Hey crew, here’s to another week of cutting through the noise and focusing on what actually moves financial minds forward.

No buzzwords, just the stuff affecting wallets, businesses, & the economy:

📼 Curing the Mega Project Hangover

👀 3 Months In, Verdict on Neway…

📈 Banks, Billions, and Kim Kardashian

Here’s to the 111th edition

Let’s dive in.

Do you still pay to fix a broken VHS cassette player when you already have Netflix? Probably not.

But when it comes to governments, they sometimes spend millions of Birr keeping old "cassette player" institutions running long after everyone else has moved on.

To see what we mean, let’s look at our neighbors in Egypt.

Naguib Sawiris, media mogul and billionaire, recently caused a massive stir online.

He asked why regular taxpayers are paying about USD 61 million every single year to cover the losses of state-owned TV channels.

His exact words? Taxpayers are footing the bill for channels "that nobody watches."

Decades ago, those state TV stations were the most important voices. But today, everyone has satellite TV, YouTube and TikTok.

So, the old studios lose money and the government has to cover the gap using public funds.

Heavily indebted State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Ethiopia, particularly within the electricity, railway and sugar sectors, have historically been a source of acute fiscal drains.

Should the government consider restructuring them or cutting them off completely? The Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH), our very own sovereign wealth fund, absolutely believes in restructuring.

Let’s look at both sides of the coin.

አንበሳ (Heads): Old Habits Pushed Us to the Brink

Macroeconomists like Dr. Eyob Tesfaye argue that letting the state run everything without careful checks is highly costly.

Those failed "mega-projects" like railway, sugar and fertilizer projects are still fresh in our memories.

All in the name of visible symbols of development… fingers crossed ኮሪደር ልማት doesn’t join the list as well!

CBE and DBE shouldered so much bad loans they had to be bailed out, ultimately by taxpayers.

ሚዛን (Tails): Reform Instead of Privatization

With all that debt, you might think the solution is to instantly sell every state company to private investors. But the people running our economy say: Not so fast.

Brook Taye, the head of Ethiopian Investment Holdings (EIH) manages 40 of our biggest state companies, like Ethiopian Airlines and Ethio Telecom, and made the government's strategy very clear… No privatization!

Why choose reform (a.k.a. adapting to the times) over selling everything?

We cannot go back to the old days of letting state companies borrow unlimited money for political mega-projects without paying it back. Our banks and frankly taxpayers cannot afford another pickpocket.

The right path forward is about making state companies thrive in the real world and investing in forward looking technology. By forcing them to compete fairly with private businesses, just like Ethio Telecom is now doing with Safaricom.

Profits rolling into the government coffers means more leeway to provide social services like protecting the vulnerable, building infrastructure and ensuring every citizen has a fair chance at a good life.

In March 2026, we were different people.

Project Hail Mary had just came out, Iran just closed the Strait of Hormuz and Ethiopians were introduced to this new weird looking app of graphs and tickers and symbols and arrows where you can buy and sell these things called ‘stocks’

The birth of Neway was not earth shattering news, but we said that it was potentially the start of something special, three months in, this is how it’s going:

Now, we don’t want to be too harsh on Neway, after all, ESX is trying.

So ‘A’ for effort!

But there is obvious issues that need to be addressed asap.

For example, the ‘Announcements’ and ‘News’ tabs show blank pages.

Logging in can feel like starting a motor with a stick and for an app that positions itself as a conduit for real time data, the absence of push notifications are a bit peculiar 🤔

Most people (especially those exposed to the world outside እሚዬ ኢትዮጵያ) expected a sleek and sharp looking app.

That could be part of the problem though, judging the app based on western expectations. Perhaps we should fix our thinking?

But one thing we can’t compromise on is any downtime.

When markets are open, a split second decision can be detrimental. That ‘ሲስተም የለም’ excuse won’t fly hear.

ESX, if you’re listening, note to you.

So How Does This Affect Me?

Are you looking to get involved in bond and equity investing?

Do you feel like current investment opportunities such as buying shares and real estate are out of reach?

Well Neway could potentially be your savior.

It brings the concept of digital access to investment products into fruition.

You set up your account, pick your stocks/bonds and execute your buy and sell trades.

Easier said than done, but you get faster returns (or losses) with a more transparent lens.

A pilot testing would have been nice, add to that a strong campaign to educate both the equity listers (companies and what not) and retail traders (you and I) to promote confidence in the system and you get a strong foundation 💪

Neway has a way to go yet it’s important that we don’t get off the train before it leaves the station…

Ethiopia’s Interbank Money Market has crossed 3 trillion birr in cumulative transactions!

Naturally, it broke the internet. Global headlines, emergency podcasts. Right next to rumors that Kim Kardashian is dating Lewis Hamilton.

Yes, we know.

It sounds like the part of finance where joy goes to die.

But the idea of an Interbank Money Market is actually simple, yet important: it is where banks lend money to each other for short periods, usually overnight or for a few days.

‘But why would banks need to borrow from each other overnight?’, you ask?

Because banks are constantly moving money.

Deposits come in.

Loans go out.

Customers withdraw.

Companies transfer.

Salaries land, salaries disappear.

Someone somewhere is always shifting large amounts of money at the worst possible time.

So, by the end of the day, some banks have more cash than they need. Others end the day looking around like, “anyone got 2 billion until morning?”

That is where the interbank market comes in. It helps move short-term money from where it is sitting to where it is needed.

That improves liquidity, finance-speak for whether banks have enough disposable cash at the right time to honor things such as your withdrawal requests, transfers, and all the other daily movements.

It also helps with price discovery.

In simple terms, banks start learning the real price of short-term money.

If many banks need cash, interest rate goes up. If cash is easy, the rate comes down.

Basically, money starts getting a market price instead of relying on grand daddy, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), when the siblings cannot sort things out themselves.

And that’s important for the wider economy, as we’re talking about the plumbing underneath the shiny financial reforms: stock exchange, foreign banks etc.

The Ethiopian Securities Exchange (ESX) announcement that the interbank market has now passed 3 trillion birr reflects growing participation by financial institutions. It’s a big milestone for something most people will never directly touch.

But finance is full of important things we only notice when they fail.

You don’t think about payment systems until your transfer fails when the waiter is standing there.

You don’t think about liquidity until banks put a limit on your withdrawals, or stop lending.

You don’t think about plumbing until the leak becomes a household emergency.

This is not the kind of reform that makes headlines.

But it is the kind that indicates the financial system is slightly more mature, more market-based and less dependent on emergency fixes.

That is a start, if not progress.

Before money can move into shares, bonds, business loans, and all the other stuff that keeps an economy moving, it first needs to move properly between banks.

Boring? Absolutely.

Important? Very.