Electricity Theft Costs Ethiopia 2.89 Billion Birr in a Single Year as EEU Takes 1,089 Cases to Court

Betegbar Yaregal

#EBR_News Aug 7, 2026

Ethiopian Electric Utility uncovered electricity theft and meter irregularities worth 2.89 billion birr during the 2025/26 fiscal year following an inspection of 2.47 million energy meters, with 1,089 individuals now facing legal proceedings and 124 people already prosecuted for infrastructure theft and vandalism some receiving prison sentences of up to 15 years. The figures were presented by utility CEO Getu Geremew at a media briefing on August 7, 2026.

According to the performance report, the inspection programme covered 111.9 percent of its planned target, examining meters across the utility’s service area and identifying 87,716 cases of irregularities. The losses associated with those irregularities totaled 1,493 gigawatt-hours of energy, valued at 2.89 billion birr.

Through corrective actions and enforcement, the utility said it recovered 2.237 billion birr of those losses during the fiscal year leaving a remaining gap of roughly 653 million birr unrecovered from detected theft alone. The 2.89 billion birr figure does not capture undetected losses, meaning the true cost of energy theft across the network is likely higher.

Beyond individual theft, the utility is also contending with organized infrastructure vandalism. The report indicated that 124 individuals were prosecuted during the fiscal year for sabotaging physical infrastructure including power lines, transformers, and distribution equipment with courts handing down custodial sentences of up to 15 years.

The short code 908 was launched during the year to allow the public to report infrastructure damage and theft directly to the utility, and an e-receipt application was introduced to reduce opportunities for off-system billing manipulation.

Internal misconduct added a further dimension to the governance challenge. According to the report, the utility received 621 whistle-blower tips 505 through digital channels and 116 through other means and investigated 595 of them.

Of those investigated, 169 employees were found guilty of misconduct, with administrative actions including warnings, salary penalties, demotions, and dismissals taken against 166.

The involvement of utility employees in facilitating or enabling theft was not explicitly quantified in the report, but the scale of the whistle-blower programme and the employee misconduct findings suggest the problem extends inside the institution as well as outside it.

Aging infrastructure, substation capacity constraints, right-of-way clearance difficulties, and fuel shortages for field operations were all cited as ongoing institutional challenges.

The utility rehabilitated 4,892 kilometers of distribution network during the fiscal year and resolved 86 percent of identified network vulnerabilities through preventative maintenance, but large portions of the grid remain aged and susceptible to technical losses that can be difficult to distinguish from commercial theft in the absence of advanced metering infrastructure.