inching closer to Eritrea
and mounting labor rights issues
Hi there,
I hope you had a great weekend. I’m off to an intense week already (yay), so keeping this edition on the shorter side. A lot is happening in labor rights, and I have included two of those stories in this issue.
As for my promise to deliver more election-related news and analysis, I’m working on a project that can deliver that, so stay tuned. I’m thinking it might need a thing (newsletter) of its own.
The general elections in Ethiopia have been scheduled for June 2026, and despite the numerous conflicts beleaguering the country right now, experts I have spoken with have good reason to believe that it is taking place, come hell or high water.
It’s in the works, and you’ll be the first I’ll be sharing that project with. If you have any particular interest around the elections, or would like to collaborate on this, please hit reply and let me know – I would love to hear from you!
My name is Maya Misikir, and I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter where I send out the week’s top 5 stories on human rights and news in Ethiopia.
Now, to the news.
Press Freedom: the good old days
It was the spring of 2019.
“…prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had come to power a year earlier promising to end decades of repression and usher in an unprecedented era of freedom. Exiled news outlets were invited back to Ethiopia, journalists were released from prison and a host of new publications sprang up.” - The Guardian
That same year, Ethiopia ‘held a glitzy ceremony’ as host for World Press Freedom Day. Fast forward 6 six years, and the attacks against journalists are now being used as a ‘weapon of war’, according to a recent report on the safety of journalists in Ethiopia.
What happened between now and then?
Here’s an excerpt from the 2025 World Press Freedom Index:
Devastated by inter-ethnic conflict and a civil war, most of the recent gains in press freedom have been reversed. Journalists’ fear of reprisals were reignited by the conflict in the Amhara region, which began a few months after a peace agreement was signed in November 2022 formally ending the Tigray war.
The Index, an annual ranking of countries by Reporters Without Borders, published on May 2, has put Ethiopia in the “very serious” category for the first time ever this year, ranking 145th from a total of 180 countries.
Eritrea has once again taken bottom place, at 180th place for a total of 13 years in this position, losing a few times to mostly North Korea or Turkmenistan. Take a look at the Index here.
Fourteen diplomatic missions in Ethiopia have ‘expressed concern over what they described as the significant pressure on freedom of expression’ and have called for journalists to be “protected”, says a story on Addis Standard.
The full story on Ethiopia’s swift decline from World Press Freedom hosting days to its current state on The Guardian, here, the outlook on Ethiopia by Reporters Without Borders, here, and the story on the response of diplomatic missions, on Addis Standard, here.
Labor rights: health professionals are striking
The Ethiopian Health Professionals Movement ‘issued an ultimatum’ over the weekend to the Ethiopian Ministry of Health. The list of demands on their end includes ‘urgent reform, fair compensation, and dignified working conditions’.
Here’s an excerpt from the list of demands published on Addis Standard:
“…a salary averaging $1,000/month based on East African benchmarks; a 45-hour work week in line with WHO recommendations, with proportional overtime pay; hazard pay, transportation and housing allowances; free medical care for professionals and their families…”
If there is no response to these requests within ten days, the medical professionals say they will take legal measures, and possibly strike.
This is not a new issue as medical professionals have been asking for change for the past few years. The statement also adds that ‘this is purely an economic demand’ lest you people get the idea of twisting this into yet another ‘political agenda’.
The full story on Addis Standard, here.
Finance: crypto miners making bank
I first wrote an update in February 2024 when Bitcoin miners flocked by the dozens to Ethiopia to set up their ‘energy-guzzling’ computers (Bloomberg broke the story). The mining companies were kicked out of China over regulatory changes, and drawn by the cheap electricity costs here, which is important as it ‘accounts for as much as 80% of miners’ operating costs’.
In January of this year, a ‘leading’ Chinese bitcoin mining company, BIT Mining, acquired a 51-megawatt mining facility, signing a 14 million USD deal with Ethiopia.
Last week, ‘Abu Dhabi-based crypto company Phoenix Group added 52 megawatts of mining capacity’. Here’s an excerpt on this latest update from Semafor:
The company will draw 90% of the power for its facilities from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, raising Phoenix’s capacity in the country to 132 MW. At the end of last year, about 18% of monthly sales by Ethiopia’s power utility went to bitcoin miners.”
This expansion will solidify the company as one of the top bitcoin miners in the world, adds the story.
The full story on Semafor Africa, here.
Investigation: forced conscriptions, again
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (Commission) is investigating ‘alleged’ forced conscriptions by the army. The Commission says this investigation follows ‘several complaints from citizens’.
Here’s an excerpt from a story on The Reporter:
Recent images and videos circulating on social media portraying youth, many of whom are underage teens, standing in long queues as part of the alleged forced conscription process have incited public outcries and rage.
In November last year, I wrote an update on forced conscriptions happening in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, forcing young people in the region’s North Shew Zone to go into hiding.
A month later, the Commission confirmed forced conscriptions were happening in ‘Jimma, Shashamane, Adama, as well as Bishoftu, which is an hour’s drive away from Addis Abeba’.
The full story on The Reporter, here.
Labor rights: discriminatory hiring
Ethiopian Airlines (ET) has been accused of systematically denying employment opportunities to young people from Ethiopia’s Tigray, Southern Ethiopia, and South West Ethiopia regions.
The statement from Human Rights First follows a job posting by ET last month for automotive and engineering professionals.
Here’s an excerpt from the story on The Reporter:
“We observed that the Airlines Group posted an online job announcement inviting young applicants with automotive or engineering certificates,” reads the statement.
“However, the designated application centers were limited to selected regions—specifically universities and polytechnic institutions in the Central, Western, Eastern, North-Western, and Southern parts of Ethiopia—completely excluding institutions in the three mentioned regional states.”
The organization, which has called for an independent investigation, says this exclusion denies young people from these regions a fair chance and undermines ‘post-war rehabilitation efforts in Tigray.
ET’s response: that it is not ‘always possible to conduct recruitment in all regions simultaneously.’
The full story on The Reporter, here.
That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!
In the meantime, feel free to share this with anyone you think can benefit from keeping up with what’s going on in Ethiopia.
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they crypto mining ⛏️ better make us rich fr cuz we’re cooked otherwise.