In Addis Abeba's crowded southern quarter, the hum of traffic fades behind SarisAboChurch, where a narrow alley leads to a mud-plastered compound. Inside, 68-year-old Welesh Gessese tucks her belongings into a single room her relatives let her use without rent. For 25 years, she filed documents in the record office of the Federal Prison Administration, drawing a wage of 1,800Br, about 14 dollars at last week's NBE's buying rate.

Two years ago, Welesh retired and began collecting a pension initially set at 2,000Br and recently raised to 3,000Br, following the state's inflation adjustment for pensioners. Prices for teff, cooking oil, and medicine have doubled or tripled since the government floated the Birr last year, and the extra cash barely covers bus fare and utilities. With no children to support her, she is scraping by.

“Our income doesn’t even cover a quarter of what we spend,” she told Fortune.

Welesh’s story is increasingly common across the country. Citizens older than 60 comprise roughly six percent of the population, yet only a sliver receives old-age support. A 2024 report by Human Rights Watch estimates that in 2017/18 barely 7.4pc of the country’s 4.3 million seniors collected a pension, and nine out of 10 of those beneficiaries were men.

A formal scheme for private-sector employees did not begin deducting contributions until 2012. The minimum monthly benefit reached 3,013Br, and the maximum is tied to the worker’s final three-year average salary. In theory, employees can retire at 55 after 25 years of service, and heirs are entitled to benefits if the deceased logged at least a decade on the payroll. The Fund expects to collect about 40 billion Br this fiscal year. However, participants say payouts fall far short of covering staples.

Across town, in Bole District’s Wereda 04, Likinesh Abregn lies on a foam mattress laid directly on a concrete floor. At 68, the former midwife wheezes in the damp air.

Her husband, a laboratory technician at the defunct Borchele Clinic, on Tito Road in the Casanchis neighbourhood, drew a pension of 600Br before he passed away. She inherited half of that. The couple once managed a cluster of single-room rentals that brought in as much as 4,000 Br a month, but their adult children gradually took control and pushed her aside. Now she lives on 1,600Br a month — after the latest increase — and occasional remittances from relatives abroad. An unpaid property tax bill of 50,000Br looms over the house she no longer controls.

“My children left me to raise their kids,” she said. “The neighbours call me the woman who raises her grandchildren.”

Getachew Kiflu, vice president of the Ethiopian Elderly & Pensioners National Association, has seen cases like these arrive in stacks. Most pensioners struggle to afford food, housing and healthcare. A survey in Arba Minch found severe food insecurity among retirees. National estimates suggest that 80pc to 84pc of pensioners skip meals. Chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension go untreated, while isolation and abuse compound the hardship.

“There're alarming reports of financial exploitation where elderly individuals are cheated out of their inheritance,” Getachew told Fortune.

Runaway prices deepen the strain. The IMF projects consumer inflation at about 21pc for this year, down from recent peaks but still high enough to erode any nominal raise. Rural districts face an even sharper squeeze. A 2022 Ethiopian Economic Association study concluded that more than 60pc of pensioners in the countryside live below the poverty line and often cannot reach an agency office to claim benefits.

Two hundred fifty-seven kilometres north of the capital, in Debub Wollo Zone of the Amhara Regional State, lives 83-year-old Getachew Mengesha. He served 25 years as principal of an adult education school in Kombolcha, retiring in August 1999, with a salary of 790Br. His first pension check came to 400Br. To keep afloat, he ran a primary school for another seven years and later rented out a room in his house.

Adjustments have raised his monthly benefit to 3,700Br, yet he still rations vegetables and kerosene.

“The increases never catch up with prices,” he said.

Facing such stories, the Pensioners Association stepped up lobbying last December, pledging to push for a United Nations convention on the rights of older persons. In February, it hosted a forum under the global "AgeWithRights" rally, hoping to influence Ethiopia’s position at forthcoming UN talks. Parliament has yet to debate a bill.

Officials admit the math is unforgiving.

“We know it is not enough,” says Zewedenesh Legesse, office manager at the Public Social Security Service Agency, which registers beneficiaries and releases payments.

The law requires a review every three years, yet the Agency pushed through two raises since 2023 to blunt the cost-of-living shock.