The New Tycoons of Abiy’s Ethiopia: Barons, Enablers and the Quiet Gold Rush for Data and Power
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By Thomas Araya Ethiopian Tribune columnist
“A new Ethiopia is being born,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared in 2019. Six years on, that birth looks less like revolution and more like the quiet emergence of an elite class technocratic, ambitious and tightly bound to the state. In the shadow of economic reform and digital modernisation, a new generation of business barons and institutional enablers has risen, reshaping Ethiopia’s economy in ways both dazzling and deeply opaque.
When African Intelligence first coined the phrase “Abiy’s business barons,” it captured a mood in Addis Ababa’s business salons: a knowing half-smile whenever someone mentioned “the new men”those whose fortunes seemed to flourish alongside the Prime Minister’s reforms. These are not the old guard of industrial Ethiopia. They are venture capitalists, logistics magnates and digital entrepreneurs whose proximity to the Prosperity Party has opened extraordinary opportunities. Some, like Tewodros Ashenafi and Berhane Gebrekristos, have re-emerged from the reform era as indispensable intermediaries between the state and global capital, whilst others are new entrants technocrats turned financiers, blending patriotic rhetoric with Silicon Valley vocabulary. At the centre of this web sits the Prime Minister himself, whose government has positioned the Ethiopian Investment Holdings, the country’s sovereign wealth vehicle, as both broker and gatekeeper.
If the first Abiy-era barons made their wealth through banks, logistics and public contracts, the second wave is colonising Ethiopia’s newest frontier: the data economy. Under banners such as “Digital Ethiopia 2025” and “Home-grown Economic Reform,” Addis Ababa has begun licensing vast data-centre and crypto-mining ventures. In theory, they promise modernisation and revenue diversification. In practice, they have created a lucrative convergence between state power and private gain. Take Alpha Data Centre Plc, a little-known company whose registration number, EIA/PC/2/0001310/2014, appears deep in the SEC filings of the Chinese crypto conglomerate BIT Mining. The paperwork confirms that BIT Mining acquired a 51 per cent stake in Alpha Data Centre’s 51-megawatt facilities, built on Ethiopian soil, powered by the national grid, and largely insulated from public scrutiny. Another example is West Data Group, a Hong Kong operator that signed a $250 million memorandum of understanding with EIH for a large-scale digital infrastructure and crypto-mining project. Its local subsidiary, Data Centre Service Plc, serves as the Ethiopian anchor, but little is known about its domestic partners or financing. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi’s Phoenix Group announced an 80-megawatt power-purchase agreement with Ethiopian Electric Power to supply electricity for crypto-mining a deal framed as “innovation in green energy monetisation.” Across these ventures, one pattern repeats: the state provides the power, the land and the protection; the foreign partner provides the capital; and local elites mediate the exchange.
If the barons are Ethiopia’s new winners, the enablers are its architects the technocrats, consultants and foreign partners who lend Abiy’s economic revolution a veneer of legitimacy. Foremost amongst them is Mamo Mihretu, former World Bank senior adviser turned head of EIH. Under his watch, the fund has become the central nervous system of the Ethiopian state’s economic projects, signing billion-dollar memorandums of understanding and restructuring state assets without parliamentary oversight. EIH’s reach now extends across logistics, telecommunications, energy and data, its role less about regulation and more about facilitation a state actor behaving like a private conglomerate, blurring public and private interests. Add to this the role of foreign consultancies and philanthropic policy laboratories, most notably the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Since 2019, TBI has quietly advised the Prime Minister’s Office on public-sector reform, digital governance and investment strategy. Whilst the Institute’s stated mission is to strengthen capacity, critics suggest that its frameworks, centred on agile government, digital identity, and “smart state” architecture, have helped legitimise an increasingly centralised form of governance. In that sense, it operates as an intellectual enabler, giving Ethiopia’s techno-authoritarian turn a developmental vocabulary.
Abiy’s economic rhetoric paints a portrait of meritocracy, a break from the ethnic patronage networks of the EPRDF era. Yet African Intelligence’s reporting, corroborated by new data-centre deals, shows a different reality: access remains tethered to proximity. The new elite may speak the language of reform, but their fortunes are as dependent on state favour as those of their predecessors. A senior Addis Ababa banker, speaking anonymously, put it bluntly: “Under the EPRDF, you needed a party card. Under Abiy, you need a smile and a selfie with someone from EIH.” The government’s digital ambition is marketed as modern, green and inclusive, yet the underlying economics evoke Ethiopia’s extractive past. Crypto-mining farms in regions like Wolaita and Oromia consume colossal volumes of subsidised hydroelectricity, whilst profits are often expatriated to foreign parent companies via offshore subsidiaries. In effect, power has replaced coffee as Ethiopia’s new export commodity, but instead of beans, it is megawatts; instead of farmers, it is algorithms. The opacity is striking. With the exception of Alpha Data Centre Plc, no local Ethiopian companies tied to these data projects publish directors’ names or beneficial owners. The Ministry of Trade rarely releases corporate extracts, and public contracts remain shielded from scrutiny. This secrecy has fuelled public suspicion that the ventures serve as discreet holding vehicles for regime insiders the very barons of the new order.
Across these ventures, three roles have become clear: the barons, domestic beneficiaries and political brokers who bridge state privilege and private gain; the enablers, institutional actors and advisers who structure and legitimise the projects; and the executors, operational foreign contractors who deliver the hardware and extract value. Together they define Ethiopia’s emerging economy: a choreography of political access, technocratic management and foreign execution, all orbiting the Prime Minister’s vision of controlled liberalisation. The government insists these projects represent sovereignty: Ethiopia as a digital nation, harnessing its energy surplus and strategic geography. Yet sovereignty without transparency is fragile. When the Ethiopian Electric Power authority signs a discounted power-purchase agreement with Phoenix Group, who audits the contract? When EIH brokers a mining concession with a Hong Kong firm, who measures the national benefit? These questions remain unanswered or unaskable.
Ethiopia’s experiment in “state-guided capitalism” is at once audacious and perilous. It promises modernity whilst centralising control, inviting investment whilst silencing scrutiny. In the long run, Ethiopia’s economic experiment will be judged not by its rhetoric of innovation but by its architecture of accountability. If the system rewards secrecy and loyalty, it risks breeding resentment and speculation. If it allows public wealth to be intermediated through private hands, it will repeat the old cycle of capture that each regime swore to end. For now, the barons continue to rise, the enablers continue to legitimise, and the state continues to expand its reach through corporate proxies. The line between reform and rentier capitalism grows thinner by the month. “We wanted a digital Ethiopia,” said one Addis-based entrepreneur, “but we got a digital oligarchy instead.”
This article builds on reporting by African Intelligence, SEC corporate filings, and independent analysis of Ethiopian Investment Holdings and related data-centre ventures.
