About eFirma

Paper was never the point. Proof was.

We are an Ethiopian company building the evidence layer under everyday agreements — so that a document signed in Addis on a Tuesday can still be proved, line for line, in front of whoever asks. Founded in 2019. Still here, still in Addis.

Start free Meet the team

Our charter

What we will not trade away

That every document eFirma seals carries its own proof — who signed it, how they were checked, when it happened, and whether anything has moved since. On every plan, for as long as the document matters.

The founders

Addis Ababa

2019Founded

Started inside lending operations, where a single missing signature stops everything.

20,000+Documents sealed

Sent, signed and sealed by banks, agencies and firms since the first pilot.

7Regions served

Signers in seven regions and the diaspora, on whatever phone they already own.

2Languages, equally

English and Amharic across the interface and every message a signer receives.

Why we exist

An agreement should be as easy to prove as it is to make.

Ethiopia does not have a paperwork problem. It has an evidence problem. A contract signed in ink is easy to make and hard to prove: the copy in the file room, the scan in someone's inbox and the version attached to the claim are three different documents, and nobody can say which one the parties actually agreed to.

eFirma exists to close that gap. Every document sent through it carries the proof of its own making — who signed, how they proved who they were, when it happened, and whether a single character has moved since. That evidence is not a premium feature and never will be; it is the whole point of the thing.

How we got here

Seven years of taking one bottleneck at a time.

eFirma was not designed in the abstract. Each part of it exists because a specific piece of paperwork was holding a specific institution up.

2019
A pilot inside a lending team
The first version was built for one bank's loan files, where an approved facility could sit for a fortnight waiting on two signatures in two cities.
2021
Built to the Proclamation
Electronic Transactions Proclamation No. 1205/2020 gave electronic signatures legal standing. We rebuilt the evidence model around what the law asks for, rather than around what was convenient to store.
2023
Passcodes, seals and a public check
One-time passcodes over SMS and email, a tamper-evident seal on every completed document, and a verification page anyone can use without an account.
2025
Beyond one document at a time
Signing routes, bilingual templates and bulk campaigns — for the agency sending the same form to two thousand people and needing every one of them to hold up.
2026
The workspace as it stands
Organisations, roles, retention rules and an audit trail that exports whole. The platform the rest of this site describes.

What we hold to

Six rules we have never found a good reason to break.

The law first, the feature second

Every part of the signing flow traces back to something Proclamation 1205/2020 asks for. If a shortcut would weaken what a document proves, it does not ship.

Evidence is not a plan tier

Identity checks, the seal, the audit trail and public verification are on the free plan exactly as on the largest one. Paying more buys volume and control, never a stronger signature.

Amharic is not a translation

The interface, the notifications and the documents themselves are built for two scripts at once — not English with a language file bolted on afterwards.

Built for the phone people have

A signer needs a link and a passcode. No app to install, no account to create, no reader that only runs on a desktop.

Say plainly what is protected

We describe what eFirma actually does — encryption, identity checks, a tamper-evident seal — and we do not dress it up in terms that imply a certificate authority we are not.

Documents outlive software

A signed document has to be readable and checkable years after the fact. Everything is exportable, and nothing that matters is locked behind a login that has to still exist.

Where we stand

Accountable in the country the documents are signed in.

A signature is only as good as the jurisdiction it can be argued in, and the people who can be asked about it. Both are here.

Under Ethiopian law

Signatures are made under Electronic Transactions Proclamation No. 1205/2020, with the evidence the Proclamation expects behind each one.

Proclamation 1205/2020

Registered and based here

An Ethiopian company with its team, its support and its accountability in Addis Ababa — not a reseller of something built elsewhere.

Addis Ababa

Data kept in region

Documents, audit trails and signer records are stored in region, with retention set by the organisation that owns them.

Regional hosting

Checkable by outsiders

Any completed document can be verified by whoever holds it — a registrar, a counterparty, a court — without an account or a call to us.

Public verification

Who is behind it

A small team from the regulated side of the room.

Between them: financial services, government technology, and the law on electronic transactions. Nobody here learned about the Proclamation from a summary.

Saba Mekonnen

Co-founder & Chief Executive

Came from the regulator's side of the table, after a decade on digital policy at the Ethiopian Securities Agency. Spends most of the week with the institutions deciding whether to trust an electronic file.

Dawit Bekele

Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Built trust and payment services for mobile banking platforms carrying five million users. Responsible for the parts of eFirma that have to still be true in ten years.

Lulit Tadesse

Head of Compliance

A lawyer by training, working on electronic transactions, data residency and identity frameworks. Reads every claim on this site before it goes up, including this one.

Put us to work on something real.

Send one document, free, and judge the evidence it comes back with. That is the only argument for eFirma we entirely trust.

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