Built for a market that did not exist five years ago

Ethiopia spent decades without a securities exchange. When one finally opened, the question was not whether people would invest. It was whether the institutions handling their money would be worth trusting.

Ethio Fidelity Securities S.C. was formed by a group of Ethiopian founders to be one of the answers to that question. In March 2025 the Ethiopian Capital Market Authority granted us the country's first securities dealer licence, after a review of our capital, governance, risk framework, and the fitness and propriety of our directors and senior management. In July 2025 we became the third trading member admitted to the Ethiopian Securities Exchange, and the first independently established dealer, as distinct from an investment bank affiliated with a commercial bank, to reach full membership.

Why a dealer, and not just a broker

A broker executes your order. A dealer can also commit its own capital, quoting a price to buy and a price to sell. In a mature market that distinction is technical. In a young one it is the difference between a market that functions and one that stalls, because someone has to be willing to quote a price when nobody else will.

We hold a dealer licence and we use it deliberately: standing in the order book narrows spreads, shortens the time an investor waits for a fill, and supports the continuous price discovery that makes a listed security worth owning. Our proprietary book runs under position and exposure limits and is operationally separated from client order handling.

What we are trying to build

A market earns the confidence of savers slowly and can lose it quickly, and the difference is usually in the unglamorous parts: how orders are handled, how conflicts are managed, how clearly costs are disclosed, and whether a firm tells someone the truth when the truth is that they should not invest yet.

That is the standard we intend to be measured against.