Ethiopia has no single consolidated, publicly maintained, English-language list of prohibited and restricted goods. Much of what is operationally true sits in directives, ministry circulars and letters to the Customs Commission that are not systematically published in English. The most-cited English sources are dated 2019 and January 2024.
Everything below should be confirmed with a licensed Ethiopian clearing agent and the issuing agency before a shipment is booked. We have marked our confidence throughout and left out anything we could not source. Treat this as a map of where to ask, not as an authority.
Some goods are banned outright. Many more are legal but need a permit, a registration or a certificate.
The single most important point: Ethiopia runs a pre-export conformity programme (PVoC). The certificate of conformity has to exist in China, before the goods are loaded. It cannot be obtained once the vessel has sailed. This is your supplier's responsibility and it belongs in your purchase contract.
Medicines, food and cosmetics — EFDA. Telecom and network equipment — ECA and INSA. Seed, fertiliser and pesticides — the Ministry of Agriculture.
Prohibited outright
The legal framework is Customs Proclamation No. 859/2014. Article 4(1) provides that no person may import, export or transit prohibited goods. Article 2(30) defines those as goods whose import is prohibited by Ethiopian law or by an international agreement Ethiopia has ratified.
Article 4(2) matters just as much and is easy to miss: importing a restricted good without its permit is itself an offence, not merely a delay at the border.
Items we can source as prohibited:
| Item | Confidence |
|---|---|
| Internal combustion engine vehicles — petrol and diesel | High that a ban is in force; see below |
| Arms and ammunition, other than imports by the Ministry of Defence | Medium-high |
| Used clothing | Medium |
| Goods of a commercial nature not imported through formal bank payment mechanisms | Medium |
| SIM boxes; high-power laser pointers | Medium — from the INSA controlled equipment list |
Narcotics, counterfeit goods and hazardous waste are near-certainly prohibited — Ethiopia is party to the Basel, CITES and Montreal instruments and has domestic criminal law covering the first two. But we could not confirm them from a current Ethiopian primary source, so we have not listed them as verified. The absence of an accessible consolidated list is a real problem for importers, and pretending otherwise would not help you.
Who issues what
| Category | Agency | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Medicines, medical devices, medical supplies | EFDA — Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority | Product registration or market authorisation plus an import permit, through the eRIS system. Special import permits exist for unregistered products. |
| Food and beverages | EFDA | Registration or licensing; a Certificate of Analysis for processed food. |
| Cosmetics | EFDA | A Certificate of Competence to trade, plus a Notification Note per import. A manufacturer's declaration that prohibited substances are absent. Shelf-life rule: at least 60% of shelf life remaining if total shelf life exceeds two years, at least 50% if it does not. |
| Tobacco, alcohol, blood products, traditional medicines | EFDA | Within EFDA's mandate. |
| Telecom and radio equipment | ECA — Ethiopian Communications Authority | Type approval, mandatory, valid 24 months. FCC and EU/ETSI test reports are accepted. Allow around eight weeks. |
| Communications, surveillance, network, navigation and security equipment | INSA — Information Network Security Administration | A separate pre-import permit and an import-release permit. The controlled list is broad — see below. |
| Plants, seeds, agricultural inputs, pesticides, fertilisers | Ministry of Agriculture / Ethiopian Agricultural Authority | Registration and prior authorisation; phytosanitary certificate; plant quarantine. |
| Goods under Compulsory Ethiopian Standards | ECAE under MoTRI; standards set by IES | Certificate of Conformity — obtained in China, before shipping. See the next section. |
| Firearms | Firearm Administration and Control Proclamation 1177/2020 | Effectively closed to commercial importers. |
It is not just radios. The controlled equipment list covers walkie-talkies, VSAT, satellite phones, IP phones and video conferencing; FM and AM transmitters; CCTV and DVR/NVR systems; routers, switches, gateways, wireless access points and servers; GPS trackers, GNSS receivers and total stations; drones and UAVs; spectrum and signal analysers; jammers; and explosive detectors.
If you are importing anything that moves data or watches a space, assume INSA is involved until told otherwise.
Get the institution names right
This is an area where published guides are routinely stale:
- IES — Institute of Ethiopian Standards. The national standards body. Formerly the Ethiopian Standards Agency (ESA), re-established under Proclamation 1263/2021. If a document refers to "ESA", it predates 2021.
- ECAE — Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise. Conformity assessment, inspection, testing and certification. Administers the PVoC programme.
