Transformation in Ethiopia: Africa's green awakening

The Ethiopian government has banned the import of combustion vehicles since January 2024. The import ban for individual parts of combustion cars followed in May 2025. Ethiopia was the first country in the world to take this step. The reason was initially economic: petrol and diesel imports had become too expensive for the country and had put considerable pressure on its foreign exchange reserves.

But the move raises questions about what role Africa will play as the world transitions to clean energy. Will most of the profits be skimmed outside Africa while the continent provides land, forests and raw materials? Or will Africa be able to build a green economy according to its own ideas and thereby create a transformation that serves its own interests?

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Araya Belete, who lives in Addis Ababa, bought an electric car. Now he's leaning on the road over the open hood. His smartphone is leaning against the windshield wiper and a four-minute repair video is playing on the display. A component is defective. The mechanic in the video speaks Mandarin, Belete Amharic and English. The car is of little interest.

Belete is an IT expert, but since buying a car he has also been a mechanic, electrician and importer of spare parts such as charging cables. Given rising fuel prices, switching was the only sensible option for him, he says.

He even convinced his company to purchase four more electric cars. However, that is where the problems began. Maintenance and repairs are difficult in a city where most workshops have little experience with electric cars.

When the import ban came into force, it was estimated that around 7,000 electric cars were registered in Ethiopia. There are now over 115,000. With a total of around 1.3 million vehicles in the country, this is an extremely high proportion. The switch also made economic sense due to the commissioning of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa, in November 2025.

The mega dam on the Blue Nile took 14 years to build. The government largely mobilized the costs of around $5 billion domestically. Civil servants bought government bonds, members of the Ethiopian diaspora made contributions from abroad, and school children collected money. Millions of the country's citizens contributed to the financing.

The Gerd has more than doubled Ethiopia's electricity production. The 13 turbines generate hydroelectric power with an electricity capacity of up to 5,150 megawatts. The country is becoming less and less dependent on fuel imports, is developing into a regional electricity exporter - and has plenty of energy for the state-sponsored boom in electric cars.

The dam is not the only major green project. As part of the Green Legacy Initiative reforestation campaign launched in 2019, millions of Ethiopians have so far planted a total of 48 billion tree seedlings, according to government figures. The target is 65 billion.

This primarily involves protecting water catchment areas, restoring degraded soils and securing the basics of energy supply and nutrition. Nevertheless, the Ethiopian project opens up the possibility of selling CO2 certificates on international markets. This means that the Ethiopian model differs from a common approach to green transformation in Africa, which is limited to offsetting emissions from wealthy countries.

Trading in CO2 certificates and the development of strategic raw materials are changing Africa's economy. Companies secure usage rights to huge areas of African forests in order to generate CO2 certificates for the global market. At the same time, the global expansion of electric vehicles and battery technologies is driving up demand for cobalt, lithium, copper and rare earths. This puts Africa at the center of the global energy transition.

However, the certificates from African areas are sold on international markets. Raw materials often leave the continent in unprocessed form - and return as high-quality batteries, electric cars or other technologies. So most of the value creation takes place elsewhere. African scientists such as the Kenyan anthropologist Wangui Kimari now refer to this process as “green colonialism”: environmental resources and economic value creation are being withdrawn from Africa under the auspices of climate protection.

Although Ethiopia is going its own way, it is by no means independent of global supply chains. It must continue importing electric vehicles, batteries and chargers. But the government is trying not just to take part in the green transformation, but to gain more control over its conditions.

It developed its new, green industrial policy in response to its own balance of payments and foreign exchange crisis and not primarily according to the ideas of international donors. The focus of the reforestation program is on strengthening local resilience, not on generating certificates for international CO2 markets.

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Belayneh Ameare has been driving the same weathered blue Soviet-built Lada around Addis Ababa for decades. He once earned his living as a taxi driver. Today he has to watch more and more often as electric minibuses take over the stops and passengers on which he lived. Ameare does not reject the green transformation, he says. But he worries whether there is still room in this change for people whose livelihoods depend on the current economic system, or whether they will be left behind.

Ethiopia shows that a green strategy can strengthen national independence, but at the same time create losers at the individual level. As a continent, Africa must therefore not only shape the green transformation itself, but also ensure that the fruits of this sovereignty within the individual countries benefit everyone.

In September 2025, the country hosted the second Africa Climate Summit and took a confident position. Africa, the final declaration states, is “not just a victim of climate change, but a resourced and proactive force in developing innovative, sustainable and inclusive solutions”. The continent should position itself as a “global hub for low-carbon production” and thus pursue a “green first” path to economic development.