I wasted multiple trips to a government office because I didn’t know the requirements — is this common in Ethiopia?
Hi everyone,
I recently had an experience that made me curious if this is a common problem in Ethiopia.
I went to my local kebele office to get a marriage certificate. I assumed it would be a simple one-visit process.
But I had to go back multiple times because I didn’t know exactly what documents were required. Each time I went, I was told I was missing something. Eventually, after asking around and figuring everything out, I finally got the service.
What surprised me is that there was no clear place (online or otherwise) that listed all the requirements in one place before going there.
It made me wonder:
Is this a common experience for other government services in Ethiopia?
How many trips did it take you to complete things like ID cards, passports, land documents, etc.?
Where do you usually find the correct requirements (friends, officers, social media, trial and error)?
I’m not trying to build anything yet — I’m just trying to understand how widespread this problem is.
Would really appreciate hearing your experiences.