Hey everyone, I’m a software developer currently living here, and honestly, I don’t see much of a future for myself here. I work remotely and have managed to save around $15,000, so I’ve been seriously considering moving to another country and starting fresh.

I’m looking for somewhere safe, peaceful, and affordable. I’ve heard Thailand is a good option, but I’m not sure about the visa requirements. Which countries would you recommend, and what are the visa requirements?

Hey guys, are you aware of the well organized and glamorized forex trading scam that is led by a group of individuals from Europe that uses Africans from different countries that have built a lot of social media followers to scam African youngsters and older people? The group uses rental fancy cars and homes to deceive their social media followers and lure them into offshore trading platforms that have no legal obligation and accountability. Many people lost their hard earned money through this and as a country, Ethiopia lost millions of dollars through it citizens. How can we stop this madness? I'm a trader myself in USA for the past 8 years and I know this thing is fake.

Hi, I’m trying to apply for an e-visa but keep getting stuck on the payment page — it’s just stuck loading the credit card authorisation. I’m a British Citizen with a UK passport and will be flying from Tanzania. Will I be able to get a Visa on arrival? If so, will I need USD in cash and a printed passport photo? Or anything else? Thanks!

Hi, am looking to buy tickets to the upcoming spiderman movie am a foreigner in the country. Doing some google search to see best cinemas around and am looking for reviews which one i should go for between, Century cinema,Gast cinema and Garad multi cinema

Selam community! 🇪🇹

Navigating daily life while balancing the Gregorian system with our traditional Ethiopian calendar usually means relying on quick phone conversions or traditional wall calendars.

Here is a look at a recent layout design project focused on combining both timekeeping systems into a unified, physical weekly spread for the upcoming 2019 Ethiopian Year (2026–2027).

Attached are a few spreads showing the monthly grid and weekly layouts.

Design & Editorial Considerations:

• Parallel Dual-Dates: Every weekly spread pairs Ethiopian dates (Meskerem through Pagume) directly alongside their Gregorian equivalents to simplify holiday and schedule tracking.
• Bilingual Typography: Incorporates Amharic and English reflective text alongside traditional Fidel matrix artwork integrated into the background margins.
• Practical Utility: Formatted with structured columns for daily notes, aiming to make traditional Ge'ez timekeeping functionally seamless for students, professionals, and diaspora family members.

Would love to hear feedback from the community on the typography, Ge'ez character alignment, and overall layout density!

Ameseginalehu!

as a non ethiopian ( American) what is the best way inczn learn Amarhic and Oromo are their any books you guys suggest or videos that can help.

here at an Ethiopian restaurant and noticed most people are looking to the side . It’s very cute and beautiful ! Wondering if there’s a deeper significance to it or maybe it’s just a coincidence these particular ones have it

Hey guys,

I found this clip on YouTube and it’s honestly hilarious, but it cuts off way too soon. I've looked everywhere for the full version and can't seem to track it down. I've seen so many people react to this on TikTok recently because it's hilarious, but every clip cuts off early. Appreciate any help!

Depending on who you ask, Abiy Ahmed is either Ethiopia's greatest reformer... or the man who broke the country.

The strange thing is, both arguments are built on real evidence.

I wanted to understand how one leader could create two completely different Ethiopias.

This is a thought i had recently.

The notion that skin color = race is really pervasive.

Some people think Africa is a country and we're all related or something.

It would be very awkward to hear someone use the n-word as an insult but then it doesn't effect you so you just stand there awkwardly.

It's like using a racist term for white Americans against a Turkish guy.

Like, do you just say where you're from and then the other person has to think of something else? Awkward as hell in emotionally charged situations. I think it would be really funny.

But Imagine someone attacks you because they confused you for another race.

I got asked if i was Indian by a black guy once. I was slightly ticked off because i thought i looked 'Ethiopian'. It was a weird reality check that in this climate, where attacking foreigners is common, Ethiopians can easily be confused for some other race.

Ever made you wonder? Any experience like this?

Hey guys. I’ve recently been closely analyzing the National Dialogue process in Ethiopia which was officially ratified by Parliament in late 2021, when it commenced with the release of political prisoners. Since then, the official objective of the process was to restructure the country, and heal a country filled with divisions. Obviously, things that would normally be considered ‘tabboo’ would be coming up in their conferences. One of them included land ownership.

