Last spring, cargo containers began appearing near electricity substations connected to the recently built Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Africa’s largest. Inside were stacks of powerful, energy-guzzling computers.
It was a telltale sign that Chinese bitcoin miners, having bounced from country to country in search of cheap power and benign regulations since Beijing cast them out two years before, had arrived in the Horn of Africa.
Buffeted by political and economic headwinds, they were lured by some of the world’s lowest electricity costs – as well as an increasingly friendly government.
Ethiopia, which allowed bitcoin mining starting in 2022 even though it still bans cryptocurrency trading, has bolstered ties with China over the past decade, and several Chinese companies helped build the US$4.8 billion dam the miners plan to draw their power from.
Ethiopia has emerged as a rare opportunity for all firms that mine the original cryptocurrency, as climate change and power scarcity fuel a backlash against the US$16 billion-a-year industry (at bitcoin’s current price) elsewhere.
