Ten years ago, if you flew over the Rift Valley at night, you'd see basically nothing. Huge stretches of Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia are completely dark. Cities hundreds of miles away are glowing, but out here in the valleys? Just blackness. That's different now, the reason? BTC mining. Thousands of rigs are humming away, powered by hydro dams, volcanic steam, and solar installations.

The economics are simple, maybe too simple. Africa is sitting on incredible renewable resources, but its transmission infrastructure is in dire need of improvement. Build a dam somewhere remote, and you can generate gigawatts, sure. Except only a fraction of those watts will ever reach paying customers. They've had years of surplus power sitting idle or shut down at sunset. Complete waste.

Then miners showed up with shipping containers full of ASICs and basically said, "We'll buy every electron you can't sell." Cash upfront.

Ethiopia was one of the earliest countries to sign a large deal. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam generates over 6,000 megawatts, but the grid cannot absorb even half that amount. By mid-2025, you had approximately twenty-three mining operations, initially led by Asian companies, followed by the Americans, and then locals getting in on the action -- all collectively pulling around 600 megawatts at 3.2 cents per kWh. That's a great deal compared to North American prices. The State utility pocketed over $100 million in hard currency in ten months. New Capital is already funding new substations and rural lines. Villages scheduled to receive electricity in 2035 received it this year instead because mining revenue made everything pencil out.

Not everyone loves this, obviously. Angola banned mining outright after rogue operators fried neighborhood transformers. Parts of Ethiopia worry mining contracts will eventually crowd out households once grid capacity catches up. But economics keep winning. Cambridge pegs Africa at roughly 3% of global BTC hash rate, nearly all hydro, geothermal, or solar. That's expected to double by 2027, with Rwanda negotiating small modular reactors and Malawi completing new Shire River dams.

It's hard to quantify, but impossible to miss if you're traveling in these areas. Kids are doing homework under LED bulbs installed because miners needed power infrastructure. Mechanics learning cooling system and inverter maintenance -- skills directly applicable to grid work. Farmers run irrigation at night when solar miners shut off and capacity frees up. Capital that used to leave buying diesel stays in-country, cycling through local payrolls and taxes.

BTC mining isn't a miracle of development. Profits swing wildly with price; badly designed projects absolutely wreck weak grids. However, places where traditional utilities have failed for decades suddenly have miners as their buyers of last resort. Customers are willing to fund a substation so everyone else gets lights, too.

The sun drops fast across Africa, but darkness isn't as pervasive as it once was. Somewhere in valleys barely on maps, machines convert wasted electrons into BTC and -- almost an afterthought -- into the first reliable power many families ever had.

Watch: Tech redefines how things are done -- Africa is here for it