by Yaada Magazine | Aug 14, 2026 | Money
Capital that a business cannot touch is capital that cannot work. Ethiopia’s foreign-exchange bureaux have long operated under exactly that constraint: a security deposit locked away with the regulator, and tight ceilings on how much cash they could hold against...
by Yaada Magazine | Aug 11, 2026 | Money
A rule designed to control money can also quietly discourage it. For years, Ethiopians who wanted to hold a foreign-currency account had to keep a minimum balance simply to keep the account open, and anyone moving more than US$10,000 in cash through customs had to...
by Yaada Magazine | Aug 8, 2026 | Money
For decades an Ethiopian importer who agreed today to pay a foreign supplier in ninety days was, in effect, placing a bet they could not hedge. The price was fixed in dollars or euros; the cost in Birr would be whatever the exchange rate happened to be when the...
by Yaada Magazine | Aug 5, 2026 | Money
Ethiopia’s central bank says the banking sector is well positioned to absorb plausible shocks. Its own stress test says sixteen banks are not. Both statements appear in the same exercise, and the distance between them is the story. A system can be sound on...
by Yaada Magazine | Aug 2, 2026 | Money
Ethiopia has more banks than ever and less competition than the headcount suggests. Thirty-one commercial banks now operate in the market, a roster that reads like a healthy, contested sector. The arithmetic underneath tells a different story. Twenty-five of those...
