Call parents in Addis Ababa, relatives in Bahir Dar, or family working in the Gulf, straight from your browser to their phone.
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Rates updated October 31, 2026
To reach a Ethiopia number from the United States, dial these three parts in order.
011 251 91 123 4567
From any mobile, anywhere in the world, you can dial +251 91 123 4567 instead. Press and hold 0 to type the +, and the phone picks the right access code for wherever you are.
Numbers in Ethiopia are written locally with a 0 in front, like 091 123 4567. Calling from abroad you leave that 0 out, so it becomes +251 91 123 4567.
A Ethiopia mobile number is 9 digits after +251. If a call does not connect, count the digits first.
Only the first part changes. Your access code replaces the 011, then 251 and the number stay exactly the same.
A ~ means wait for the second dial tone before dialing the rest. It is not a digit you press.
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The heaviest inbound stream runs from the United States, home to the largest Ethiopian community outside Africa. The Washington, D.C. metro (spilling across Virginia and Maryland, the two US states with the most Ethiopians) is the anchor, with Minneapolis-Saint Paul as the clear second, followed by Seattle, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Columbus, and the Bay Area - Ethiopian Americans. Over 356,000 people of Ethiopian birth or heritage live in the US as of 2022, and a large share phone home weekly to parents and grandparents in Addis Ababa, to relatives in regional hubs like Bahir Dar, Hawassa, and Mekele, and to family still farming outside the towns - World Population Review.
Beyond America, big inbound volumes come from the Gulf, where hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians work in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Lebanon, many as domestic and construction workers sending money and news home. Israel hosts a large Ethiopian-Jewish (Beta Israel) community, and Europe (especially Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the UK) adds steady traffic. Neighboring Kenya, Djibouti, and South Sudan generate constant cross-border calls tied to trade, transport, and refugee families. A practical wrinkle: Ethiopians who worked abroad often keep their home 09... Ethio Telecom number active through a relative, so the number you dial frequently rings a phone physically inside Ethiopia even when the person it belongs to is overseas.
Dialing out of Ethiopia, the international access code is 00 (so a call to a US number is 00 1 followed by the 10 digits) - howtocallabroad.com. The dominant outbound destinations mirror the diaspora in reverse: the United States first, then the Gulf states and Israel where family members are working, plus Kenya and Djibouti for business and logistics. Because international rates from inside Ethiopia have historically been steep and foreign currency scarce, many people at home lean on data-based apps to place the outbound leg, or simply wait for the relative abroad to call in.
There is a real friction to be aware of when someone in Ethiopia tries to call you: hard-currency and network constraints mean outbound international minutes are treated as a premium service, and prepaid balances get consumed fast. This is a large part of why the calling relationship is so lopsided, the person in Denver or Riyadh initiates the call far more often than the parent in Gondar does. Placing the call from your side, where you control a clear per-minute rate shown before you dial, sidesteps the balance anxiety on their end entirely: their phone simply rings.
Start with your international access, then Ethiopia's country code 251. From our browser dialer you simply type or paste the number in +251 form.
Drop the leading trunk 0 from the local number. A number written locally as 091 234 5678 or 011 234 5678 loses that first 0 when dialed internationally.
Dial the 9 remaining digits after +251: the two-digit prefix (91, 11, 58, and so on) plus the 7-digit subscriber number.
For a mobile, confirm the number starts +251 9 (Ethio Telecom) or +251 7 (Safaricom); for a landline, confirm it starts with a valid city code such as 11 for Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia's country code is 251 and every national number is 9 digits after it, written locally with a trunk 0 you must drop when calling from abroad - Telephone numbers in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). The classic error is keeping the 0 (dialing +251 0...), which fails, because +251 and the trunk 0 serve the same routing purpose and you use only one. Watch for old single-digit area codes from before the 2005 reform (an old +251 1 Addis number is now +251 11), and for family members who quote the same mobile in three different styles (091..., 9..., +2519...); normalize to nine digits after +251 and it will connect - howtocallabroad.com.
Ethiopia's biggest reaching-a-number challenge is a gray-market call economy born of high international rates. Ethio Telecom historically charged some of the steepest international incoming termination rates anywhere, and foreign carriers routinely complained about them - ecofinagency.com. The predictable result was a flourishing of SIM-box operators, unlicensed setups that intercept international calls and re-terminate them as cheap local calls, and Ethiopian authorities have counted hundreds of such illegal operators - The Reporter Ethiopia. For you as a caller, this shows up as poor audio, dropped calls, or a caller ID that arrives mangled or masked. Calls that terminate over legitimate licensed routes connect more cleanly and, crucially, display an honest number that a wary relative is more likely to answer.
