Two-Thirds of Ethiopian Adults Have an Account. One in Five Used It.

66 percent of Ethiopian adults own a financial account. Only 21 percent made a transaction in 2025.

That gap — reported by Shega — is the finding that should reorganise how Ethiopia's financial inclusion story gets told.

Access was the easy half

Account ownership at two-thirds of adults is a genuine achievement, and it is the number that gets quoted at conferences. It is also the number that is easiest to move: a bank or a mobile money operator can open accounts in volume, and an agent network can be built faster than a habit can.

Usage is the hard half. An account that sees no transactions is not a customer; it is a line in a regulatory return. It generates no float, no transaction data, no credit history, and no revenue for the institution that opened it.

What a dormant account costs

For anyone building a financial product in Ethiopia, the 45-point spread between ownership and use defines the actual addressable market. A fintech pricing off the 66 percent figure is pricing off a number that does not transact.

It also reframes what the binding constraint is. If two-thirds already have accounts, the shortage is not of accounts. It is of reasons to use one — merchants who accept digital payment, incomes that arrive digitally, and charges low enough that moving money is cheaper than carrying it.

Open

Shega's figures do not say how dormancy splits between banks and mobile money, between urban and rural holders, or between accounts opened voluntarily and those opened as a condition of something else. Without that breakdown it is not possible to say whether the problem is distribution, pricing, or trust.

Sources: Shega, 6 October 2026