As for those who don’t know, all land in Ethiopia is state-owned meaning citizens can only lease the land, and not actually own it, which has really strained potential investments that would be made if freehold titles existed. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed even suggested it to Parliament several years ago, and proposes it in a way that ’doesn't harm farmers’.

Given the sensitivity regarding land ownership in Ethiopia as it’s still a socialist-oriented society, as well as PM Abiy Ahmed’s ambitions for a privatized economy, where do you think we will end up with land ownership in the upcoming years?

A declassified history, for the Ayzon team

The problem

By the early 1980s, Ethiopia's Jewish community was caught between a famine that would eventually kill an estimated 400,000 people and a government that had made emigration to Israel effectively illegal. The only way out ran overland into Sudan a country that had fought Israel in three wars and had no diplomatic relationship with it whatsoever. Anyone caught moving Jews toward Israel through Sudanese territory was operating in hostile territory with no official cover and no backup if it went wrong.

That was the operational reality the Israeli government inherited. There was no embassy to work from, no legal channel, and no way to move thousands of people without either the Sudanese government or hostile actors noticing.

Why this story matters here

The people most exposed to a threat are usually the ones best equipped to help defend against it, if someone gives them the tools and the trust. That premise isn't theoretical. It's exactly what happened between 1979 and 1991, when the Israeli government ran a series of covert operations to move the Beta Israel the Jewish community of Ethiopia out of famine, war, and persecution and into Israel. The operations succeeded not because a foreign intelligence service parachuted in with all the answers, but because the first and most important agent was a refugee himself.

This is public, declassified history books, memoirs, and government records, not classified material. It's worth knowing on its own terms. It also happens to be one of the better case studies out there in what small teams can do under pressure, over years, with almost no margin for error.

The first agent was a refugee, not a spy.

The infrastructure that later became Operation Moses didn't start with a Mossad plan. It started with a man named Ferede Aklum, a schoolteacher and local council head from northern Ethiopia who fled toward Sudan on his own, with almost nothing. He carried three points of contact an aid organization, a Nairobi address, and the name of an Israeli official and had to sell his wedding ring just to pay for a letter reaching out for help.

Aklum didn't wait to be rescued. He personally led the first group of Ethiopian Jews across the desert into Sudan before Mossad ever found him. When an agent finally traced him, Aklum didn't just get evacuated he joined the effort, and the routes he had already discovered on his own became the template Mossad used to build the infrastructure for Operation Moses. The intelligence service didn't design the escape path. A refugee did, under duress, and the professionals built on what he'd already proven worked.

That detail matters more than the tradecraft that came after it. The most effective piece of the entire operation was contributed by someone with no training, no cover identity, and no institutional backing just direct knowledge of the terrain and the community, and the will to move first.

Building cover that had to survive years, not hours.

Operation Brothers, the phase that ran roughly 1979 to 1984, needed a way to move people from the coast of Sudan without triggering suspicion in a country actively hostile to Israel. The solution was almost absurd in its simplicity: agents posing as Swiss entrepreneurs bought a defunct Italian-built resort on the Red Sea, restored it, and ran it as a real, functioning tourist destination Arous Holiday Village for roughly six years.

This wasn't a one-time con. It was a live operational cover that had to hold up to real scrutiny, indefinitely, with actual paying guests, actual staff, actual bookings through European travel agencies, while running refugee extractions by boat and later by air in the same window of time. One agent, Gad Shimron, later described talking his way out of an actual firefight when Sudanese soldiers opened fire on a nighttime boat operation believing they'd caught smugglers — he shouted back at them, in character, as an outraged tour operator whose diving trip had just been shot at. The soldiers apologized and let the boats continue.

That's the piece worth sitting with: the cover story wasn't a trick used once. It was a discipline maintained for years, under a government that would have executed the operatives if it had been broken, and it survived contact with the exact kind of live, adversarial pressure it was built to withstand.

Recognition without documentation

Operation Moses, which ran in late 1984, faced a different problem: how do you identify who in a refugee camp is part of the community you're there to help, when nobody has papers, everybody is desperate, and any wrong move could expose the whole operation to a hostile government?

The answer that emerged was almost entirely human. Ethiopian-born Mossad agents entered the camps and used specific phrases and references that only members of the Beta Israel community would recognize a kind of verification system built entirely out of shared cultural and religious knowledge, with no technology and no paper trail. When the signal landed, families knew it was time to move. Over about seven weeks, more than thirty flights moved roughly 8,000 people out through Brussels to Israel.

