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

Just the stuff affecting wallets, business & the economy:

🥑 4.1 Million Tons? Avocadon’t Believe The Numbers

🏋️‍♂️ Do you Even Jim Bro?

Here’s to the 122nd weekly edition

Let’s dive in.

Here’s a story we didn’t expect to cover.

Ethiopia produces 4.1 million tons of avocados every year.

At least according to a claim repeated across social media and, eventually, by Ethiopia’s embassy in Moscow.

If true, Ethiopia would be the largest avocado producer on Earth, comfortably ahead of Mexico and responsible for roughly two out of every five avocados grown worldwide.

An extraordinary agricultural revolution. Particularly because nobody can find the avocados.

In the most obvious of plot twists, UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO)-derived production data puts Ethiopia’s actual 2024 output at approximately 201,892 tons, around 9th in the world, and has been steadily falling since 2020.

So where did the other 3.9 million tons go? Living their best private lives, perhaps?

The 4.1 million figure is at best entertaining, but Ethiopia does have a genuine avocado disappearance problem.

A recent assessment of Ethiopia’s avocado value chain estimates that nearly 41 percent of production is lost because of poor handling, inadequate infrastructure and weak market systems.

This is probably true for almost all our agricultural outputs.

In some areas, avocados are harvested from tall trees using the most state of the art, tried and tested tools: long sticks.

The fruit falls to the ground, gets bruised, sits in the sun, is packed into unsuitable containers and receives further character development during transport. A 2025 study of supply chains in Ethiopia identified avocado as the worst-affected fruit in its sample, with estimated farm-level losses of 28 percent.

By the time the fruit reaches market, all it needs is a pinch of salt and a dash of lime to become guacamole.

Across Ethiopian horticulture more broadly, an estimated 30 to 50 percent of produce is lost between harvest and market. The same source says better post-harvest management could save enough food to feed more than 23 million people.

Ethiopia may not produce 4.1 million tons of avocados.

But we are extremely efficient at producing waste.

This is where Cool Port Addis enters the story.

The planned cold-storage facility for perishable goods at Modjo Dry Port has a reported project value of €44 million and capacity of 5,000 pallets. It would collect, grade, pack and refrigerate produce before sending it by rail to Djibouti and by sea to international markets.

The concept works. In 2020, one refrigerated container carrying 24 tons of Ethiopian avocados travelled 750 kilometers by train to Djibouti before continuing to Europe.

Cool Port could lower freight costs, extend shelf life and make larger-scale exports possible.

But Modjo is near the end of the avocado’s Ethiopian journey.

If fruit is badly harvested, bruised, left in the heat or transported without proper packaging before reaching the facility, refrigeration cannot reverse the damage.

It is not a time machine after all.

The less glamorous investments must therefore begin earlier: better harvesting equipment, field crates, farmer training, collection centers, pre-cooling and coordinated transport.

A minister can look remarkably photogenic inaugurating a €44 million cold-storage facility.

Put the same minister beside a farmer training session and even the embassy in Moscow will struggle with the caption.

There is a type of bank in the city that does not end with the acronyms S.C (Share Company).

It doesn't hold annual meetings, doesn’t own a banking license and instead of withdrawal forms and deposit slips, you’ll find dumbbells and weight racks with the words:

“Yesterday, you said tomorrow. Just Do It.”

Wisdom like this can only be found inside the testosterone producing, sweat generating rooms of a gym.

Now, if you’re an eagle eyed ፍራንክ Digest reader (and we know you are, just testing you 😉), then you’ll know that last week, we said that Starbucks acts like a bank.

Indeed, we put out good arguments to suggest that.

This gave us an idea to focus on the consumer side, but this time, instead of coffee, using bench presses for comparison.

You see, we all have friends that always seem to update their new year’s resolution as soon as lunch time kicks in on January 1st…መቼስ አንደባበቅም 👀

One of these resolutions is usually starting to go to the gym.

And the gym seems to get a lot of highly motivated individuals during the first few days of the new year.

Then, they drop-off. Like flies after a whiff of bug spray.

The gym economics is simple, you pay a lump sum fee upfront and based on the program that you’ve purchased you get access to a whole set of amenities that are either too expensive or way too heavy to have at your house.

Plus it’s a way to get your butt out of the house to do something that you said you would.

Average gym memberships cost about ETB 50,000 to 60,000 per year in Addis.

Yes we know, there are some some fancy which go for either double or triple that.

Which means, if you go once a week, you are technically spending around ETB 1,100 per visit. 

That’s without counting your RIDE fare or the gas you used in your car (plus the customary parking tip for the parkingologist, let’s not forget about them) and maybe a snack on your way home cause…you know…you deserve it after all of your hard work 💪

The gym, like Starbucks, sits on cash that it got before selling anything. 

Gym goers pay in advance.

If they come, great. If they don't, also great. (At least for the cash maybe not for the brand)

Either scenario doesn’t change the fact that cash is already in the account.

Now, the gym can do what it wants with this advance, what we want to know is, are our resolutions pushing us to unnecessary spending?

Going to the gym is a healthy choice for our body. Now let’s ask ourselves is it also a healthy choice for our wallet (both physical and digital, you have to mention both these days 🤷‍♂️)?

It’s a difficult question because the variables are different for everyone: the three most important commodities for an adult are Time, Money and Health.

We want all three, but that’s in a perfect world.

If the gym is a way of exercising and not training for an Olympic event, then walking or doing a pick up game is an acceptable alternative.

Probably cheaper too.

Staying healthy is good but you have to do it with discipline.

Whenever you skip the gym, that’s ETB 1,100 that could have gone to groceries or buying a little something for yourself. 

So before you insert your card into the card reader and debit that gym membership money, maybe reassess your resolutions?

Just a thought 💭