by The Fikiria Desk | Jul 29, 2024 | Intellectual
Every reforming government wants the credibility of a market without the pain of getting there, and most discover the two cannot be separated. Ethiopia’s decision on 29 July 2024 to float the birr, announced by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), is best read...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jul 29, 2024 | Profiles
The temptation in any bold reform is to hang it on a single decisive figure, and the risk is that the institution behind them never learns to repeat the act. Ethiopia’s shift on 29 July 2024 to a market-based foreign-exchange regime, delivered by the National...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jul 29, 2024 | Money
For a decade, Ethiopia held out a frustrating bargain to international capital: a market of more than 120 million people and visible growth, paired with almost no dependable way to price the birr or move a profit home. On 29 July 2024, the National Bank of Ethiopia...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jul 29, 2024 | Lifestyle
A currency reform is an abstraction until it reaches a hotel rate card, a taxi fare or a market stall, and then it becomes the most concrete thing in a person’s week. Ethiopia’s move on 29 July 2024 to a market-based foreign-exchange regime, announced by...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jul 29, 2024 | Money
East Africa’s firms have spent years treating Ethiopia as the large neighbour they could not quite do business with, a market of more than 120 million people, next door, yet walled off by a currency nobody outside could reliably price or repatriate. On 29 July...