Good morning. Pour the buna.

The Ethiopian fiscal year ended last week, and the numbers came in like report cards nobody wanted to hide. Record exports. Record FDI. Record budget. Record premiums, record profits, record payment volumes. And while the government was closing the books on 2025/26, the Ethiopian Securities Exchange was quietly opening new ones, four more companies moved a step closer to listing, an insurer registered securities for the first time in the country’s history, and the regulator handed out three fresh licenses.

But the week’s most symbolic story didn’t happen in Addis at all. It happened in Karachi, where the man who built Africa’s largest airline was picked to rescue Pakistan’s. Ethiopia, it turns out, doesn’t just export coffee and gold anymore. It exports flight routes, electricity, and now, chief executives.

Let’s get into it.

Aviation

Ethiopian Airlines lands in Mauritius.

The national carrier inaugurated its new passenger service to Mauritius on July 12, operating three times weekly and adding another spoke to the Addis Ababa hub. The route connects the Indian Ocean island nation to Ethiopian’s network across Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas, and reinforces the airline’s strategy of stitching the continent together through Bole. For Mauritius, a financial services and tourism economy, a direct line to Africa’s largest carrier network is no small thing.

And the man who built that network is off to Pakistan.

Tewolde Gebremariam, the former Ethiopian Airlines Group CEO who grew the carrier from a $1 billion regional airline into a $4.5 billion continental giant over his 2011–2022 tenure, has been selected to lead Pakistan International Airlines. The newly privatized PIA, offloaded to an Arif Habib-led consortium after racking up more than $2.8 billion in accumulated losses, is betting that the architect of Africa’s biggest aviation success story can engineer a second one in South Asia. The appointment awaits final clearances, but weekend reports out of Karachi say the decision is done. (Source: Bloomberg)

Capital Market

The market nearly tripled in a week.

ESX equity trading jumped to 39.4 million birr in value for July 6–10, up 183% from the previous week’s 13.9 million, with volume rising to 19,818 shares across 345 trades. The average ticket also got bigger, roughly 114,000 birr per trade, up 20%, meaning the surge wasn’t just more activity, but larger ones. Meanwhile, the interbank money market cooled 8.5% to 58.5 billion birr, and the 7-day rate eased 26.6 basis points to converge with the overnight rate at exactly 12.000%. Money got quieter; equities got louder. (Source: ESX)

The listing pipeline just got four names longer.

ESX granted Approval in Principle to Ayat S.C., Sidama Bank, Nib Insurance S.C., and ZamZam Bank to list on its Main Market. Ayat, Sidama, and Nib still need to complete securities registration with ECMA and publish their prospectuses; ZamZam has already done both, putting it closest to the bell. Notably, Ayat would bring real estate to an exchange so far dominated by banks and Nib would bring insurance. The market is diversifying before it has even finished forming. (Source: StockMarket.et)

ECMA licensed three new market players.

PrizeWorth Investment Bank S.C. received an Investment Bank license, while BluFin Capital Advisory PLC and Lumina Capital PLC were licensed as Securities Investment Advisors, taking the total number of licensed Capital Market Service Providers from 18 to 21. The Authority also approved 10 Appointed Representatives and 15 board directors for the new firms. Ethiopia now has eight licensed investment banks and eleven securities investment advisors. Director General Hana Tehelku urged the newcomers to serve with “professionalism and integrity” the ecosystem is growing faster than the market it serves, and the regulator knows the trust deficit is the real constraint. (Source: StockMarket.et)

Hibret Insurance made history.

It became the first insurance company in Ethiopia to register its securities with ECMA, with the Authority approving its Registration Statement on June 29 under Directive No. 1030/2024. The registration covers 1.5 million existing ordinary shares plus a rights issue of 476,190 new shares for current shareholders. CBE Capital Investment Bank advised the transaction, with CEO Zemedeneh Negatu calling it an important step in deepening the market. Insurance has arrived at the capital market’s door and with Nib holding Approval in Principle at ESX, it won’t be alone for long. (Source: StockMarket.et)

The registration counter kept ticking.

