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Feb 14 , 2026

With Ride-hailing Service, Even a Fragile Promise Carries Weight

A few weeks ago, what could be a familiar drama for many unfolded before me. I was late, logged my details in the taxi-hailing app, and was matched with a driver supposedly one minute away. I calle...

Feb 7 , 2026

In the Shape of a Tej Glass, a Country's Past Comes into Display

The humble "Birillé", a familiar glass flask used for Tej, a local honey beer, was elevated from a utilitarian object to a prism through which centuries of cultural, political, and social evolution w...

Jan 31 , 2026

How Developing Countries Can Make the Most of AI

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, industrial policy has crept back into respectable economic discourse, after decades of being derided as misguided interventionism, particularly for developing c...

Jan 24 , 2026

What Happens When Paid Work Disappears?

What we typically refer to as “artificial intelligence” is, in practice, a set of data-based systems (DS). These technologies are already transforming nearly every aspect of human life, giving ris...

Jan 17 , 2026

Grok Tests Whether AI Governance Means Anything

In recent weeks, Grok, the AI system developed by Elon Musk's xAI, has been generating nonconsensual and sexualised images of women and children on the social-media platform X. This has prompted inves...

Jan 10 , 2026

What Democracy Means for a Society's Bottom Line

Democracy is in trouble. For nine consecutive years, more countries have suffered a weakening of democratic institutions than have experienced improvement, the longest such decline in a half-century....

Jan 3 , 2026

When Language Betrays the Lives It Describes

The backlash sparked by a TikTok clip featuring “Tigi Perspective”, a self-styled social critic known for her conservative takes on gender and family, has reignited long-buried cultural tensions....

Dec 27 , 2025

AI Learns the Lyrics But Misses the Meaning

While trying to work at a café the other day, I experienced the real war on Christmas. Hoping for the familiar hum of conversation and music, I was surprised upon entering that no one was talking. St...

Dec 20 , 2025

AI Rewrites the Music Business. Musicians May Pay the Price

For a glimpse of what our AI-driven future could be, consider what is happening in the music business. It was through music that the market for non-rare products and services began, where remuneration...

Dec 13 , 2025

When Governments Put a Price on Everything

US President Donald Trump recently announced that professional work visas (H-1Bs) for the United States will now cost sponsoring institutions 100,000 dollars. This is not a fee; it is the price that a...

Dec 6 , 2025

AI Boom Promises Progress While Risks Buried in Code, Credit

In 1978, Charles Kindleberger published "Manias, Panics,& Crashes", an instant classic history of investment booms and subsequent busts. Such booms can be divided between those that end up buil...

Nov 29 , 2025

A Vibrant Art Scene Struggles Without a Home-grown Market

Addis Fine Arts, the country's leading gallery, convened a candid conversation in October this year, bringing on board three well-known figures in the contemporary arts scene, who sat before a modest...

Nov 22 , 2025

Why Emerging Economies Embrace AI

During a recent trip to Kazakhstan, I was struck by people's enthusiasm for AI. Virtually everyone I encountered, including academics, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, seemed convinced that the techno...

Nov 15 , 2025

What Kind of AI Do We Actually Want?

For decades, the Turing test was AI researchers' North Star. Today, it has been quietly surpassed. With reasoning models and agentic capabilities emerging, and with the pace of AI infrastructure build...

Nov 8 , 2025

The Quiet Labour That Keeps Peace Alive

Like the air we breathe, peace does not typically command our attention until we lose it. That is why the study of peace is inextricably linked to that of war. It seeks to understand the root causes o...

Nov 1 , 2025

Lead Recycling Pollutes Addis Abeba's Backyards

On a recent rainy morning, a visit to a small workshop in Lideta neighbourhood laid bare a public health risk often hidden in plain sight. The site, a cramped plot operating as both a garage and a hub...

Columns

Commentaries | Jun 06,2026

The Elections Offered Order at the Centre, Silence at the Edges

For a political veteran as controversial as Getachew Reda, last week's national elections...

Editorial | Jun 6 , 2026

Addis Abeba Pours a New Story in Every Cup, Where Tradition Meets Global Influence

Customers settle into a carefully curated space of dark wood, black accents, muted green f...

Featured | May 31 , 2026 . By HELINA HADGU

THE GOLD RUSH RUNS OUT OF FUEL

Zenebe Girja used to sit close to the centre of the formal gold trade, where sacks of raw...

Agenda | Jun 7 , 2026 . By MASTEWAL ZEMENE

National Census Delay Opens a New Fight Over Who Controls the Facts

The long-delayed census has returned to Parliament not as a counting exercise, but as a fi...

Fortune News | Jun 7 , 2026 . By NAHOM AYELE

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