Vehicle registration plates of Ethiopia

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Ethiopia requires its residents to register their motor vehicles and display vehicle registration plates.^[1] Current plates feature Ge'ez text.

First issued	Serial format	Notes
1950s	AB 12345	Addis Ababa
1980-1989	4 A/B 12345	Government owned vehicle
2000s	1 AB over 12345	Addis Ababa

Italian Africa (1913-1941)

The very first Italian registration plates, from 1913 to the end of the 1920s, were rectangular, with a white background and with the name or initials of the colony in red followed by the registration number, on a single line, but the documentation on this is fragmentary. For the Italian colonial troops, however, special military service plates were used with the initials SOM (Somalia) or T (Tripolitania) in front.^[2] Subsequently, until 1935, the Italian colonies used white plates on black with a colonial code on the first line, and up to 5 numbers on the second line. The numbers, in relief, were assigned serially and the plates were made of metal, with the fasces as a seal. The colonial codes were:

ERITREA, later ER for Eritrea
SOMALIA, later SOM for Somalia
TRIPOLI for Tripolitania
CNA for Cyrenaica

Between 1937 and 1941 there was an Italian governorate in Ethiopia and in those years a new type of Italian license plate was issued. They were exactly the same as the previous ones, but they had three squares on the left, colored top to bottom green, white and red, like the Italian flag, with the letters AOI (Africa Orientale Italiana) for Italian East Africa inside. The front plates resembled standard Italian front license plates, as these were smaller, and only sometimes had the colored squares like the rear license plates.^[3] The abbreviations used to indicate the origin are:

AA for Addis Ababa
AM for Amara
ER for Eritrea
OS for OROMO e Sidama
HA for Harrar
SC for Scioà
SOM for Somalia

References

v t e Vehicle registration plates of Africa
Sovereign states	Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Eswatini Ethiopia Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Ivory Coast Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda São Tomé and Príncipe Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa South Sudan Sudan Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe
States with limited recognition	Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Somaliland
Dependencies and other territories	Canary Islands / Ceuta / Melilla (Spain) Madeira (Portugal) Mayotte / Réunion (France) Saint Helena / Ascension Island / Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom)

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