Filming in Ethiopia

[Jordan Beard]

I'm headed to Ethiopia next month to shoot a documentary. I'm not planning to bring a ton of gear— probably just one or two small pelicans. We recently traveled to China with an ATA carnet and didn't have any issues but it appears that Ethiopia doesn't recognize carnets. Does anyone have any advice for best practices for traveling with gear in countries that don't accept carnets? I know that filing our gear with US customs will help us upon our return to the states, but I'm curious if there's anything I can do to smooth out the process of entering/exiting Ethiopia.

 

[Grzegorz Gill]

I shot a cooking/travel show in Addis and Lalibela last April. We had sent a complete gear list to our fixer in Ethiopia so they can get it stamped at some government office, dunno exactly what one. We also had letters from the government tourism office to approve our project with their stamps. We had the tourism office on our side because it was a tv show that would in the end promote tourism in Ethiopia, so that helped. Those letters got us through and we had too much fun in Ethiopia. Bring some USD incase you might need to pay a "special fee". But as I remember we didn't pay any special fees in Ethiopia. Kenya + Tanzani were different stories.