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August 14 , 2022

National Dialogue! What National Dialogue?

The call for lofty ideals such as national dialogue and consensus has been as old as Ethiopia’s ingrate revolution. It may mean different things for various groups as successive regimes danced around the multiple elements of the concept. But they tend to see it as a ploy of their adversaries as th...

August 6 , 2022

Finance to the Tiller! Plebiscite on the Land Question

Few initiatives by the administration of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) have been publicised as aggressively as self-sufficiency in agriculture production. To be precise, it is about scaling up wheat farming. With an ambitious stroke, Minister Umer Hussien and his experts at the Agriculture Ministry intend to boost the crop’s output by 70pc to 107 million quintals. They even aspire to begin exporting 10 million quintals starting next year. Contrast this to the historical trend that the Ethiopian state has been importing 1.7 million tonnes of wheat annually for over a decade. Many have ta...


July 30 , 2022

What Do New Banks Offer Their Older Cousins Don't?

Ethiopia’s banking industry is not merely underdeveloped. It has historically regressed. Calls for the financial sector to open for international capital, technology, network and skill remain dwarfed in the face of nationalistic disguise to shelter it from foreign competition. Perhaps the die-hard protectionists who have taken economic policy discourse hostage would be surprised to find out that the first bank established was a concession deal given to non-nationals. The Bank of Abyssinia, as it was called, was established in 1906 with half a million pounds of authorised capital. Formed t...


July 23 , 2022

Tweaking Tax Policies No Silver Bullet to Fund Budget Deficit

The flip side of a government spending plan is financing. Behind the campaign promises, capital expenditures, public sector wage raises, and social welfare programmes is a dilemma. How can all of this be funded? How should the financing be structured? And what is the consequence of the volume and means of the money raised? These are partly the questions the recently approved federal budget tries to answer. Total spending this year will be 786.6 billion Br, about 16.6pc higher than last year without adjusting for exchange rate fluctuations. Spending on debt service and defence accounts fo...

Editorials

July 17 , 2022

Durable Peace Indispensable for Negotiating External Debt Restructuring

Messrs Ahmed Shide and Eyob Tekalegn (PhD), minister and state minister for Finance, have lately been touting “progress” to restructure Ethiopia’s sovereign debt. A summit in Paris that brought...

July 9 , 2022

Fuel Subsidies Phasing Out. Floating the Birr Yet to Happen

Fuel shortages are a staple in Ethiopia. Severe policy miscalculation in the form of subsidies has led to underinvestment in the retail fuel business. It fed a thriving contraband trade in areas bor...

July 2 , 2022

Giving Peace a Chance. Long Overdue.

After nearly two years since the civil war broke out in northern Ethiopia, adversaries in this regrettably brutal conflict appear to have realised that there neither is victorious nor the vanquished....

June 25 , 2022

The Local Elections Everybody Forgets About

It is not the best of times to be in charge of governance in Ethiopia, whether at the federal or regional levels. The news of atrocities coming from around the country is horrific. Enervating insec...

June 18 , 2022

Central Bank Shoots Itself in the Feet. Again!

Some of Ethiopia's economic policymakers may take solace from realising that inflation is a global phenomenon. It would be unwise to disregard their reading on what transpires around the world. In the...

June 11 , 2022

What Agenda the Budget Bill Serves?

The stereotype many people have of parliamentarians is as clueless seat fillers who exist to rubber stamp legislative bills drafted by the powerful executive body of government. To defeat the stereoty...

June 4 , 2022

Ethiopia Sleeps at the Wheel in the Race for Regional Integration

It was an institution confident in its mission, capabilities and progress that was on display during the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) most recent annual conference in Accra, Ghana. The weeklong...

May 28 , 2022

Cheap Global Capital Era Over. Time to Reimagine Infrastructure Financing

There seem to be all types of wars these days. Civil wars, from Ethiopia to Myanmar; inter-state wars and geopolitical apprehensions, from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to China's growing tension wi...

May 21 , 2022

Capital Market Does Little to Help Crowded Out Private Sector

There was a great deal of handshaking and patting each other on the back at the Hyatt Regency, near Mesqel Square, where the bigwigs of the new economic policymaking team gathered. Ahmed Shidie, Finan...

May 14 , 2022

Macroeconomic Council's Glaring Omissions

Diana Yohannes is one of those actively engaging in social media platforms with her Twitter account @Shai-buna. She is enthusiastic about faith related subjects. But her recent tweet poked a pertinent...

May 7 , 2022

Stagflation Here: Damn If You Do, Damn If You Don't

The Ethiopian Economic Association (EEA) recently proposed the formation of a macroeconomic board to stabilise the galloping prices of goods and services. It may have been a desperate call in an era t...

April 30 , 2022

War Cost Emaciates Agricultural Productivity. Stop the War!

There is no ambiguity in the UNDP's assessment of Ethiopia’s economic performance and prospects. A quarterly economic profile on Ethiopia, released in March this year, portrays a rather dismal pictu...

April 22 , 2022

The Sharing Economy Needs Less Policing, More Support

Most African countries top the list when ranked on the prevalence of conflict, food insecurity, poverty or lack of essential services. Ethiopia is no exception to this. On the contrary, those same cou...

April 16 , 2022

More Farmlands, Less Battlefields in Times of 'Hunger Pandemic'

Earlier this year, a pandemic that ravaged the world was finally subsiding, and demand for consumer goods increased. Some dared to theorise that countries were entering the 'roaring twenties' when sev...

April 9 , 2022

The Battle for Peace with Few Allies, No Time!

The heartbreak from Ethiopia’s civil war has not abated. Not even close. A few months shy of its second year, the war has induced a new chapter in almost three decades of relative peace and economic...

April 8 , 2022

Choosing the Lesser Evil in Macroeconomic Course Correction

By the government's own admission, the macroeconomic reality for Ethiopia is distressing. Consumers battered by inflation find the answer to their bind in life in the first-quarter report recently rel...


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National Dialogue! What National Dialogue?


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National Dialogue! What National Dialogue?

The call for lofty ideals such as national dialogue and consensus has been as old as Ethio...

Editorial | August 14 , 2022

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The traditional tattoos in the shape of a cross on her chin and forehead tell a story. It...

Featured | July 9 , 2022 . By RAHEL BOGALE

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The roads leading to Megenagna were crowded and hectic as ever. Street vendors selling a f...

Agenda | August 14 , 2022 . By RUTH TAYE

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Federal authorities approved submissions by the Addis Abeba University (AAU) administrator...

Fortune News | August 14 , 2022 . By RAHEL BOGALE