School management systems in Ethiopia compared: eSchool, Fidel, Ethio Telecom and Temari

A director who searches for a school management system in Ethiopia finds a dozen names and very little to compare them by. Most come from small Ethiopian companies, and they suit different schools. This page puts them side by side on the things that decide whether a system lasts a school year: what the school pays, whether parents without smartphones hear from the school, which phones it runs on, and whether it understands the Ethiopian school year.

• Who pays, and how the price grows. A price per student per month grows with every child you enrol, a price per school stays put, and a price paid by parents never reaches the school's budget.
• The Ethiopian calendar. Terms, fee months and the leave year run on it, and a system that only formats Gregorian dates goes wrong at the edges of every term.
• The bureau's paperwork. Ask to see the government roster printed from real marks.
• Parents without smartphones. An app notification reaches nobody with a basic phone, and an SMS does.
• A weak connection. Ask what happens to attendance when the network drops halfway through a register.
• Your data on the way out. Ask for a full export before you sign anything.

Our longer guide, choosing a school management system in Ethiopia, turns each of these into a question to ask in the demo.

eSchool is built by Dream Technologies PLC (DreamTech) in Addis Ababa and sold as a managed service: the price includes setup, moving your records in, training, hosting and SMS setup. Its site lists admissions and student records, attendance with card readers and absence alerts by SMS, exams and PDF report cards, fees with receipts, HR and payroll, a timetable builder, library, transport, hostel and inventory, with apps for teachers, parents and students on Google Play and the App Store.

What it does well: it publishes its prices in full, with worked examples, and one vendor covers a wide set of jobs, including transport and hostel, which few of the others list. What to know: the school pays every month for each active student and staff member, plus the setup fee, so eSchool's own example of 300 students and 30 staff comes to about ETB 1.18 million in the first year before tax. Its pages say it takes on at most ten schools a year and that a school needs an internet connection, and its App Store listing names English as the app's only language. The homepage says 23+ schools in one place and hundreds in another.

Fidel, at fidel.et, is made by Wovera Solutions PLC in Addis Ababa. It has no connection that we could find to Fidel Labs, whose Fidel LMS is a different product. It lists student records, courses and curriculum, timetables, fees and invoices, an analytics dashboard, and messaging between teachers, students and parents, and it says it checks students against the Fayda national ID through a direct connection.

What it does well: the price is per school rather than per student, and it is published: ETB 7,899 a month for up to 2,000 students, ETB 8,999 for up to 10,000, about a fifth less when billed yearly, with no setup fee, no lock-in, and a lower price on request for public and non-profit schools. What to know: its pages do not say whether messages reach parents by SMS, whether it follows the Ethiopian calendar or which payment providers it connects to. We found no Fidel app in either store, and the demo link on its site returned an error on 23 September.

Ethio Telecom launched its Education Management System (EMS) in February 2025 as one of its cloud services, for everything from preschools to universities. It lists student records, academics, timetables, finance, HR, library, inventory, announcements, reports and a portal for students and parents, and parents can pay school fees through telebirr.

What it does well: prices are published for every kind of institution, VAT included, with unlimited students on every school package, and fee payment through telebirr comes from the company that runs telebirr. What to know: each package shows a second, larger figure with no label (350,000 birr beside the 55,000 for a private school), so ask what it pays for before comparing. It is bought at an Ethio Telecom enterprise service centre. No demo, app or sign-in page is linked, and the pages say nothing about SMS, the Ethiopian calendar or working through a weak connection.

Askuala Link, from a team in Bahir Dar that also lists an Addis Ababa office, puts school administration and a learning platform in one subscription. Its pages list attendance (including face, fingerprint and card readers), fees and invoices, grading and report cards, timetables, a digital library, online exams, SMS to parents, a parent portal that opens in the phone's browser, an AI study assistant and exports in the ministry's format, and its FAQ says attendance and grades can be entered offline and sent later.

