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It was a private bank whose shares were sold in Addis Ababa, New York, Paris, London, and Vienna. One of the first projects financed by the bank was the Franco-Ethiopian Railway which reached Addis Ababa in 1917. In 1931, Emperor Haile Selassie introduced reforms into the banking system and the Bank of Abyssinia became the Bank of Ethiopia, a fully government-owned bank providing central and commercial banking services. With the Italian invasion in 1935 came the demise of one of the earliest initiatives in African banking.

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