We saw last week that the founding of Ethiopia’s first bank, the Bank of Abyssinia, in 1905, was followed, in 1915, by that institution’s issue of bank notes. This issue of paper money was something of a revolution in Ethiopian currency hisotry. The Bank of Abyssinia bank-notes took time to be accepted by the population at large. Charles Rey, a British businessman, claimed, in the 1920s, that paper money was not used outside Addis Ababa. A decade or so later…

Ethiopian banking history, in its modern sense, began towards the end of the reign of Emperor Menilek. This period witnessed the establishment, as most readers will know, of the country’s first bank. Called the Bank of Abyssinia, or in Amharic “Ye-Ityopya Bank”, it was an affiliate of the National Bank of Egypt, and was founded in 1905. Ten years later, in 1915, the bank began issuing bank notes. The issue of this paper money was another notable event in the…