ECMA also registered the securities of Gadaa Bank S.C., 230,713 existing shares plus one million new shares approved for offer and Zam Zam Bank S.C., covering five million existing shares and one million new ones. Both Registration Statements were approved on June 29 under the same directive. The pattern is now unmistakable: register, publish, list. The machinery Ethiopia spent two years building is running on schedule. (Source: StockMarket.et)

Banking & Digital Finance

EthSwitch had a trillion-birr year.

The national payment switch reported a gross profit before tax of ETB 2.6 billion for FY 2025/26 after processing 387 million interoperable transactions worth ETB 1.26 trillion. P2P transfers did the heavy lifting, 242.6 million transactions worth ETB 1.06 trillion, while the EthioPay Instant Payment System crossed one million P2P transactions in a single day, moving ETB 5.1 billion in its highest daily volume yet. The company also launched its 2026/27–2030/31 strategic plan and took home the Best Financial Inclusion Technology Initiative in Africa award in Kuala Lumpur. The rails underneath Ethiopia’s digital economy are no longer the bottleneck. (Source: StockMarket.et)

Hijra Bank showed what a lifted cap looks like.

The interest-free lender posted annual revenue of 3.55 billion birr, up 97% year-on-year and more than its previous four years of revenue combined, after the National Bank of Ethiopia exempted fully Sharia-compliant banks from its credit growth ceiling. Gross profit before tax hit 1.9 billion birr, and total assets more than doubled, from 14.61 billion to 31.45 billion birr. Board Chairperson Abdusalam Kemal’s argument to the regulator was simple: interest-free banks can’t park money in T-bills or interest-bearing instruments, so the cap hit them twice as hard. The NBE agreed. The result is the clearest natural experiment yet in what Ethiopia’s credit restrictions have been costing. (Source: Capital)

ZamZam crossed a billion on Ansar.

The bank surpassed ETB 1 billion in digital Sharia-compliant financing through its Ansar platform, built with Kifiya’s AI-powered decisioning infrastructure, reaching more than 10,000 MSMEs and 18,800 merchants nationwide. The standout figure: 82% of financed customers are women-led businesses, and a large share are first-time borrowers. In a week when ZamZam also cleared its final registration hurdles at ECMA, the bank is making a two-front case, to regulators and to investors, that Islamic finance scales. (Source: StockMarket.et)

Michu topped 60 billion birr.

Cooperative Bank of Oromia’s collateral-free digital lending platform, also powered by Kifiya, has now disbursed more than 60 billion birr through over 3.2 million loan accounts since launch. For context, the platform crossed 50 billion only in April, a 10-billion-birr sprint in roughly a quarter. Uncollateralized digital credit isn’t a pilot program anymore; it’s a parallel banking system.

But the credit map still has a gender problem.

A National Bank of Ethiopia study found that women receive only 17% of the value of Ethiopia’s traditional bank credit, a stark imbalance in a week when digital platforms like Ansar reported 82% women-led borrowers. The contrast tells its own story: where lending requires collateral, relationships, and branch visits, women are shut out; where it runs on algorithms and transaction data, they dominate. The future of women’s finance in Ethiopia may simply not run through the branch network. (Source: Birr Metrics)

Macro & The Economy

Exports set an all-time record.

Ethiopia earned more than $10.7 billion from exports in FY 2025/26, the highest annual figure in the country’s history, up roughly 29% from $8.3 billion the year before and 114% of the annual target, according to Trade Minister Kassahun Gofe. Gold led the way at over $5.5 billion, while coffee brought in about $3 billion, up from $2.65 billion. The record lands squarely in the reform-program narrative: a floated birr, better market access, and a government desperate to narrow the external imbalance finally have a headline number to show for it. (Source: Birr Metrics)

FDI climbed to $4.32 billion.

The Ethiopian Investment Commission reported an 8% year-on-year increase in foreign direct investment for the fiscal year, alongside 528 new investment licenses and $225 million in exports from Special Economic Zones, an 80% jump. Commissioner Zeleke Temesgen credited the macroeconomic reforms for improving the investment climate, and noted the figure excludes pledges from the Invest in Ethiopia 2026 Forum that have only recently secured licenses. More than 260 projects moved into implementation during the year. (Source: StockMarket.et)

Parliament passed a 2.34 trillion birr budget.