What it does well: it is built around SMS for parents without smartphones, it claims offline entry, and its FAQ says training is included and most schools are running within a day. What to know: the site disagrees with itself in places. The English pricing page shows ETB 70 a month or ETB 700 a year and the Amharic one shows lower figures. Neither says whether the price is per student or per school, and a setup fee of unpublished size applies. The homepage gives 27+ schools and 22,000+ students. It mentions Android and iPhone apps, but we found none in either store.

Engocha Technologies is an Addis Ababa software and website company, and its school system is one of six products it sells, next to inventory, property rental, fleet, hotel and hospital systems. The product page lists registration and attendance, exam results and report cards, class schedules, fees with receipts and communication with parents, and says the systems it builds can run in Amharic as well as English.

What it does well: one system covers the office's core jobs, and support comes from a team in Addis Ababa. What to know: the page publishes no price, customer count, demo or case study, and it does not say whether the system is a ready product or built for each client. Anything past the feature list has to come from a conversation with them.

AIT Technology is an Addis Ababa software and outsourcing company that sells a school management system beside its Arif Education learning platform and its Adey Fee payment service. The school page lists admission, fees, attendance, student details, timetable, transport, reports and examinations, and Adey Fee takes school fees by card, mobile money, bank transfer or a POS machine, with QR receipts and payment links sent by SMS or email.

What it does well: fee collection works through many banks and wallets, and AIT publishes the steps of its setup, from a needs assessment to training. What to know: the school page is short, with no price, screenshots or customer count, and Arif Education's own website returned a server error on 23 September. None of AIT's school pages mention the Ethiopian calendar, attendance alerts to parents or working offline.

Temari keeps one record per student from registration to transcript, and every part of the school works from it. Attendance is taken on a phone or by a tap-in card at the gate, and the family gets an SMS the same morning. Fees are invoiced on the Ethiopian months, each payment is checked, and a QR receipt goes out. Continuous assessment becomes report cards that freeze when the term closes, and the government roster prints in the bureau's format. Timetables (the platform draws them itself), lesson plans in the Ministry format, HR, payroll under Ethiopian tax rules and inventory all run on the same record. Nineteen schools run on it, and it is INSA certified.

Where it differs from the others: parents pay for the core platform at 200 ETB per student a year at registration, so the school carries no software cost for it, and a new school runs a full semester before paying anything. It is also the only system on this page whose own pages say it runs on the Ethiopian calendar, from term dates to fee months (DreamTech says eSchool's calendar can be set up after checking with each school). Like Askuala Link, it gives the school's students national exam practice in the same account, with Grade 6, 8 and 12 past papers and chapter notes that follow the national textbooks. What to know: Temari is not on Google Play yet, and it installs from the browser on Android and iPhone instead.

Asquala, a school system from 50Lomi in Addis Ababa, described parent and student apps in Amharic and English on its website in 2024, but that website no longer loads and its domain was not registered on 23 September 2026, so there was nothing current to compare. Nolawi, which turns up in some searches, is a case study on the site of Ahaduweb, a web company that built a school system for Nolawi Academy, rather than a product with a site of its own. International products that publish an Ethiopia or Addis Ababa page are left out: this page covers systems built and supported in Ethiopia.

Public schools under the Addis Ababa City Administration Education Bureau already have a platform the bureau provides. e-KHOOL, the company behind it, describes the bureau as a client since 2023, with more than 500 government and public schools using it for attendance, lesson coverage, teacher reports and learning materials. The bureau also runs its own sign-in page at aa.ministry.et. This comparison is written mainly for private schools, which choose and pay for their own system.

Whichever you shortlist, run the same three tests in every demo: register a student with a full three-part name, take attendance with the network switched off, and print a report card and the government roster from real marks. If a system needs a workaround for any of the three in the demo, your staff will need the same workaround every week of the school year.

ይህ ጽሑፍ መጨረሻ የተረጋገጠው 23 ሴፕቴምበር 2026 ነው። የፈተና ጊዜያት፣ ክፍያዎችና ፖሊሲ ስለሚለወጡ፣ ከዚያ በኋላ ብዙ ቆይተው እያነበቡት ከሆነ ቀኖቹን እንደ መነሻ ብቻ ይውሰዷቸውና ከታች ካሉት ምንጮች ጋር ያረጋግጡ።