Building Ethiopia's first private credit bureau

Credit that sees
all Ethiopians

AI-powered. Alternative data. A real financial identity for 135 million people — built on the city growing around you.

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The Opportunity

Ethiopia's credit economy,
ready to be built.

0
Population — Africa's 2nd largest
Worldometer 2025
0
Current formal credit bureau coverage
World Bank
0
Annual SME financing gap
IFC 2024
0
2026 GDP growth — among the world's fastest
FocusEconomics consensus 2026
Ethiopia Today

The rails are real —
and the moment is now.

54M+
Telebirr mobile-money users
Ethio Telecom, 2025
40M+
Fayda national digital IDs
National ID Program, 2026
~10M
Digital-credit accounts in market
NBE, 2024
+45%
Bank-lending growth, year on year
NBE, 2026
How it works

Your score, finally
visible.

From mobile money to savings habits to agricultural activity — Sheba Credit turns everyday behaviour into a verifiable credit identity.

300
Building
STEP 01
Create your account
Sign up with your email and verify your identity with Fayda, Ethiopia's national digital ID. One person, one credit file.
STEP 02
Connect your data
Share your Telebirr history, savings behaviour and consented account data. Your data, your consent, your control.
STEP 03
Get your real score
Sheba's AI engine computes your score and shows exactly what's driving it, and how to improve it.
Try it yourself

Move the sliders.
Watch a score respond.

Telebirr payments on time85%
Savings streak6 mo
Mobile-money activity20 / mo
Education modules completed4 / 20

Illustrative simulation only — not a real Sheba Score. The production model uses more signals, always with your consent.

300
BuildingFairGoodExcellent
Strong payment history Late payments hurt most Consistent saver Active wallet Learning boost earned
Open the live demo Create your account ›
Trust

Proof, not
promises.

Four guarantees enforced by the system itself — not by a policy document filed somewhere.

Checking system status

No consent, no score.

Without a valid, unexpired consent record the query returns a refusal — not a guess. The system fails closed, every time.

Revoke it, and it is gone.

Withdraw one data source and it disappears from your very next score. Not at month end — the next query.

Every search, one sealed record.

Approval or denial, each query is written to a tamper-evident, append-only ledger. Nothing can be quietly edited after the fact.

The engine never sees your name.

Scoring runs on a de-identified feature vector. Who you are and what you score are computed apart, by design.

See how each guarantee is enforced
What you get

Your score.
Free, forever.

In much of the world, seeing your own credit score is a monthly subscription. We think that is backwards. The file is about you.

 
Ethiopia today
With Sheba Credit
Your credit score, visible to you
Not available
Free, always
Who searched your file
Not disclosed
Every search, listed
Why you were declined
Rarely explained
Plain-language reasons
Informal income and thin files
Invisible to lenders
Scored from consented data
Withdrawing your data
No mechanism
Revoke any source
Correcting a mistake
No clear route
Raise a dispute
Free access is a permanent commitment, not an introductory offer. Sheba Credit earns its revenue from institutions that query the bureau with your consent — never from charging you to see your own file, and never from selling your data.
Where we stand. Sheba Credit is a pre-licence private credit bureau. We are building toward authorisation under NBE Directive CRB/02/2019, and we do not present ourselves as licensed or regulated today. The consent ledger, audit trail, dispute process and retention limits described above are built and running now.
Products

Five products.
One ecosystem.

Everything Ethiopia's credit economy needs, built as one platform.

Sheba Credit Score

Ethiopia's first real-time AI credit score, built on alternative data from telecom, mobile money and savings behaviour. Free to check your score, available in 5 languages.

  • Scores computed from Telebirr, Ethio Telecom and mobile-money data
  • 300–850 scale with real factor explanations
  • Available in Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali, English
  • Anchored to your Fayda national digital identity
Explore Sheba Score ›
LIVE
782
Your Sheba Credit Score
Telebirr history✓ On time
Savings pattern✓ Consistent
Score trend↑ +14 pts
Loan status✓ Eligible
Score percentile in Ethiopia

Sheba Save

Savings-linked credit building. Regular deposits build a formal score with no loan required — designed for first-time borrowers, youth and women entering the credit economy for the first time. Your deposits always stay yours — Sheba Save pays no interest; saving simply builds your credit history.

