Has the Other Shoe Dropped?: Ethiopia’s Rise and Fall as U.S. Supplier of Sub-Saharan African Footwear

Historically, Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, including Ethiopia, have accounted for only a small share of global footwear production. In 2011, U.S. imports of footwear from SSA totaled only $2.4 million, and Ethiopia accounted for only 28 percent. By 2018, however, Ethiopia had grown to become the leading SSA supplier, accounting for 96 percent of the region’s $36.3 million in footwear exports to the United States. Despite Ethiopia’s meteoric rise as a U.S. supplier of SSA footwear, challenges with the local business environment, bottlenecks in global supply chains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and political strife have resulted in two years of significant export declines. This paper provides an overview of Ethiopia’s footwear trade with the United States during the 2011 to 2020 period and analyzes the key competitive advantages likely impacting Ethiopia’s rapid rise as SSA’s leading exporter of footwear to the United States. Lastly, it reviews challenges and recent events that contributed to the country’s fall as a supplier of U.S. footwear.