Entering Ethiopia with a car

[Matthew O'Leary]

Hi

I heard this was a good place to get overland information.
I'm currently in East Africa at the moment and I'm looking at going to Ethiopia in the coming months. But I have heard that getting a car into Ethiopia is very hard and expensive!
So I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with getting a car into Ethiopia and the process they did to get the car into the country?

Thanks


Matthew

 

[El-Dracho]

Hi Matthew,

Welcome to Overland Bound!

I think Christoff @Get Out GO , our OB Ambassador Africa can definitely give you some good information and contacts in that region.

The last thing I have heard was that Ethopia stopped (again) accepting CdP and TIP end of 2022. Since then a transit is only possible with high amount of deposits with the customs or mandate and pay an agency. There are some good information about this in the german language Wuestenschiff traveller forum. The last entry of that topic contains some adresses of these agencies. It is in german but I guess an online translater will do the trick, take a look here: Ethiopia does not accept Carnet and TIP anymore By the way, have you been in contact with Achim of the Wuestenschiff-Forum recently?

Another good source might be the HUBB you probably know.

So, what are your trip plans, going further north through Kenia and then onwards to Ethopia?

Cheers,
Bjoern

 

[Matthew O'Leary]

Hi Bjoern

Thanks for the information, I suspected that was the situation which is a real pain! As I'm not sure how to proceed with my overland travels from Kenya.
No have not been in contact with Wuestenschiff-Forum, I will make contact.

The trip plan was to do Cape Town to Cairo but then the war in Sudan broke out ! So then the plan was to drive to Djibouti and ship my car from there. But then I looked into Ethiopia and that's causing a problem now. So I'm unsure what to do. But got a feeling I might need to ship out of Kenya which sucks !

Thanks for the contacts and advice!

 

[Get Out GO]

Hi Matthew!

Besides the TIP / Carnet issues, there is armed conflict / civil unrest in Ethiopia at the moment (Northern and Central regions) so I would obviously advise against traveling there.

A lot of folks that took the Eastern route are now shipping out of Kenya to other destinations or taking the Western route instead.

 

[Matthew O'Leary]

Hi

Thanks for the information! Yeah probably best to avoid getting shot.
Just out of curiosity what route would the west involve from Kenya?

 

[Get Out GO]

Hi
Thanks for the information! Yeah probably best to avoid getting shot.
Just out of curiosity what route would the west involve from Kenya?

Normally I'd say take the Mombasa - Lagos route. I wouldn't advise travel to the DRC at the moment either though (especially Eastern DRC) so that would mean going back down to Tanzania and then Zambia, Angola etc. You have to cross the DRC on this route as well but it's in the West and only a short stretch at least (still not ideal though).

Sorry I don't have better news for you right now!

 

[Matthew O'Leary]

Thanks for the information!