VoIP has a fraught legal history here that still shapes behavior. The Telecom Fraud Offences Proclamation No. 761/2012 criminalized bypassing the licensed network and was read by many as making Skype-style calling illegal, and cybercafes were barred from offering VoIP - Global Network Initiative. In practice the law targets unlicensed operators earning money by bypassing the network rather than a family video call, but the legacy is real caution, and it is one more reason people at home prefer to receive a normally-terminated inbound call rather than originate one.
The market is mid-transition, which affects who you can reach and how. Ethiopia ended one of the world's last telecom monopolies when Safaricom won a license in 2021 and launched nationally in late 2022, but Ethio Telecom still dominates with over 86 million subscribers and controls the backbone network - Semafor. That means the overwhelming majority of numbers you dial still begin +251 9, though +251 7 Safaricom numbers are rising fast. Number portability between the two is not a settled, everyday feature the way it is in mature markets, so the leading digit still reliably tells you which network you are reaching. Add periodic network congestion and power interruptions, especially around major holidays, and a first attempt that fails is normal; a redial after a minute usually connects.
Every Ethiopian phone number is 9 digits long as a national significant number, written domestically with a leading trunk 0 as 0YY XXX XXXX - Telephone numbers in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). The first two digits after that 0 tell you what you are calling: a geographic area code for a landline, or a mobile prefix for a cellphone. The country calling code is 251, and the golden rule when dialing from abroad is that you drop the trunk 0 and dial +251 followed by the remaining 9 digits.
So a real Addis Ababa landline written locally as 011 234 5678 becomes +251 11 234 5678 from the US. An Ethio Telecom mobile written locally as 091 234 5678 becomes +251 91 234 5678. The mistake to avoid is keeping the 0: dialing +251 0 11... will not connect, because the 0 and the +251 do the same routing job (reaching Ethiopia from outside versus routing long distance inside it), and you only ever use one.
Because both landlines and mobiles are exactly 9 digits after the country code, length alone will not tell you which you have. The prefix does. If the digits after +251 read as a city code (11, 22, 25, and so on) it is a fixed line; if the number starts +251 9 or +251 7 it is a mobile. This uniform 9-digit structure means a correctly formatted Ethiopian number is easy to sanity-check: count nine digits after +251, and confirm the leading pair is a valid prefix.
If you have an Ethiopian number in an old address book that no longer connects, the culprit is almost certainly the 2005 numbering reform. Ethiopia moved from single-digit area codes to two-digit ones, expanding capacity as the network grew - Telephone numbers in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). Addis Ababa changed from +251 1 to +251 11, and the region around Nazret/Adama went from +251 2 to +251 22, with every other region similarly gaining a digit - howtocallabroad.com.
The reform is the reason a scrap of paper from twenty years ago may show a shorter number that fails today, and why some diaspora relatives still misremember the format. The practical fix is usually to take an old-style number, identify the single-digit region code, and expand it to the current two-digit form (an old Addis number under the +251 1 scheme is the same subscriber digits under +251 11).
This is also why you will see mobile numbers quoted inconsistently by well-meaning family: some write 091 XX XX XXX, others 9 XX XXX XXX, others paste the whole thing as +2519.... They are the same number. Normalize by stripping the trunk 0, confirming nine digits, and prefixing +251, and it will dial correctly no matter which style you were handed.
Ethiopia has exactly two mobile operators, and each owns a distinct leading digit. Ethio Telecom mobiles begin with 9 (dialed 09... locally, +251 9... from abroad), and the newer entrant Safaricom uses 7 (dialed 07... locally, +251 7... from abroad) - Telephone numbers in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). Because Safaricom only launched nationally in late 2022, the great majority of mobiles you will encounter still begin with 9, though 7-numbers are growing quickly among younger and urban users - Semafor.
Landlines are the older, geographic layer. Each carries a two-digit area code after the trunk 0: 11 for Addis Ababa (and its satellite Debre Zeit/Bishoftu), 22 for Adama/Nazret, 25 for Dire Dawa and Harar, 34 for Mekele, 46 for Hawassa, 47 for Jimma, and 58 for Bahir Dar and Gondar - howtocallabroad.com. Fixed lines are common for government offices, banks, hotels, and older family homes, but in daily life mobiles dominate, so for most personal calls you will be dialing a +251 9 number.
One reachability nuance: a mobile is nearly always the surest way to reach a person directly, while a landline reaches a place. If you are trying to reach an elder who does not carry a phone, you often call a younger relative's mobile and ask them to hand the phone over, a common pattern in Ethiopian family calling.
