What does the TZ database mean "local time" to be? Time in its common representation where zero is midnight and 12 o'clock is noon? Or is it meant to account also for local conventions that zero is some point in the day different from midnight? If the former, then this issue is out of scope. If the latter, then it suggests there might be two Ethiopia zones, one for "midnight origin" (the one we have now) and one for "local convention" which combines the offsets from latitude, and the offset from the different convention of what the starting point is. paul