips went up by five Birr to 25 Br, and Irtib jumped by 10 Br to 70 Br. The response was immediate. Daily sandwich sales fell from 15 to 20 to about half that. Holding prices steady was not an option.

“If I didn’t make this adjustment, I couldn’t even afford to buy the potatoes,” she said. “It would push me out of business.”

Her dilemma captures a broader squeeze playing out across Addis Abeba. A sudden jump in cooking oil prices has rippled through importers, wholesalers, retailers, street vendors, and households, forcing painful choices about whether to pass on costs, absorb losses, or cut consumption altogether. The shock has been sharp enough to alter buying habits and, in some cases, diets.

At the retail level, neighbourhood shopkeepers like Ali Melik, who owns a small shop near the Mamo Condominium area in Gotera, are also feeling the squeeze. Ali is uneasy telling customers about the new prices.

“I feel embarrassed to tell prices to my customers,” he told Fortune.

He sells edible oil at a markup of about 100 Br a bottle, but rising costs of transportation and labour have eaten into his margin. Most customers are opting for one-litre bottles, as larger purchases have become unaffordable.

Cooking oil prices in Addis Abeba have surged sharply in recent weeks, upending household budgets and straining the bottom lines of small businesses like Saba's and Ali's that depend on the commodity.

The price of a five-litre bottle of cooking oil passed a 2,000 Br threshold in a few weeks, according to vendors and market data. The steep rise in prices has left families and traders across the city scrambling to adjust, with some forced to change their consumption habits or even reduce their sales volumes.

Two weeks ago, five-litre bottles of cooking oil were available in Addis Abeba for between 1,700 Br and 1,800 Br, depending on the brand. Since then, prices have climbed across the board, hitting 2,400 Br. Orkide oil was sold for 2,200 Br in retail markets, while Badria oil, which once sold for 1,750 Br, was selling for 2,150 Br. Omaar oil, in short supply, has jumped by 210 Br to 2,400 Br. Sunflower oil has also followed the upward trend, rising from 1,700 Br to 2,100 Br.

The jump has come suddenly and affected all segments of the market, from wholesalers to neighbourhood kiosks.

Further up the supply chain, wholesalers found the recent increases abrupt and largely beyond their control. According to Beytulah Muzeme, who sells cooking oil in bulk at the Metesaseb Building near Mercato, wholesalers make about 30 Br a box of four five-litre bottles, a margin that has remained unchanged even as prices have surged.

“Importers raise the price they give us, so we do the same, but our profit stays the same,” she said.

Beytulah blames shortages from importers, who have become less able to supply the market in recent weeks, for price increases.

Ethiopia’s edible oil market has been undergoing a transformation driven by supply-side industrial expansion and a steady, if modest, growth in national demand. Consumption surged to 686 million litres in 2024, a sign of demographic growth and shifting dietary patterns.

Domestic edible oil consumption was dominated by imports, which accounted for 90pc up until 2023. The ratio has declined sharply over the past two years, with domestic production accounting for nearly one-third of total consumption. Large-scale investments drive the domestic production renaissance, although the number of medium- and large-scale producers grew to 232 in 2024, alongside over 1,000 micro and small processors.

Yet production remains highly concentrated, with 26 companies producing over 1,000 litres a day. Two players dominate, however. Phibela Edible Oil Complex, in Bure, Amhara Regional State, boasts an installed capacity of 1.5 million litres of palm oil daily. The company asserts it could satisfy up to 60pc of national demand when fully operational. W.A. Industrial Edible Oil Complex, with a daily capacity of 1.35 million litres, follows closely.

Officials attribute the leap in domestic market share, from five percent in 2021 to approximately 40pc in 2024, to the commissioning of these two facilities.

The rest is covered by imports, predominantly from Indonesia, Malaysia, Djibouti, and the United States, in volume terms, with Yemen entering the value-based rankings. Djibouti’s rising prominence as a re-export and transit point adds another layer of complexity to tracing oil flows.

Total imports of 584 million litres were worth 980.4 billion Br in 2024, though edible oils are not disaggregated. The average import cost was 1,820 dollars a ton the same year, an 8.8pc year-on-year increase.

A recent study by Tilahun Alemu and colleagues attributed the problem to the country's dependence on imported cooking oil. With domestic production far short of national demand, monthly expenditures on imported edible oil are about 48 million dollars.