Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
A message on Ethiopia and America’s relationship
The United States’ decision to remove Ethiopia from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a significant and intentional blow to the Ethiopian people and economy. The country exports around 3 billion dollars — removal from AGOA will be cutting out approximately half of Ethiopia’s exports to the US, which was the country’s largest export market. According to Foreign Policy: this will make over 200,000 people, 80% of which are women, working mostly in the Textile and Manufacturing industries lose their jobs. Those most affected by this particular move made by the US are the Ethiopian people; not the Ethiopian Government. The reason this is being done to Ethiopia is no secret. It is also no secret to Ethiopians why they were allowed to be a part of AGOA in the first place.
Ethiopia’s message to the US regarding this has been consistent: It is still not too late to stop what you are doing and start supporting a democratically elected government. You can reverse the AGOA sanction on Ethiopia and save thousands of people their jobs and life security. This decision also damages Ethiopia’s export market significantly which will hurt the overall population. America can still support Ethiopia and earn back the trust of the Ethiopian people. We still believe America is capable of standing for its founding values. If this continues though, unfortunately it’s clear that America will lose the hearts of Ethiopians to other super power influences.
As Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma from the Republican Party said: Other super powers are already in Ethiopia, clearly ready to come off as more virtuous and supportive than the US. As of now, we still want to believe that it’s not the US as a whole that wants to divide us, but rather a small arm of the current administration which is working hard to lose its long time friend. Nothing says “Black Lives Matter” like enforcing the unwanted will of the US onto Africans through unsympathetic and harsh foreign policy on an already impoverished continent.
Ethiopia should convert energy directly into sovereign money
For Ethiopia, the only solution is to live outside of the centralized economic system of the world. If we want real sovereignty instead of choosing between which foreign super power should influence us, we need real, non-fiat, internationally-respected, hard money that we can produce entirely on our own. Freedom and sovereignty isn’t possible when all of the items we seek are audited by the centralized SWIFT system for days before they are allowed or denied. Our developmental aspirations and wants are controlled by others who say Yes or No based off of how it benefits them. We need money we can move when we want to, money we can use to do what we want with. We need the most secure, decentralized, and incredible achievement of mankind that no superpower can tamper with. We need Bitcoin now more than ever.
How to make AGOA’s damages insignificant: Ethiopia can make $4 – 6 Billion using Bitcoin and local resources
Ethiopia doesn’t have much that it can sell without the approval of the super power nations. The only thing that can be sold without anyone’s approval is energy. Not to a nation, but to a network. The Bitcoin network pays energy providers (“miners”) with Bitcoins and Ethiopia has enough installed generation capacity to make $4-6 Billion/year, just in the short term — Making the damages done by AGOA sanctions seem insignificant.
Ethiopia also has 60,000 Megawatts of untapped potential energy capacity, and with only 6,000 Megawatts, approximately $5 Billion can be generated annually. Over 4,500 Megawatts of it is already built to support the AGOA companies that just left. That energy could immediately be used to generate even more money than it was generating while being used by the AGOA manufacturing companies. Our flagship project, GERD, can generate 6,000 Megawatts by itself — completely untapped and remote, making it very expensive for internal or external use, but perfect for Bitcoin mining. Alex Gladstein says the following about how Bitcoin mining can help developing nations accelerate their growth, while simultaneously increasing their foreign currency and energy access:
“Billions of people in developing nations face the stranded power problem. In order for their economies to grow, they have to expand their electrical infrastructure, a capital-intensive and complex undertaking. But when they … build power plants to try and capture renewable energy in remote places, that power often has nowhere to go.
Here is where bitcoin could be an incentives game-changer. New power plants, no matter how remote, can generate immediate revenue, even with no transmission lines, by directing their energy to the bitcoin network and turning sunlight, water or wind into money … With bitcoin, any excess energy can be directed to mining until the communities around the plant catch up.”
This is what Ethiopia should be doing to counter the AGOA sanctions. Provide power to the Bitcoin network to generate billions to use for its own aspirations with unsanctionable money that can be converted to any country’s currency at anytime without anyone’s approval.
All Ethiopia needs to do to generate billions is to use its already installed generation capacity. But that’s not where its potential ends. The 60,000 Megawatts of potential energy that the country has is obviously not easy to realize. If Ethiopia invites Bitcoiners around the world to help us realize our energy potential, the kindest souls will come help set up power infrastructure that the population can use, while also helping convert the excess energy into money that is fully sovereign. All Ethiopia has to do is open its arms and express its energy aspirations. The nuances of these agreements will matter greatly, but if planned well, all Ethiopians will benefit.
Any power source, no matter how remote, can be used to mine bitcoin. The more energy we realize, the more we will develop our economy, the faster we close our trade deficits – the more bitcoins we will mine, the more energy we will realize, the more our economy grows. And this will all be a repeating cycle. We sincerely ask the Ethiopian government to seriously look into mining Bitcoin to solve our most challenging problems.
Project Mano has many ideas and aspirations. it is a non-profit, powered by a decentralized network of bitcoiner Ethiopians working together in open source fashion to try to help their nation escape the FIAT/SWIFT hell we found ourselves in. We believe Bitcoin is the only way out. We say NO MORE to foreign intervention into our economy and way of life. Mano will continue to publish more technical outlines and strategies on our blog to help Ethiopia realize its economic and cultural sovereignty. Mano is just an idea, and ideas are powerful. Check out the three primary methods we believe Ethiopia can use Bitcoin to its advantage at bitcoin.com.et & projectmano.com/plan
Ethiopia Prevails!