Ethiopia’s Digital-Finance Accounts Reach 257 Million, President Says

What changed

Ethiopian President Taye Atske-Selassie said the country’s combined mobile-money and mobile-banking accounts reached 257 million. During the first nine months of 2026, those services processed more than 24 trillion birr in transactions, he said, speaking in Addis Ababa on October 21 at the 10th Session of the Statistical Commission for Africa.

Why it matters

That figure shows Ethiopia’s digital-payment system has become large enough to sit alongside the country’s broader state infrastructure. The government has paired a national digital-payment strategy with financial-sector liberalization, interoperable payment systems and Fayda, its national digital identification programme.

The important point is not simply that more payments now happen on phones. Ethiopia is trying to make digital finance, identity and official statistics reinforce one another. The Ethiopian Statistics Service is meant to coordinate the national statistical system, while policymakers use measured results to plan and track development.

There is one important limit to the headline number: 257 million accounts is not the same as 257 million people. The figure does not show how many accounts are active, who owns them, or what kinds of transactions they represent.

Taye’s larger argument is that digital expansion only becomes useful when institutions can measure it, protect the quality of the data and turn it into better public decisions. That puts pressure on Ethiopia’s statistical bodies to absorb new data sources without sacrificing independence or public trust. It also explains his call for African governments to strengthen statistical institutions, legal safeguards and evidence-based policymaking.