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Sep 13 , 2025

In Climate Talks, Africa Mortgages Tomorrow Simply to Survive Today

At its launch in Nairobi two years ago, the Africa Climate Summit was billed as the forum that would at last give the continent a commanding voice in global climate talks. Last week, the second edition convened in Addis Abeba under the African Union's (AU) auspices. The speeches were longer and the...

Sep 6 , 2025

Ethiopians Celebrate Big Dreams, While Everyday Realities Cast Shadow

The dawn of a new year is more than a simple turning of the calendar. It is a moment heavy with national pride, buoyed this time by the long-awaited completion of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a flagship project six years overdue. With GERD poised to run at full throttle, generating more than 5,000MW and potentially earning the country over a billion dollars in annual electricity exports, the air is thick with both celebration and relief. The political leaders, engineers, planners, and workers who shepherded the project from blueprint to reality deserve sincere commendation. F...


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 sought to curb the rise of socialist agitators by guaranteeing a modest income for workers who were sick or injured. Medical coverage, to him, was almost beside the point. Ethiopia, 128 years later, turned to community-based insurance for a different reason than ideology. In the late 2000s, too ma...


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...

Editorials

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...

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...

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 aut...

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...


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In Climate Talks, Africa Mortgages Tomorrow Simply to Survive Today


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In Climate Talks, Africa Mortgages Tomorrow Simply to Survive Today

At its launch in Nairobi two years ago, the Africa Climate Summit was billed as the forum...

Editorial | Sep 13 , 2025

Digital Payments Reshape Economy While Service Workers Lose Out

The way the Birr moves is changing, and with it, habits that have shaped daily life for ge...

Featured | Sep 14 , 2025 . By NAHOM AYELE

Student Tax ID Push Triggers Logjam

The yellow flush of Aday Abeba flowers has returned to Addis Abeba, heralding the arrival...

Agenda | Sep 13 , 2025 . By NAHOM AYELE and YITBAREK GETACHEW

Monument to National Ambition, Geopolitical Agency

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Africa's largest hydroelectric power project,...

Fortune News | Sep 15 , 2025 . By AMANUEL BEKELE