A report by a US-based magazine Clean Technica says “Ethiopia Shows Us Just How Fast the Transition to Electric Mobility Can Happen in Africa.”
Ethiopian government sources indicate that Ethiopia had a plan to catalyze adoption of electric vehicles in Ethiopia with a 10year target to see 148,000 electric cars and close to 50,000 electric buses on Ethiopia’s roads by 2030.
The 10-year target has already been met only in two years. “Ethiopia has made incredible progress on this path to the extent that the Ministry of Transport and Logistics recently said that this target of over 100,000 electric vehicles has already been met in just the first 2 years of this plan! How cool is that!” the report said.
This has called for a revision of the government’s 10-year plan.
“Due to this incredible progress, the target has since been bumped up to close to 500,000 in the 10-year period. Let’s take a moment to take this all in. So, in just 2 years, locally assembled EVs and imported EVs have added almost 10% of Ethiopia’s current total ICE vehicle registrations!”
In the next 8 years,the total fleet will then be 1.7 million. If the target is met, it would mean the penetration of electric vehicles in Ethiopia’s total fleet will be close to 30% at that time.
“This will be quite a remarkable feat. Of course, the actual number will be more than 30%, as a lot of the vehicles in the current ICE fleet will be retired by then. Also, given the extremely low motorization in Ethiopia, vehicle sales should grow at a much faster rate going forward, and probably the penetration of EVs in the country’s total fleet will hit close to 50% by then,” the report stated.
Additional major factor that speeds up the growth of electric vehicles population is the decision by the Ethiopian government to push for restrictions on all ICE vehicle imports.
“Drastic but understandable. Ethiopia spends over $5 billion USD annually on petrol and diesel imports, precious foreign currency it does not have. Ethiopia has also recently started generating electricity from the first units at the 5-gigawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, adding to its other hydro and renewable energy resources. Electricity is ridiculously cheap in Ethiopia at under 1¢ USD per kWh in many cases. Ethiopia therefore wants to save as much foreign currency from that fuel import bill as possible, and EV drivers of course will be benefiting from some unbelievably cheap electricity, which will lower their transport costs,” it explained.