Addis Ababa shopping runs from pit looms in Shiro Meda to fixed-price design studios in Bole. Handwoven cotton, eri silk, silver Coptic crosses and just-roasted highland coffee are the things worth carrying home — and nearly all of it is made inside the city.
Rows of open-fronted stalls below Entoto sell handwoven cotton habesha kemis, netela shawls and tibeb-bordered scarves. Weavers work pit looms in the yards behind the shops, so you can watch a border being woven before buying one.
The city's tidiest spice market: sacks of berbere, mitmita, korerima and shiro powder beside baskets, mesob serving tables and clay jebena coffee pots. Far calmer and more navigable than the Merkato sprawl.
A fair-trade workshop in Mekanisa where eri silk is reeled from cocoons and hand-woven into scarves, throws and table linen on wooden looms. Free tours pass the natural dye garden and weaving sheds, ending in the factory shop.
The Italian-era arcades around De Gaulle Square hold Addis's silver trade: Coptic neck crosses, Lalibela and Gondar crosses, filigree bracelets and Maria Theresa thalers, most sold by weight against the day's posted price.
Salem Kassahun's showroom stocks handwoven cotton scarves, cushions, bedspreads and children's clothing made by a network of around 200 weavers, spinners and embroiderers working across the city.
Above an Italian restaurant on Bole Road, Makush hangs several hundred canvases by more than 70 Ethiopian painters, all priced and sold on the spot. Lunch downstairs and browse between courses.
Designer Mahlet Afework reworks Dorze and Menit hand-weaving into tailored jackets, dresses and unisex shirts. The Bole studio keeps a small ready-to-wear rack; made-to-measure pieces take about a week to finish.
Eight floors on Africa Avenue: Ethiopian labels, gold counters and a supermarket at the base, food court and cinema on top. Useful for fixed-price coffee, honey and leather shoes once you have run out of patience for haggling.
Muya's shop sells hand-embroidered linen, ceramics and woven baskets produced by its own workshop of roughly 350 artisans, most of it designed for export to Europe and rarely seen in the tourist stalls.
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu's roastery roasts single-origin Yirgacheffe, Guji, Harar and Limu beans in the room in front of you, then sells them by the 250g bag alongside jebena pots, sini cups and roasting pans.
The mud-and-straw village built by Elias Sime and Meskerem Assegued keeps a small shop of ceramics, indigo-dyed cloth, museum honey and work by resident artists — the most distinctive objects sold anywhere in Addis.
The expat stock-up stop: shelves of berbere, shiro, mitmita, white and forest honey, tej, and vacuum-packed roasted coffee, all fixed-price, barcoded and sealed in a way that survives an airport inspection.