Send a letter to Ethiopia from Sweden

Ethiopian addresses consist of the recipient's name, a P.O. Box number, and the city or town name.

Postcodes are not used in practice and should be omitted.

The final line of the address must read ETIOPIEN in Swedish uppercase, because your letter is sorted in Sweden before leaving the country.

This feels counter-intuitive when writing in English, but Swedish postal sorting requires the destination country in Swedish.

A complete address looks like: Name / P.O. Box 1234 / Addis Ababa / ETIOPIEN

The last line is always the country name in Swedish: ETIOPIEN. This surprises people who write the rest of the address in English, but the letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country, and Swedish sorting reads Swedish. Everything above that line should look exactly as it would if the letter had been posted inside Ethiopia, because a postal worker there is the one who has to read it.

Almost every letter that fails to arrive has an address problem, not a transport problem. These are the mistakes that keep coming back on mail posted from Sweden to Ethiopia:

Always add a sender address. A letter with a correct sender comes back to you if the address is wrong, and you can then send it again. Without one, the letter is simply gone.

Normal delivery is 12–25 vardagar, counted from the moment we hand the letter to PostNord — not from the moment you order. Order before 11:45 on a weekday and the letter is handed in the same day.

Most of the variation comes from distribution inside Ethiopia rather than from the flight. A letter to a major city arrives faster than one to a rural address in the same country.

A standard letter to Ethiopia costs 88 SEK and an express letter 128 SEK. Printing, paper, envelope, postage and hand-in to PostNord are all included. The price is the same to every country, so you never need to know which postal zone Ethiopia belongs to.

PostNord divides the world into seven zones if you buy stamps and post the letter yourself, which is why other services charge different amounts for different countries. The table below shows both options.

The Ethiopian Postal Service operates a box-based system where recipients collect their mail from post offices rather than receiving delivery at home or business addresses. This model reflects the country's infrastructure and ensures reliable mail handling in both urban and rural areas.

When you send a letter to Ethiopia through Posta Brev, it travels from our Swedish facility to the destination post office, where the recipient collects it using their assigned P.O. Box number. Delivery times of 12–25 working days account for international transport and the collection-based system.

Always verify that your recipient has an active P.O. Box and knows to expect your letter. Without a valid box number, delivery cannot be completed, as there is no general street delivery network in Ethiopia.

Registered international mail (Rek utrikes) may contain documents only, weighs no more than 2 kg and carries liability up to 2,000 SEK. It can be tracked to most countries, and only one recipient may be named.

It is the right service for notices of termination, powers of attorney and legal documents where you need proof that the letter was sent. The country name still has to be written in Swedish on a registered letter — ETIOPIEN on the last line.

Banknotes and coins may not be sent in an international letter, in any currency and for any amount. Dangerous goods are prohibited. Goods sent in a letter to a country outside the EU require a customs declaration and a barcode that an ordinary letter does not carry.

We therefore send documents and personal letters only. That is also what keeps the service simple: no customs forms, no weighing and no questions about the contents.

You need no printer, no envelope and no international stamps. Everything happens in your browser, and the letter is handed to PostNord in Sweden by us.