The paper analyses the formal relationships between causal and noncausal verbs in Kambaata (Cushitic; Ethiopia). The language is morphologically rich and has, among others, a system of nine nominal cases. The causative, passive, middle (autobenefactive) and reciprocal are productive verb derivations. Kambaata has only a single labile verb but otherwise distinguishes consistently between transitive and intransitive verbs. The study departs from Haspelmath’s (1993) list of 31 verbal concepts to determine the morphological strategies expressing causal-noncausal alternations. It is shown that the causative strategy is predominant in Kambaata, but that the anticausative strategy follows closely behind. If the whole lexicon including the numerous ideophones are taken into account, the equipollent strategy is a very important third strategy. Finally, we find two suppletive verb pairs in the list of 31 verbal concepts: ‘die/kill’ and ‘finish (vi/vt)’.