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May 30 , 2026

Mistaking Development Theatre for Public Trust Has a Cost

Tomorrow, millions of Ethiopians are expected to vote in the seventh national elections. According to the national electoral agency, more than 50 million voters are registered. Yet the poll may be the strangest since the constitutional order began in the mid-1990s. Tigray Regional State, a foundi...

May 23 , 2026

Tax Push Tests How Much Pain Taxpayers Can Bear

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team has spent weeks in Addis Abeba conducting the fifth review of the macroeconomic reform programme it backs in Ethiopia. Its checklist would be familiar and hard. Its experts demand to see a fuller floating of the Birr in the foreign-exchange market, a phased withdrawal of direct state subsidies and much stronger efforts to raise domestic taxes. In Ethiopia, as elsewhere, such prescriptions mean weaker currencies, faster inflation and a higher cost of living. Kenya's experience, where anger over tax measures helped ignite an urban insurrection, warns...


May 16 , 2026

T-Bills Trap Begins in the Federal Government's Own Budget

The federal budget tells a troubling story about inflation, debt and reform. The problem is not only that the state is short of money. It appears to be struggling to control the money it has. The books show a system that spends too little where policy needs delivery, too much where limits should bind, and hides too much under labels that tell the public little. By the third quarter of 2024/25, federal expenditure had reached 697.7 billion Br, 46.8pc of an adjusted budget of 1.49 trillion Br. By the fourth quarter, spending climbed to 1.097 trillion Br, but execution was 58.2pc. Almost 789 b...


May 9 , 2026

Every Encounter with the State Should Not Become an Invoice

The Ethiopian state appears to have discovered a fiscal instrument that is politically convenient and administratively tempting yet economically burdensome for its citizens. It has gotten itself into an addiction where mandatory contributions behave like a tax while avoiding the name. Take the latest cybersecurity bill before federal lawmakers, one of a series in the legislative grail, which would extend this model to owners of critical infrastructure, requiring them to finance the protection of systems deemed vital to the economy, national security, and public order. The bill follows a gro...

Editorials

May 2 , 2026

National Dialogue Has Everything But the Trust It Needs

By the time Ethiopia's National Dialogue Commission (ENDC) reached the end of its first three-year mandate, the country had gathered everything a dialogue needs, except for the one thing it cannot do...

Apr 25 , 2026

Addis Abeba's Roads Reveal a Country Where the Powerful Drive Through the Law

In a political community, official speeches show what governments want their citizens to see. But a country can be read through its roads, where streets show what citizens live with. In Addis Abeba...

Ethiopia's New Diplomacy Essence Could Be About Shielding Sovereignty

For much of the past three decades, Ethiopia occupied a familiar place in the Western imagination. It was a security partner in a combustible region, the Horn of Africa, a development darling with chr...

Voters' Registration Drive Risks Eroding Public Trust

The electoral process is again inviting uncomfortable questions, not about logistics, but about procedure, principle and trust. What ought to be a routine civic exercise is increasingly viewed with su...

Apr 4 , 2026

Drivers Stranded Between Parched Pumps and Policy Pipe Dream

Fuel stations across the country, especially in Addis Abeba, have become the stage for a grim new ritual. Lines of vehicles now stretch for as long as two and a half kilometres. Motorists spend ent...

Mar 28 , 2026

The Economy Grows on Paper as Tomorrow's Assets Go Unbuilt

The most alarming economic losses are often the hardest to see. A bridge destroyed by war is visible, not a factory closed down by foreign-exchange shortages. The machinery not imported, the warehouse...

Mar 21 , 2026

Banking Boom Conceals a Deeper Concentration, Risk Reordering

In its latest financial stability report, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), for the third in a row, declared the country's financial system “stable, resilient, and low risk”. However, the ed...

Mar 14 , 2026

The State Wants Cash. Taxpayers Need Oxygen

Policymakers have pulled off a remarkable feat. They have found a way to demand more cash from taxpayers precisely when businesses have the least room to breathe. Taken one by one, each of the gove...

Mar 7 , 2026

Education Policy Overhaul Inadequate in Deliberation, Fleeting in Effect

Berhanu Nega, a university professor-cum-opposition leader, is attempting one of the most sweeping overhauls the education sector has seen in decades. University financing, teacher training, curriculu...

Feb 28 , 2026

National Interest, Grand Narrative With a New Hobby of Sanctioning the Media

Regulators sent a chill through the local newsrooms last week when they yanked the registration of Addis Standard, one of the country's most popular online outlets, for allegedly “dissiminating repo...

Feb 21 , 2026

Young Voters Logged In, Tuned Out

The next general election, pencilled in for June 2026, remains distant, yet among its plugged-in youth a quiet verdict is forming. A digital poll of 142 respondents, mostly aged 22 to 30, conducted...

Feb 14 , 2026

Can a War-Scarred Federation Turn a Crisis Election into a Reset Moment?

Nearly 50 countries will hold national elections this year. In more than 20, the campaign trail runs between sandbags, with voters expected to queue while rifles glare. Ethiopia is one of the latter....

Feb 7 , 2026

Gold Boom Buoys Exports But Erodes Central Bank's Stability

Ethiopia's new love affair with gold looks, at first glance, like an economic fairy tale. For a country starved of hard currency, mired in arrears and stuck in debt talks under the G20's Common Fra...

Jan 31 , 2026

Ethiopia Aid a Nobel Idea Until Shiferaw Thinks About Its Financing

Shiferaw Teklemariam (PhD), czar of the federal relief operations, is wrestling with a problem that is growing faster than the country's patience, its fiscal space and, increasingly, its foreign frien...

Ethiopia Inc Drives Consolidation While Liberalisation Remains Tightly Managed

From a distance, Ethiopia looks like a country finally prising open its economy. Licences for mobile operators have been sold, a capital-market law passed, foreign banks invited, subsidies pared, and...

Jan 17 , 2026

US Support to Ethiopia's Health Sector Should Not Become a Data Giveaway

Two East African capitals have reacted differently to America's latest offer to pour billions of dollars into their respective public health sector. In Nairobi, under William Ruto's (PhD) governmen...


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Mistaking Development Theatre for Public Trust Has a Cost


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Mistaking Development Theatre for Public Trust Has a Cost

Tomorrow, millions of Ethiopians are expected to vote in the seventh national elections. A...

Editorial | May 30 , 2026

Addis Abeba Pours a New Story in Every Cup, Where Tradition Meets Global Influence

Customers settle into a carefully curated space of dark wood, black accents, muted green f...

Featured | May 31 , 2026 . By HELINA HADGU

THE GOLD RUSH RUNS OUT OF FUEL

Zenebe Girja used to sit close to the centre of the formal gold trade, where sacks of raw...

Agenda | Jun 7 , 2026 . By MASTEWAL ZEMENE

Vote Counts Give Way to Complaints Over Credibility

The national elections held last week have moved from counting to contestation, after Mela...

Fortune News | Jun 7 , 2026 . By YEABSIRA TAYE and NAHOM AYELE