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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 keeps widening. More than five million people, according to the city administration's official projec...

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 nationals from owning bricks and mortar. That could soon change. On May 1, 2025, the Council of Ministers approved a bill that would let non-citizens buy buildings - houses, flats or shops - so long as they pay at least 150,000 dollars for each deed, bring the money from abroad, accept a limit of five properties and leave the underlying land in the hands of the state, as the Constitution demands. Pa...


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 not the result of medical efficiency but of absence. Medical professionals, mainly doctors, have downed tools. Their nationwide strike, launched after years of pleading for “better wage structure and incentive systems”, has already run for over a week, leaving desperate patients to fend for themselves. No one could doubt why the walk-out happened. “Livable wage” has become the rallying...


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 mere 261 Scopus-indexed (the world's largest database where 23,000 peer-reviewed academic works are stored since 2004) papers to global scholarship, output has surged nearly 23-fold, reaching 6,352 papers by 2020. That exceptional rise put Ethiopia among Africa's fastest rising research hubs, in line with the African Union's STISA2024 agenda, which casts knowledge production as the engine of develop...

Editorials

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...

Apr 13 , 2025

Officials Bank on Student Service to Patch a Fractured Country

The federal government will soon require one year of national service from university students, which education officials have dubbed "Ethiopia University Service." Four-year students will serve after...

Apr 6 , 2025

Cheap Power Lures Bitcoin Miners. But Millions Wait for a Lightbulb Moment

Last week, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, announced a 100-million-dollar debt financing package for Raxio Group, a major data-centre operator in sub-Saharan...

Mar 30 , 2025

Media Council's Edging to Accreditation a Deceitful Drift

When the private satellite channel, Ethiopian Broadcasting Service (EBS), aired an emotional interview last week featuring a young woman's allegations of sexual assault, it inadvertently sparked a pol...

Mar 23 , 2025

Preventing War Far Cheaper Than Paying Its Deadly Price

Getachew Redda, head of the Tigray Interim Regional Administration (TIRA), at least up until last week, is no ordinary politician. Witty, articulate, and boldly confrontational, he seldom hesitates...

Mar 16 , 2025

A Country Governed by Guesswork, While Millions Lost in the Shadows

Ask anyone about the population of Addis Abeba, and a straightforward answer proves elusive. Wikipedia claims the city's population reached 5.7 million this year. Worldpopulationreview.com, however, p...

Mar 9 , 2025

The GMO Experiment Can Be Harvest of Hope, Not Seed of Trouble

Five years ago, 11 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), together with 40 allies across Africa, demanded a five-year moratorium on Ethiopia's use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). They wanted...

Mar 2 , 2025

Mismanaged, Trade Liberalisation Could Pour Cold Water on Local Hopes

The domestic economy has endured a punishing half-decade. A global pandemic throttled trade, a civil war inflicted grave damage to livelihoods and external financing, and persistent unrest in two of i...

Feb 23 , 2025

Africa Wants to Mark Own Homework with Homegrown Credit Agency

Africa is a place where the frustrations of its elites run high due to what they feel are external yardsticks distorting the continental potential. Ironically, successive generations of leaders have l...

Feb 16 , 2025

IMF Tells Ethiopia to Stay the Course, with Leap of Faith on the Market

Madame Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recently became the third IMF chief to set foot in Addis Abeba in over 30 years. Her arrival showed Ethiopia's...

Feb 9 , 2025

The Race to the AUC Follows Mahamat's Grand Entrances, Quiet Exits Legacy

This week, the African Union's (AU) annual summit in Addis Abeba is set to be more than a routine exercise of convention by heads of states. The continent is beset by increasingly intricate conflicts...

Feb 1 , 2025

Addis Abeba's Costly Pursuit of Prosperity Bulldozes Dreams on Bargain Prices

Urban renewal is seldom gentle to those on the receiving end of redevelopment. Take several neighbourhoods of Addis Abeba where bustling life once thrived. Silence now reigns on them, bar the bulldoze...

Jan 25 , 2025

Birr in Tumble, Reform Rhetoric Meets Bitter Economic Realities

Grand ambitions have long driven Ethiopia's successive leaders, but they remain weighed down by deep structural vulnerabilities. But, nowhere is this more evident than in the monetary policy front, wh...


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Where the Roof Overhead Comes with a Ceiling on Hope


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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. Gle...

Editorial | Jun 7 , 2025

E-Commerce May Never Be the Same Again

Zemen Gebeya, the digital marketplace that Ethio telecom switched on only two weeks ago, i...

Featured | May 24 , 2025 . By YITBAREK GETACHEW

A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

Meseret Mulle rises before dawn in the crowded quarter around Golagol Tower, waking her tw...

Agenda | Jun 8 , 2025 . By RUTH BERHANU

WEGAGEN GRAZES FRESH GREEN GROUND

Wegagen Capital Investment Bank, one of the first two standalone investment banks, launche...

Fortune News | Jun 7 , 2025