Ethiopia's black market rate, and why this site won't quote it

The parallel - or black - market is currency changing hands outside the licensed banking system: cash for cash, privately, at whatever price the two people agree on. It exists wherever demand for foreign currency runs ahead of what the formal system supplies at the official price.

For years that described Ethiopia well. Foreign exchange was rationed: importers waited for allocations, travellers faced limits, and the difference between what a bank would give you and what somebody would pay you privately was, in effect, the price of not queuing. That difference is what people are asking about when they search for the black market rate.

Every number on ET-Forex has a bank's name attached to it, a timestamp, and a board the bank published itself. That is the entire proposition. A parallel rate has none of those things: no issuer, no publication, no branch that will honour it, and no way for a reader to check it against anything.

Sites do publish figures for it. They are assembled from hearsay, they disagree with each other, and nobody who prints one can tell you where it came from. Putting one here would mean asking you to trust a number on the same page as thirty numbers that can be verified - which would devalue the thirty rather than lend credibility to the one.

Foreign exchange in Ethiopia must go through an authorised dealer: the commercial banks and the licensed bureaux the National Bank of Ethiopia supervises. Buying or selling foreign currency outside that channel is an offence.

The practical risk is worth stating separately from the legal one. A private cash trade has no receipt, no recourse on a short count or a counterfeit note, and no counterparty you can go back to. Every bank listed on this site is an authorised dealer, which is the same reason its rate can be printed here with its name against it.

The National Bank of Ethiopia moved to a market-determined exchange rate, ending the managed regime that had held the official rate well away from where the currency was trading privately. The official rate depreciated sharply, and banks began pricing independently rather than tracking a single administered figure.

The reason to seek a parallel deal shrinks as the distance between the two closes, and that distance narrowed considerably. How much of it remains on any given day is not something this site measures, so it is not something this site will tell you. What it can tell you is that the banks now genuinely compete - which is why the spread between them is worth checking.