Formal remittances are doing heavy lifting for Ethiopia’s external accounts, and the National Bank wants the rest of the informal pipeline closed. Net private remittances rose 36.5 percent to $4.6 billion in the first half of the 2025/26 fiscal year, the central bank reported, while headline inflation slipped to 9.7 percent. Full-year diaspora inflows for 2025/26 have been put near $7.9 billion in government presentations tracked by Capital and ET Business View. That is real FX next to gold and coffee, not a side story.
The July 2024 Birr float narrowed the parallel-market gap and made licensed corridors look less like a tax on honesty. Telebirr and partner rails now advertise direct wallet credit at the official National Bank rate, with Ethio telecom saying receiving through integrated partners carries no Ethio-side service charge even as send-side remittance fees still sit with Western Union, Remitly, TalkRemit, and the rest. Digital transfers from the US side also sit outside the 1 percent federal excise that hit cash remittances from January 2026, which is why diaspora banking apps keep pitching card and ACH over the agent counter.
Hawala did not vanish. In April 2026 the NBE again warned that unlicensed remittance activity, domestic or cross-border, breaks Ethiopian law and listed approved providers that include Western Union, MoneyGram, PayPal, telebirr, and Yaya Wallet. Abiy Ahmed’s government sells the surge as reform success. The harder read is that households still shop fees, speed, and trust, and that informal networks grow wherever formal FX desks ration dollars or delay payouts. Remittance fees, Birr float math, and hawala enforcement are now the same story: who captures the diaspora dollar, and who pays to move it.
Sources:
Banks in Ethiopia / NBE figures
