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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...

Jan 10 , 2026

Governor Eyob Ends Deposit-Rate Floors Restoring Policy Credibility

The National Bank of Ethiopia's (NBE) decision, two weeks ago, to scrap the seven percent statutory minimum on deposit rates was celebrated by free-market enthusiasts and lamented by dirigistes. Ho...

Jan 3 , 2026

Somaliland Tests Africas Postcolonial Order. Ethiopia Eyes a Fateful Choice

The decades after the 1960s were unkind to Emperor Hailesellasie. Ethiopia, once able to lean on a special bond with Israel for diplomatic ballast, found itself cornered when the Jewish state went to...


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In Going Digital, the State Designs for the Citizen It Wants to Have


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In Going Digital, the State Designs for the Citizen It Wants to Have

The World Bank asks readers to picture a mother in rural Ethiopia who has never held a ban...

Editorial | Aug 8 , 2026

SMALL-NOTES SQUEEZE WORN, TORN, NEVER RETURNED

For Hirut Ayalew, a small shop owner around Ferensay Legasiyon, the shortage of usable sma...

Featured | Aug 1 , 2026 . By BIZUAYEHU ABIY

The Storm Passed, the Freight Bill Did Not

A year after a violent storm tore through one of Ethiopia's major flower-growing clusters...

Agenda | Aug 9 , 2026 . By NAHOM AYELE

National Bank Forces Anbesa Bank Board Re-run, All Incumbents Out

Anbesa Bank has elected an entirely new board of directors, nine months after the Board it...

Fortune News | Aug 9 , 2026 . By NAHOM AYELE