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Aug 30 , 2025

Will Community Health Insurance Falter Under Its Ambitious Weight?

For Germans, Otto von Bismarck is first remembered as the architect of a unified nation. However, his lesser-known stroke of statecraft continues to have a lasting impact on the world. In 1883, he introduced the world's first compulsory health insurance law. For Bismarck, it was not altruism as he s...

Aug 23 , 2025

The Capital Market May Be Too Shallow to Swim In. Beware.

Banks have a new obsession. After decades chasing deposits and, more recently, digital banking, they are scrambling to attach investment-banking arms to their franchises. The state-owned colossus, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), is in the vanguard; Wegagen, Awash and Siinqee are not far behind. Two novelties, the birth of the Ethiopian Securities Exchange (ESX), the country's first organised capital market, and the creation in 2023 of the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority (ECMA), headed by Hana Teheklu, once a state prosecutor, have sparked the frenzy. The prospect of underwriting fees...


Aug 16 , 2025

Capital Market Ambitions Face Credibility Test Over Conflicted Oversight

A decade ago, a case in the United States (US) jolted Wall Street. An ambulance operator in the State of Arizona had, in 2011, accepted a buy-out that valued it below earlier indications. Shareholders said their bankers, lured by lucrative financing fees, had pressed the board of Rural-Metro Corporation to bless the deal without adequate valuation analysis. A judge agreed and in 2014 ordered the adviser to pay 75.8 million dollars, about 83pc of the investors' losses, for having “aided and abetted” directors who breached their fiduciary duties. The ruling shocked bankers by showing how...


Jul 5 , 2025

Civil Society Feels the Squeeze as Reform Era Unravels

Six years ago, Ethiopia was the darling of international liberal commentators. A year earlier, crowds filled Mesqel Square, chanting slogans celebrating the dawning of an era away from what was an authoritarian state and towards political openness and market-friendly reforms. That widespread optimism has been on a retreat as civic space contracts as quickly as it once expanded. A new set of draft laws governing democratic institutions, from electoral and political parties to civil society, threatens to stifle the same civic freedoms that politicians once praised, revealing how easily a bold...

Editorials

Aug 9 , 2025

Squeesing Stones for Silver, the State Pulls While Taxpayers May Duck

In the 14th Century, the Egyptian scholar Ibn Khaldun drew a neat curve in the sand. Young dynasties, he observed, can fill their coffers with modest taxes, but ageing ones squeeze ever harder for dim...

Aug 2 , 2025

Saplings Should Not Be Rushed Like Election Rallies

At daybreak on Thursday last week, July 31, 2025, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians fanned out across parks, highways, and riverbanks, seedlings in hand, driven to smash what organisers say was...

Jul 26 , 2025

Teaching Hospitals Shoulder the Burden While Administrators Count the Beans

Teaching hospitals everywhere juggle three jobs at once: teaching, curing, and discovering. But, few do so on a tighter rope than those in Ethiopia. Around the world, these institutions shape medic...

Jul 19 , 2025

In Taxing Aggressively, Fed's Fiscal Reckoning Arrives

Parliament is no stranger to frantic bursts of productivity. Even so, the vote last week on a new income tax law was dizzyingly swift. Only five legislators dissented before the bill was rubber-stampe...

Jul 12 , 2025

Legal, Policy Volatility Turns Promises into Headwinds

Political leaders and their policy advisors often promise great leaps forward, yet they frequently fall short, landing with a thud. In July 2024, Mamo Mehiretu, governor of the Central Bank, declar...

Jun 28 , 2025

Soaring Taxes Fail to Plug Holes as Audit Reveals Enduring Waste

Meseret Damtie, the assertive auditor general, has never been shy about naming names, and with a reputation for her clear voice and sharper pencil. Last week, she published her latest verdict on the f...

Jun 21 , 2025

Expanding Federal Budget Tests Limits of Fiscal Discipline

A well-worn adage says, “Budget is not destiny, but it is direction.” Examining the budget bill for 2025/26 now before Parliament, the federal government's compass appears to be drifting. The b...

Jun 14 , 2025

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 bec...

Jun 7 , 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 keep...

May 31 , 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 national...

May 24 , 2025

A Country on Life Support Must Not Neglect Its Healers

Public hospitals have fallen eerily quiet lately. Corridors once crowded with patients' relatives now echo, wards lie half-empty, and family members milled outside in anxious knots. The silence was no...

May 17 , 2025

Researchers Churn Out Studies by the Ton. Quality Checks are Causality

Ethiopia pours more than three billion Birr a year into academic research, yet too much of that money is vanishing into a sinkhole of low-quality work. Since 2001, when the country contributed a me...

May 10 , 2025

Ethiopia's Aid Reckoning Demands a Homegrown Rescue Plan

Federal legislators recently summoned Shiferaw Teklemariam (PhD), head of the Disaster Risk Management Commission (DRMC), to explain a new bill designed to streamline the country's response to emergen...

May 3 , 2025

When Pension Funds Nap Inflation Steals the Blanket

Pensioners have learned, rather painfully, the gulf between a figure on a passbook and a loaf of bread. A monthly allowance of 5,000Br (about 38 dollars at last week's weighted average rate) used to k...

Apr 26 , 2025

Policymakers Trudge Down a Path of Punitive Taxation

Benjamin Franklin famously quipped that “nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Yet, when taxes themselves threaten economic life, policymakers should reconsider their methods. Ethiopia's lea...

Apr 20 , 2025

Overseas Job Push Evokes Hopes at Home, Hardship Abroad

Mufariat Kamil, the minister of Labour & Skills, recently told Parliament that her Ministry had created 3.4 million new domestic jobs in nine months of the current fiscal year. She also touted an...


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Will Community Health Insurance Falter Under Its Ambitious Weight?


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Will Community Health Insurance Falter Under Its Ambitious Weight?

For Germans, Otto von Bismarck is first remembered as the architect of a unified nation. H...

Editorial | Aug 30 , 2025

Ashenda Grows Louder

The late-season drizzle that falls on Addis Abeba each August does little to dampen the mo...

Featured | Aug 23 , 2025 . By RUTH BERHANU

School Bells Ring as Wallets Snap Shut

The rainy season was losing its grip on Addis Abeba. Patches of pale sky opened between br...

Agenda | Aug 30 , 2025 . By RUTH BERHANU

DASHEN BANK'S NEW REMITTANCE GATEWAY ENTERS THE RING

At a high-profile event held at the Sheraton Addis last week, the launch of Dashen Bank's...

Fortune News | Aug 30 , 2025