- MoTRI — Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration. Oversees the National Quality Infrastructure and appoints the PVoC inspection agents.
- ECC — Ethiopian Customs Commission.
One area we could not resolve: the division of competence between the Environmental Protection Authority, the Ministry of Agriculture and EFDA for industrial chemicals. If you are importing chemicals that are not obviously agricultural or food-related, that question needs answering by the agencies directly before you commit.
The certificate your supplier must get in China
This is the single most operationally important thing on this page, and the thing importers most often discover too late.
Ethiopia operates a Pre-export Verification of Conformity programme. Regulated goods must be inspected, tested and verified for conformity in the country of export, before shipment. The resulting Certificate of Conformity is required for customs clearance.
Once the goods have sailed, the certificate cannot be issued. Regulated goods arriving without one incur penalties, and non-compliant goods risk destruction or re-export — at your cost.
This is your Chinese supplier's action, taken in China, before departure. It must be written into the purchase contract, not assumed. "The Seller shall obtain a Certificate of Conformity under the Ethiopian PVoC programme prior to shipment and provide the original to the Buyer" is the kind of sentence that saves a container.
Who issues it. MoTRI appoints and authorises the inspection companies. Those operating in China have included Cotecna, TÜV Rheinland, Intertek, SGS and Bureau Veritas. The roster changes — at least one has published a discontinuation notice — so verify the currently appointed agents with ECAE or MoTRI before instructing your supplier.
What is covered. Around 124 Compulsory Ethiopian Standards across five families: food and food products; chemical products; textile, leather, plastic and rubber; construction materials; electrical and electronics. Published agent lists also include metrology and measurement equipment, environment/health/safety equipment, paper, and stand-alone solar products.
A MoTRI notice dated 13 December 2024 expanded the scope further, adding stand-alone solar products, electrical components, household appliances, motors and vehicles, power generation equipment, automotive products and chemical products. Separately, electric vehicles were recorded as excluded from the programme as of 25 March 2025.
Three routes to certification:
- Route A — inspection and testing per shipment. Slowest per shipment, no upfront commitment. Right for one-off orders.
- Route B — product registration, roughly a year. Faster clearance on repeat shipments of the same product.
- Route C — manufacturer licensing, roughly a year. For high-volume repeat importing from the same factory.
If you expect to import the same product repeatedly, the registration routes pay for themselves. If this is a trial order, Route A is the sensible choice.
Vehicles
Ethiopia has banned the import of internal combustion engine vehicles — petrol and diesel — in a move toward electric vehicles. We can confirm the ban is in force. We could not establish, from sources we would rely on, the precise current scope, the treatment of commercial vehicles and heavy trucks, or the position on spare parts.
If vehicles or vehicle parts are your business, this is a question for a clearing agent with live experience of the category, not for a web page. It is also worth noting that vehicles fall on the surtax-exempt side of the tax cascade, paying the 3% social welfare levy instead of the 10% surtax — see the duty guide.
On used goods more generally: used clothing is prohibited. The position on used machinery and used vehicles we could not verify to a standard worth publishing.
Before you place an order
- Identify the HS code first. Everything — the duty band, the permit requirements, whether PVoC applies — hangs off it.
- Ask a clearing agent whether the code is on the compulsory standards list. If it is, PVoC applies and your supplier has work to do before shipping.
- Ask whether any sector agency has jurisdiction. EFDA, ECA, INSA, Ministry of Agriculture. Ask before the proforma, not after.
- Write the certificate obligation into the purchase contract. Naming the certificate, the programme and the timing. A supplier who agrees verbally and forgets has cost you nothing until it has cost you everything.
- Get sector permits before you go to the bank. A missing permit is one of the commonest reasons an import application stalls — see the bank permit guide.
- Verify certificate numbers with the issuing body. Forged CE, ISO and FDA certificates are common; a PDF proves nothing. Our supplier verification guide covers this.
We are in Guangzhou, so we can instruct the inspection body, chase the certificate and confirm it exists before your container is loaded — which is the only time it can be fixed.
- Customs Proclamation No. 859/2014, Art. 4 — prohibited and restricted goods
- Ethiopian Food and Drug Authority (EFDA)
- Institute of Ethiopian Standards (IES) — established by Proclamation 1263/2021
- Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration (MoTRI) — appoints PVoC inspection agents
- INSA controlled equipment list (published by the German Embassy, Addis Ababa)
- US ITA — Ethiopia import requirements and documentation (January 2024)
- World Bank — The Ethiopian Quality Standards Regime