Ethiopian visas now appear to be available again at Nairobi embassy (2016)
 

For the last few years when coming from the south the only option for reliably getting your Ethiopian visa has been to send your passport back to the embassy in your home country as all the Ethiopian embassies in the southern half of Africa would not issue them to non-residents.

The policy now seems to be changed at least at the Nairobi embassy. Three friends of mine have all successfully obtained visas there in the last three months. The process as described by one of them is:

Okay, to obtain the Ethiopia visa in Nairobi you must have a letter from your country's embassy verifying your identify ( name, passport number ect) and something about please assist him/her in their endeavour. Then it is simply obtain the application form from the Ethiopia embassy, hand in the forms with embassy letter, photo, a copy of your passport. Once they verified that you have all the correct documents they will send you to the chancellor to obtain his signature. We did this on Monday but were told to come back the next day because the ambassador want to sign it instead. So we went back on Tuesday morning, they just took our forms, and within 10minutes give it back,signed. Didn't need to see the ambassador at all. We went back to the admin office with the signed forms, they then asked us to deposits some money to the Ethiopian embassy account. $40 USD for single entry 30 days ( and other cyclist paid 60 USD for 90days). We deposits the money and they issued the visa all within the same day. So all in all it took three days ( 1st visit to get the application form) ( 2nd visit to hand in the documents and get approval from admin to obtain signature ) ( 3rd visit to get signature and pay money).

The Australian embassy in Nairobi issues the required support letter for $25 within 24 hours after sighting your passport.

Note, it's well worth getting the 90 day visa because the clock starts from the day the visa is issued (plus you'll use up at least 5 days in Addis Ababa if you choose to get your Egyptian and Sudanese transit visa there (which is an easy option)) .

This is great news - it cost me over $300 in courier fees getting my passport to and from Australia to get my visa only a month or two before the policy was changed.

This is kind of off-topic however "Egypt/Sudan" transit visas were also mentioned so I want to ask about "Egypt/Sudan/Kenya" carnet issues. Is it possible to enter Egypt with the $800TIP, Sudan without carnet? Kenya without carnet?

Sudan and Kenya can certainly be done without carnet with no real problems. I have met one person who managed to get into Egypt using a TIP he purchased when arriving at the Libyan border in 2013. No idea how much it cost or whether it can be obtained on the Egypt/Sudan border. Some people without a carnet are currently getting around the issue by flying their bikes from Khartoum to Turkey which I'm told costs about $800 with Turkish Airlines.

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Ethiopian visa from Nairobi
 

Got my Ethiopian visa in Nairobi today. I had a letter of Introduction from my Finnish embassy. I was asked to apply first the Sudanese visa because riding from south to north. But on the embassy of Sudan they refused to issue the visa to Sudan and said after prosessing 30 min my application that I must apply it on Adis Ababa! Went back to embassy of Ethiopia with my bomerang Sudanese application and the 3 mth visa was issued and stamped to my passport after paying the fee to bank.