Good morning! Pour the buna. This week’s number is 21. That is how many years Sheraton Addis went without a profit, according to MIDROC’s chief executive. 

Hold that thought. Dangote opened his refinery to anyone with 10 shares’ worth of naira. The ESX cleared 11 companies to go public. And Wegagen, our first listed company, showed what public books look like, good news.

Capital Market

The ESX has 11 more companies waiting at the door

The exchange has given early approval to 11 companies to list their shares. That would nearly triple the market, which has six listed companies today. New CEO Yodit Kassa told Bloomberg the first one, a financial-services firm she didn’t name, starts trading this week. Most of the queue is banks and insurers. The exchange’s goal is 50 listed companies by 2030.

Getting companies to list is the easy half. The harder half is getting people to trade them. Total trading since the market opened only passed 1 billion birr in June. Eleven new names won’t help much if the same small group of investors is doing all the buying.

Wegagen: more profit, less profit per share

Wegagen made 3.15 billion birr in net profit, up 13.6%. But it also raised a lot of new capital from shareholders, and that new money hasn’t started earning yet. So each share earned about a quarter less than last year. Costs grew faster than income, and the bank earned $366 million in foreign currency, up 34%.

This is what being listed means. A private company can report “profit up” and stop there. A listed one has to answer the next question: up for whom? Wegagen now has a year to show the new capital pays its way.

Two Billionaires, Two Ways of Doing It

Dangote lets the public in

Africa’s biggest share sale opened on September 14. The Dangote Refinery is selling 4.1 billion shares at 525 naira each, worth $1.6 to $2 billion. The minimum buy is just 10 shares, and people can buy through bank apps, fintech apps and even USSD codes. It closes October 13. Dangote says the point is sharing ownership, not raising cash, though the money will also help fund a $14.3 billion expansion that would double the refinery’s output by 2029. His net worth hit $51.3 billion on opening day, up from $13.4 billion in 2024.

There’s an Ethiopian angle too. United Capital, the first foreign investment bank licensed in Ethiopia, is one of the deal’s lead managers and brokers.

When Ethiopia’s big companies eventually list, the playbook will look like this: low minimums, phone-based buying, and banks that have done it before. United Capital is getting that experience in Lagos right now.

MIDROC admits it nearly went under

MIDROC’s CEO Jemal Ahmed told Fana TV what happened after Sheikh Mohammed Al-Amoudi was detained in Saudi Arabia in 2017. Several group companies couldn’t pay salaries, some had property sent to auction, and one industrial firm was shut down owing close to 5 billion birr. Only a few businesses could stand on their own. He also said Sheraton Addis made no profit and saved nothing for repairs for 21 years. Carpets went unchanged for 27 years, and a fully equipped restaurant sat closed for 23.

The group says it’s turned around. It reports 80,000 workers, up from 47,000, and $390 million in exports last year. In May, the IFC lent $80 million to refurbish the Sheraton and build a second one next door. Then Al-Amoudi spoke to staff himself for the first time in years. He wants MIDROC to grow to 120,000 workers, is planning a “ten-star” hotel, and joked that the media “have killed me once or twice.”

Banking

Gadaa Bank more than doubles its profit

Gadaa Bank made 1.05 billion birr before tax, up from 444 million a year earlier. Its assets grew 64% to 16.5 billion birr, and it reached 1 million customers in three and a half years. Interest-free banking brought in 56% of its income.

Interest-free banking has become a main line of business, not a side window. More than half of a fast-growing bank’s income now comes from it.

Power

Less water, but more promises

Water flowing into Ethiopia’s dams fell about 20%, so Ethiopian Electric Power cut supply to Bitcoin miners by 75%. That matters because miners paid 35% of the utility’s revenue last year. In the same week, the utility said it will double exports to Kenya to 400MW from December. It is also negotiating €400 million from three Italian banks to finish the Koysha dam, which is three years late.

Here’s the tension. The utility says it will look again in October, and if water stays low, exports could be cut too. It’s promising Kenya twice the power for December while warning it might have less to give. A country that runs almost entirely on hydropower has to plan around the rain, and Koysha is part of how it stops depending on one river.

Mining

Kurmuk is weeks from its first gold

Allied Gold’s $500 million Kurmuk mine is now connected to the national grid and has started crushing ore. It expects its first gold pour within weeks. At full speed it would produce about nine tonnes a year. That’s close to triple what all of Ethiopia’s large commercial mines produced last year, most of which came from MIDROC’s Legedembi mine.

Gold earned about half of Ethiopia’s $11.2 billion in exports last year, but more than 90% came from small, traditional miners selling to the central bank. Kurmuk would be the first big gold exporter that doesn’t need central bank buying to bring in dollars.

Money Coming Home

Remittances are up more than eight times in a decade

A UN agency report (IFAD) puts Ethiopia’s formally recorded remittances at $7.14 billion, making it Africa’s fourth-largest receiver. That money equals about 43% of export earnings and 5% of the economy. Sending $100 home still costs about $4.20, above the 3% global target.

Money sent home from abroad is now as important to the country’s dollar supply as a big export sector. Every point cut from sending fees means more money landing with families.

Aviation

Ethiopian is still Africa’s biggest airline

Ethiopian Airlines flew 2.1 million seats in September, up 10% and almost double second-placed Safair. Bole is now Africa’s second-busiest airport, behind Cairo.

Policy

A US sanctions order runs out

The US order signed in 2021 over the northern conflict expired on September 17. The companies and people removed from the list were mostly Eritrean, including the ruling party and the army. Earlier this year, Washington also eased limits on arms sales to Ethiopia.

This is a legal deadline passing, not a big policy change. But it adds to a pattern: the rules left over from the war years are slowly being taken apart.

Deep Dive

Why being poor in Ethiopia costs more

A quarter kilo of sugar costs more per gram than a full kilo. Injera bought one piece at a time costs more than flour from a quintal of teff. Charcoal costs about six times more per meal than cooking with electricity, but a tin is cheap today and a mitad is not. This week’s deep dive follows that everyday poverty premium through food, fuel, harvest seasons, credit and minibus fares. Its argument is that it isn’t bad choices. It’s lacking three things at once: cash now, somewhere to store things, and the ability to wait.

Read the full piece on Stockmarket.et →

That’s your Monday Breakfast Stories for this week. Dangote opened his books to the public, MIDROC opened up about its past, the ESX is about to open its doors to 11 more companies, and Wegagen showed that open books mean hearing the bad news with the good. Meanwhile the dams ran low, Kurmuk got close to gold, and the diaspora kept sending money home.

See you next Monday ☕