Ethiopia sits in a single time zone, East Africa Time (UTC+3), and does not observe daylight saving, so the offset from you is stable year-round on the Ethiopian side - Time in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). From the US East Coast that is 7 hours ahead in US summer and 8 hours ahead in US winter; from the West Coast, 10 to 11 hours. A comfortable window is your morning: 9am to noon Eastern lands at 4pm to 7pm in Addis (8am to 11am Eastern in US winter), when people are home from work and awake.
The genuinely Ethiopia-specific thing to understand is the local 12-hour clock, which counts from dawn rather than midnight. Ethiopians widely reckon the day as starting at daybreak, so what a Westerner calls 7am is '1 o'clock' in the Ethiopian system and 7pm is '1 o'clock' at night; in practice you subtract 6 hours from standard EAT to get the spoken Ethiopian hour - Time in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). If a relative says to call at 'two o'clock,' clarify whether they mean the international clock or the Ethiopian one, because the two differ by six hours and this is a frequent source of missed calls between the diaspora and home.
The Ethiopian calendar adds another layer worth knowing for scheduling: it runs about 7 to 8 years behind the Gregorian calendar and has 13 months (twelve of 30 days plus a short 13th month), so holidays and family dates like Enkutatash (New Year, in September) may not line up with your calendar - Time in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). Around major holidays, expect networks to be congested and call attempts to need a retry.
Ethiopian institutions lean heavily on fixed lines with the 011 Addis Ababa code, since the capital concentrates head offices, ministries, and bank headquarters. When you call a bank branch, an embassy, a hospital, or a hotel in Addis, you are typically dialing +251 11 plus seven digits, and you should expect the call to reach a switchboard or reception rather than a direct extension. Regional branches use their own city codes, so a hotel in Bahir Dar answers on +251 58, one in Hawassa on +251 46.
Ethio Telecom also operates short codes for its own customer service and utilities, but those are dialable only from inside Ethiopia, not internationally, so from abroad you always need the full +251 geographic or mobile number. For customer-facing businesses (tour operators, guesthouses, shops), the number advertised is frequently an 09... mobile rather than a landline, because a mobile is more reliable and reaches the owner directly. That is a useful signal: if a business gives you a 9-prefixed number, you are likely reaching a person, not a front desk.
A last practical note on reachability of official lines: infrastructure strain, occasional power interruptions, and network congestion mean a first attempt to a busy government or bank line may not connect. Redialing after a minute usually works, and calling in the Ethiopian late morning or early afternoon (their business hours, which is your very early morning US time) gives the best odds of a human answering.
Nine digits as the national number. Locally it is written with a leading trunk 0 (so ten characters on paper), for example 011 234 5678 or 091 234 5678, but that first 0 is dropped when you call from abroad and replaced by +251 - Telephone numbers in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). If someone gives you fewer than nine digits, it is likely an old pre-2005 format that needs its area code expanded.
Look at the first digit after +251. A 9 means an Ethio Telecom mobile and a 7 means a Safaricom mobile; anything starting with a city code (11, 22, 25, 34, 46, 47, 58) is a landline tied to a specific place - Telephone numbers in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). For reaching a person directly, a 9-prefixed mobile is almost always your best bet.
Ethiopia carried out a numbering reform in 2005 that expanded single-digit area codes to two digits. Addis Ababa went from +251 1 to +251 11, and other regions gained a digit similarly - howtocallabroad.com. An old number from before that change will fail until the area code is expanded to its current two-digit form.
No. The leading 0 is a domestic trunk prefix used only inside Ethiopia. From abroad you dial +251 and then the 9 digits without that 0, so local 091 234 5678 becomes +251 91 234 5678. Keeping the 0 (dialing +251 0 91...) will not connect.
Ethiopia historically had high international termination rates, which fueled a gray market of SIM-box operators who reroute international calls as local ones, degrading quality and masking the caller ID - The Reporter Ethiopia. Calls that terminate over legitimate licensed routes connect more cleanly and show an honest number, which also makes people in Ethiopia more likely to answer.
Ethiopia is on East Africa Time (UTC+3) with no daylight saving, so it is 7 to 8 hours ahead of the US East Coast. Your morning, roughly 9am to noon Eastern (8am to 11am in US winter), is their late afternoon and early evening, a reliable window - Time in Ethiopia (Wikipedia). Just confirm whether a relative means the standard clock or the Ethiopian 12-hour clock, which runs six hours off and causes many missed calls.
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