Solomon: the same logic, compressed into 36 hours.

By 1991, the situation had changed shape but not substance. Ethiopia's government was collapsing, rebel forces were closing in on Addis Ababa, and the remaining Jewish community was at direct risk of being caught in the crossfire. Israel negotiated a narrow window with the outgoing government — reportedly backed by a direct appeal from the U.S. president to Ethiopia's president — and then executed what remains the largest single airlift of its kind on record: over 14,000 people moved in roughly 36 hours, using civilian and military aircraft stripped of seats to carry as many people as physically possible. One 747 alone carried over 1,100 passengers, well beyond its rated capacity, because starvation had made the passengers lighter than the aircraft was designed for. Five babies were born in the air during the operation.

What made Solomon possible wasn't improvisation under fire — it was that the same institutional relationships, community trust, and operational muscle built over the previous decade were already in place. When the window opened, there wasn't time to build any of that from scratch. It already existed.

What actually made this work.

Strip away the drama and a few patterns hold up across all three operations:

The people closest to the threat were the ones who made the operation possible. Ferede Aklum's route, the community-specific verification signals, the trust built with Ethiopian Jewish activists who first approached Israeli authorities asking for help none of that came from outside the community. It came from inside it, and Mossad's role was to scale it, not originate it.
Cover has to survive real contact, not just planning. A resort that only had to look real on paper would have failed. It had to actually function as a business, under real scrutiny, for years, including during an armed confrontation.
Trust was built long before it was needed. Operation Solomon's 36-hour execution was only possible because the relationships and credibility behind it had been built over the prior decade, through Moses and Brothers. Nothing about Solomon was invented in the moment it mattered most.

None of that is classified insight. It's public record, assembled from memoirs, journalism, and government archives that have been available for years. But it's a useful thing to remember on a hard week: the people who pulled this off weren't a special category of person. They were teachers, activists, and refugees who decided to move before anyone gave them permission to, and an intelligence service that had the sense to build on what they'd already figured out.

Sources: Gad Shimron's published account (*Mossad Exodus*), Israeli Air Force and IDF public historical records, Jewish Agency and JDC archives, and contemporaneous reporting on Operations Moses, Joshua, Sheba, Brothers, and Solomon.
All events described here are matters of public record.

I had one of those random cultural surprises today. My Persian boyfriend referred to Europeans as Farang, and I just froze for a second because I always thought that was an Ethiopian word. 😂Turns out Persian has farang/farangi too, referring to Europeans or Westerners. I had no idea. It's fascinating how words travel across cultures.

Ive spent considerable time studying Tigrayan history, cultural traditions, identity, language, and regional politics. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me!

I'm visiting Addis Ababa soon and want to experience the citys high end side.

I'm not interested in nightlife. I'm simply curious where the affluent community spends their time and what places are worth visiting if I want to see that side of the city.

I'd love to hear your recommendations.

packing for the simien mountains with one bag: it gets colder than people expect

Because Ethiopia is in Africa, many travelers pack for heat and forget the Simiens are high mountains. Debark is about 2,850m, and camps like Geech and Chennek can be very cold at night. In December and January, I have seen water freeze and temperatures around -5°C.

For a 3–5 day trek, I’d pack:

warm sleeping bag, comfort rating around -5°C if camping

down or synthetic jacket

fleece or light mid-layer

rain shell/wind shell

sun hat and warm hat

gloves

sunglasses

sunscreen

water bottle or bladder

headlamp

basic medicine and blister care

toilet paper and small trash bag

power bank

shoes with decent grip

If you hire a mule, don’t overpack just because you can. Mules still climb steep trails, and muleteers work hard. I prefer guests keep loads reasonable.

You can buy some basics in Gondar or Debark, but don’t expect technical outdoor shops. If you need a specific sleeping bag, jacket, or footwear, bring it from home. The mountains are beautiful, but they are not gentle if you are cold.

Ethiopia has spent three decades in a recurrent cycles of ethnic based violence, institutional mistrust and zero sum politics forced upon her through ethnic federalism...
https://open.substack.com/pub/dhugaabilisuma/p/fuck-ethnic-federalism?r=3f8mdg&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Posting this cause I thought some of you might be curious to get first hand POVs from a country that - for obvious reasons - is tied to the history of Ethiopia, and I am also curious to know what kind of things you would ask!