At the end of last month, global investors, development partners, and policymakers converged on the Skylight Hotel for the fourth Invest in Ethiopia Forum. The Ethiopian Investment Commission had set an ambitious target: more than 2.4 billion US dollars in new investment agreements over just two days.
Ethiopia already ranks second in Africa for foreign direct investment inflows, with 18.6 billion US dollars secured between 2021 and 2025 and 2.3 billion US dollars in the first half of the current fiscal year alone, according to government statistics.
Ethiopia has dismantled some of the most entrenched barriers in its economy in a remarkably short span of time. The telecom sector—once a state monopoly—has been opened to foreign competition. Banking, long sealed off for more than half a century, is now accessible to international players. Retail has followed suit, and even the export of key commodities such as coffee is no longer the exclusive domain of domestic actors.
Taken together, the direction is unmistakable: with only limited restrictions remaining, Ethiopia is steadily shedding its legacy of closed markets. The message from policymakers is clear—the country is open for business. Nonetheless, at the latest summit, something felt absent.
Investors did not arrive with blind faith in brochures or ministerial speeches. They demanded credible, granular, locally informed analysis—sector deep-dives, risk assessments, supply-chain realities, and forward-looking data on everything from renewable-energy feed-in tariffs to agro-processing logistics. In most emerging markets, that intelligence comes from a vibrant private media ecosystem. In Ethiopia today, it largely does not.
With 309 licensed outlets nationwide—most of them small, under-capitalized, and struggling for revenue—independent media lack the resources to produce the kind of investor-grade journalism that could turn interest into commitments. State broadcasters dominate the narrative, while private outlets are squeezed between low ad revenues, talent flight to exile platforms, and regulatory uncertainty. The result is a credibility gap precisely when Ethiopia needs to project transparency and sophistication to close deals.
The solution is straightforward and long overdue: treat private media businesses as strategic economic actors, not peripheral watchdogs. Just as the government offers tax holidays, land leases, and co-investment incentives to manufacturers and agro-processors, it should extend comparable status to hybrid media enterprises—print, radio, and digital outlets—that commit to producing investor-oriented content.
Imagine a new category of “media development investment” within the Ethiopian Investment Commission’s portfolio. Private outlets that meet transparent criteria—editorial independence safeguards, verifiable circulation or listenership metrics, and a track record of business reporting—would qualify for low-interest working-capital loans, matching grants for English-language production, and even partial equity participation from the Ethiopian Investment Holding, modeled on the successful telecom liberalization path.
In return, they would deliver regular, high-quality products: quarterly sector reports on priority areas (agribusiness, renewables, tourism, ICT), English-language podcasts featuring on-the-ground factory tours and farmer interviews, and data-visualization dashboards on regulatory reforms and regional opportunities.
The economic multiplier would be immediate. Every additional dollar of credible local coverage accelerates investor confidence. Research from comparable African markets shows that transparent, domestically produced business intelligence can shorten due-diligence cycles by months and raise the conversion rate of leads into signed agreements.
At the 2025 forum, deals worth 1.6 billion US dollars were concluded, according to the Investment Commission. And with deeper, more trustworthy storytelling, the 2.4 billion USD target set for last month’s gathering becomes not aspirational but repeatable in future years.
Critics will argue that government support for media inevitably compromises independence. That concern is legitimate and must be addressed head-on. Any incentive scheme must include ironclad firewalls: editorial decisions remain entirely with the outlet; funding is disbursed through performance-based, independently audited contracts; and an arm’s-length oversight board—perhaps involving the Ethiopian Media Council and international development partners—ensures compliance without content interference. The goal is not propaganda; it is professionalization.
A well-resourced private media sector that can pay competitive salaries, invest in investigative capacity, and export content will naturally produce higher-quality, more balanced coverage. Credibility, after all, is the ultimate FDI magnet.
This is not a luxury. Ethiopia’s 10.2 percent growth target depends on services and manufacturing outpacing agriculture, on industrial parks filling with new tenants, and on regional integration projects moving from blueprint to bankable.
Private media can be the connective tissue—translating policy reforms into investor language, surfacing success stories from the factory floor, and, yes, candidly flagging bottlenecks before they become deal-breakers. In short, media businesses must evolve from cost centers to deal-closers.
The timing could not have been better. With the Invest in Ethiopia Forum now behind us, policymakers have a fresh platform to announce a new media-investment window. A single line in the next policy communiqué—“Private media enterprises producing investor-grade content will receive the same co-investment privileges as manufacturers”—would send a powerful signal: Ethiopia is not only ready for investment; it is ready to tell the story in a way the world can trust.
The returns would compound. Stronger newsrooms mean better-informed citizens and policymakers. Higher journalistic standards reduce the space for rumor and disinformation. And a professionalized media sector becomes an export industry in its own right—selling Ethiopian business intelligence to the continent and beyond.
Ethiopia has already shown it can liberalize strategic sectors and attract world-class partners. Applying the same logic to media is not a concession to critics; it is a pragmatic investment in the narrative infrastructure that will sustain 10 percent growth for decades. The forum at the end of last month offered the perfect moment to begin.
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Samson Berhane is an economics graduate with expertise in business and economic reporting and communications. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent the opinions of the institutions he is affiliated with nor that of the magazine.