  • Monthly deposits automatically build your credit history
  • Score boost for each consistent savings milestone
  • No debt required — saving is enough
Explore Sheba Save ›
8 mo
Consistent saving streak
Deposit pattern✓ Regular
Score impact+42 pts
Next milestone3 months away
Savings milestone progress

Open Banking & Credit API

Consent-based open banking paired with the real-time credit reporting API that banks, MFIs and fintechs query before they lend. Consumers share account data securely; institutions get NBE-aligned, real-time decisions with a full audit trail.

  • Consumer-consented data sharing — you control what's shared
  • Read-only bank connections, never write access
  • Real-time credit API satisfying the NBE pre-lending query mandate
  • Real-time responses with a full NBE audit trail
For institutions ›
LIVE
~1s
Average API response time
CBE account✓ Connected
Telebirr wallet✓ Connected
NBE CRB/02/2019Built to spec
Score enrichment+35 pts

Sheba Agri

Specialist credit profiling for Ethiopia's 70% farming workforce. Cooperative records, crop yields and input data unlock agricultural lending for people invisible to traditional credit.

  • Integrates with agricultural cooperatives
  • Seasonal scoring adapts to crop cycles
  • Unlocks financing for 70M+ farmers
Explore Sheba Agri ›
70%
of Ethiopians work in agriculture
Cooperative members scoredActive
Financing accessUnlocked
Crop cycle adaptation✓ Built in
Coverage of farming workforce

Sheba Education

Gamified financial literacy in 5 Ethiopian languages. Completing modules earns real score boosts — building a generation of credit-ready citizens from the ground up.

  • 5 languages: Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali, English
  • Real score boosts on module completion
  • Gamified lessons, badges, leaderboards
Explore Sheba Education ›
5
Ethiopian languages supported
Modules completed12 / 20
Score boost earned+28 pts
Next badgeSavings Master
Course progress
Explore the platform

One platform.
Every door open.

For individuals

Your free score, plus the tools to grow it — savings streaks, learning boosts and clear reasons behind every point.

See the products

For institutions

Banks, MFIs and fintechs query real-time credit reports through one NBE-aligned API, with a full audit trail.

Partner with Sheba

For developers

REST endpoints, sandbox keys and copy-paste examples — integrate credit queries in a day.

Read the docs

Live demo

Watch a credit query round-trip.

Our story

Why we're building Ethiopia's credit engine.

Get started

Create your account in minutes with Fayda.

Talk to us

Pilots, partnerships, press — say hello.
Common questions

The questions
people actually ask.

How is this different from the National Bank's credit registry?
The National Bank's registry records loans that regulated banks have already made. It is a lender's reference tool: if you have never held a formal loan, you do not appear in it at all, and you cannot see your own entry. Sheba builds a file from data you consent to share — mobile money, savings behaviour, agricultural activity — so a first-time borrower has something to be judged on. The two are complements, not substitutes.
Is Sheba Credit licensed by the National Bank of Ethiopia?
Not yet, and we will not imply otherwise. Sheba operates pre-licence and is building toward authorisation under NBE Directive CRB/02/2019. The compliance machinery is not a promise for later — the consent ledger, the tamper-evident audit trail, the dispute process and the retention limits are implemented and running today. See exactly how we prove it
I have never had a bank loan. Can I still get a score?
That is precisely who Sheba is built for. Most Ethiopians have no formal credit history, which traditional bureaux read as risk when it is really just absence. Your score can be built instead from consented mobile-money history, savings consistency and agricultural or cooperative records. Where we genuinely lack evidence, we say so — unknown is never scored as good.
Who can see my score?
Only an institution you have given consent to, for a stated purpose, for a limited period. Consent is specific and time-bound rather than blanket, and it is enforced in code: no valid consent record, no score returned. Every search is logged and visible to you in your dashboard.
What happens to my data if I stop using Sheba?
Revoke consent for a source and it stops feeding your score from your very next query onward. Negative records expire on a fixed schedule while positive history endures, so a bad year does not follow you indefinitely. Your data is never sold — not to lenders, not to advertisers, not to anyone.
Ethiopia's Credit Engine

More than a bureau.
A platform for transformation.

Building the financial architecture for Ethiopia's next era of growth — inclusive, AI-powered, and aligned with Vision 2030.

Get in touch Our story ›