The notion behind Islamic finance is providing alternative Shariah-compliant financial services and products for those who do not willing to access conventional finance as it contravenes Shariah principles. Currently, Islamic finance is expanding throughout Muslim and non-Muslim countries. One of the most critical challenges of the Islamic financial sector is the extent of the compliance of Islamic finance practices with Shariah principles. Therefore, there should be a control mechanism for ensuring the compliance of the products and services provided by Islamic financial institutions with Shariah principles. Scholars argue that a Shariah governance framework should be applied by institutions engaged in Islamic finance in countries where Islamic finance is being practiced. Shariah governance framework is mainly categorized into two approaches centralized and decentralized Shariah governance framework. The availability of a centralized Shariah governance framework is essential in ensuring the application of Islamic finance in accordance with Shariah principles. Ethiopia is one of the countries that accommodated the application of Islamic finance through exclusively interest-free banking windows by conventional banks in 2011 and fully-fledged interest-free banks in late 2019. However, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) did not specify any Shariah governance framework in any of its legislations. The unavailability of an established Shariah governance framework may expose the sector to Shariah non-compliance risk. This study investigates how to ensure Ethiopia's Islamic finance applications' compliance with the Shariah principles. Semi-structured interviews and document studies were conducted with 15 respondents, including experts in Islamic finance, Shariah scholars, and Islamic finance practitioners, to collect the needed data for this endeavor. The findings indicate that interest-free banks, especially interest-free banking windows, do not give the necessary attention to the issue of the Shariah governance framework. The presumed manifestations of Shariah compliance in Ethiopia are having Shariah advisory committee, using Arabic words and names for their products and services, declaring they are following the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) standards, and participating in corporate social activities. However, these claims are insufficient to argue that their products and services are Shariah-compliant, as long as an external authorized body should oversight and control their application. In addition, the results indicate that adapting the AAOIFI standards to the extent of industry development is recommended to ensure Shariah compliance in Ethiopia. Besides, considering responsible stakeholders in ensuring Shariah compliance, government/NBE and financial institutions engaged in Islamic finance are identified as primary stakeholders. On the other hand, the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (EIASC), religious scholars and institutional Shariah advisors, interest-free professional associations, academicians in Islamic economics and finance, and educational institutions are considered secondary stakeholders. In addition, the findings also indicate that the policymakers' approaches of Türkiye, Malaysia, Kenya, and South Africa to the Islamic finance industry could be the best model for policymakers in Ethiopia. Establishing a centralized Shariah advisory committee under the NBE is recommended to ensure the compliance of interest-free finance applications with Shariah principles in Ethiopia. To this endeavor, all stakeholders such as government/NBE, financial institutions engaged in the Islamic finance industry, EIASC, religious scholars and institutional Shariah advisors, interest-free professional associations, academicians in Islamic economics and finance, and educational institutions should play a significant role by fulfilling their respective responsibilities.

The aim of the chapter is to explain the strategic role of Islamic finance, which can be considered as financial product innovation, in combating financial exclusion in Ethiopia. It intends to assess the extent and the nature of religious-driven financial exclusion of Ethiopian Muslims and the level of their participation in the existing interest free window banking system introduced to the sector recently. In order to collect data for the research, mixed approaches such as questionnaires and semi-structured interviews are used. The questionnaire was distributed to 321 respondents in Addis Ababa in 2017 while the semi-structured interview was conducted with selected high-ranking bank officers. At the end of the analyses there are findings which show the extent of financial exclusion of Ethiopian Muslims due to the absence of alternative financial systems.

The aim of this chapter is to investigate the short and long-run impact of devaluation of the trade balance of Ethiopia. Devaluation has been used as a measure to improve trade balance. The data was collected from the World Bank for the years 1990 to 2017 and analyzed by applying an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach and an Error Correction Model (ECM). The empirical findings show that the long run Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) significantly and negatively correlated with the trade balance. The error correction coefficient which shows the adjustment of disequilibrium in the subsequent year is also significant. The empirical result indicated that devaluation of the Birr can improve the trade balance of Ethiopia. However, in reality, the trade balance of Ethiopia is not improved through a consecutive Birr devaluation. This may be resulted from the non-responsiveness of import to devaluation of the Birr, shortage of import substitute domestic products and the dependency of exports on primary agriculture products.