The House of People’s Representatives approved the record federal budget for 2026/27 by majority vote, targeting 1.49 trillion birr in tax revenue, a goal that will require continued digitization of tax administration and closing policy gaps. The Standing Committee’s endorsement came with warnings: the Auditor General continues to find violations of financial laws in government institutions, and delayed road projects are piling up costs and governance headaches. A record budget is easy to pass. Collecting 1.49 trillion birr in taxes is the hard part. (Source: StockMarket.et)

Insurance

Awash Insurance closed a record year of its own.

The private-sector leader generated more than 6.1 billion birr in gross written premiums, up 35% year-on-year, holding its market leadership across life, health, and Takaful segments. Board Chairman Tadesse Gemeda credited “strong strategy, mature leadership, and a committed workforce” — and the company says a major digital upgrade is next. With Hibret registering securities and Nib holding ESX approval, Ethiopia’s insurers are having their most consequential quarter in decades. (Source: Birr Metrics)

Energy & Infrastructure

Kenya will pay 15.5 US cents per kilowatt-hour for Ethiopian power.

The newly finalized purchase agreement, signed by Ethiopian Electric Utility CEO Getu Geremew and Kenya Power’s Joseph Siror, sets the tariff at roughly 24.07 birr per kWh plus a monthly demand charge. That’s a steep climb from the 6.5 cents in the original 2022 deal, but still comfortably below the 22–25 cents Kenyan households pay retail and the up-to-23-cents thermal IPPs charge, saving Kenya an estimated $10 million annually. Ethiopia supplied 83% of Kenya’s electricity imports last fiscal year, and with GERD fully online and installed capacity at 9,752 MW, power is quietly becoming one of Ethiopia’s most reliable exports. (Source: Capital)

The City

Addis Ababa capped rent increases at 11.5%.

The city’s Housing Development and Administration Bureau set the ceiling for privately owned residential properties for the 2026/27 fiscal year, based on what it called a scientific assessment of households’ ability to pay. Registration of renewed lease agreements opened Tuesday, July 8, across all sub-cities. With previous studies showing some Addis residents spending as much as 80% of their income on rent, the cap is the city’s attempt to hold the line, enforcement, as always, will be the real test. (Source: Birr Metrics)

Deep Dive of the Week

From an Undersubscribed IPO to 900 Birr: The Short, Sharp Journey of TELE

Ethio Telecom shares closed at 900 birr on Monday, three times the 300 birr IPO price, six weeks after listing. But the road there was anything but smooth: an offer that raised barely a tenth of its 30 billion birr target, an eleven-month administrative grind of KYC checks and dematerialization, a dividend year that paid shareholders nothing, and now a euphoric rally running on a float of just 10.7 million shares. Yesuf Hadji traces how Ethiopia’s flagship stock compressed an entire market education into one price chart and why, six weeks in, TELE is doing exactly what a flagship should: teaching the market how to be a market.

Read the full piece: https://www.stockmarket.et/from-an-undersubscribed-ipo-to-900-birr-the-short-sharp-journey-of-tele/

🎙️ The Podcast

The latest episode of our podcast is live. This week, we break down debt securities, what bonds and T-bills actually are, how they work, and why they matter for Ethiopia’s developing capital market.

▶️ Watch here:

☕ The Last Sip

A fiscal year that ended with every scoreboard lit up. Records in exports, investment, payments, premiums, and profits and a listing pipeline that added four names in a single week. The question for 2026/27 was written between the lines of every story above: the numbers are getting bigger, but can the institutions keep pace? The Auditor General’s warnings, the 1.49 trillion birr tax target, the 17% women’s credit share, and TELE’s 11% bid-ask spread all point to the same answer the building isn’t finished. But for the first time in a long time, the foundation looks solid.

Keep your coffee strong. See you next Monday. ☕