ADDIS ABEBA FUEL QUEUES UNCOVER COST OF KEEPING THE COUNTRY MOVING

Mar 28 , 2026.

An aerial visualisation of a fuel queue winding in Addis Abeba last week did more than capture a city stuck in traffic. It uncovered a capital stalled by scarcity. Stretching a gruelling 2.1Km around the Ambassador Theatre area, the line of vehicles, from buses and minibuses to private SUVs and trucks, snaked through some of the city’s most prominent landmarks in a surreal procession of delay and frustration. The digital map traced motorists’ desperate path from a fuel pump behind what was once the Harambie Hotel, past Ambassador Park, the Zewditu Memorial Hospital and the Sheraton Addis, before looping toward the Filwuha thermal baths and circling back to the Total gas station, one of the 153 stations in the city. In those lost hours on the asphalt, a chronic fuel shortage, particularly of Diesel, became a visible measure of the productivity drained from a city forced to idle while waiting to fill its tankers.

Behind that urban tableau sits a fuel trade of staggering scale. The Ethiopian Petroleum Supply Enterprise (EPSE) imports and distributes nearly four billion tons of petroleum products, estimated to cost over four billion dollars. In the 2025 fiscal year, its revenue from contracts with customers surged sharply to 457.35 billion Br, from 259.37 billion Br a year earlier. Cost of sales climbed even faster, to 496.14 billion Br from 246.09 billion Br, revealing the magnitude of the trade, while a 40.4 billion Br claim from the fuel price stabilisation fund helped the Enterprise post a gross profit of 1.61 billion Br and net profit of 1.06 billion Br. Inventories more than doubled to 34.54 billion Br by year-end, while receivables from the fuel price stabilisation fund ballooned to 183.56 billion Br.

PUBLISHED ON Mar 28,2026 [ VOL 26 , NO 1352]