It is found in Eritrea, Ethiopia, northwest Somalia, and northern Kenya.

The Ethiopian boubou was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[2] Gmelin based his description on "Le merle noire et blanc d'Abyssinie" that had been described in 1775 by the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon.

[3] The Ethiopian boubou is now one of 22 species placed in the genus Laniarius that was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot.

The species complex was split based on the results of a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2008.