plate 268 · 2025 data

China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric

China's car exports to Ethiopia by engine type, share of value, 2023–2025, as reported by China.

Africa's century
  1. 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
  2. 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
  3. 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
  4. 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
  5. 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
  6. 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
  7. 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
  8. 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
  9. 9. Nearly two in three people in Africa are still offline
  10. 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
  11. 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
  12. 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
  13. 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
  14. 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
  15. 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
  16. 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
  17. 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
  18. 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
  19. 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
  20. 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
  21. 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
  22. 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
  23. 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
  24. 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
  25. 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
  26. 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
  27. 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
  28. 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
  29. 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
  30. 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
  31. 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
  32. 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
  33. 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
  34. 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
  35. 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
  36. 36. France fell from first to third among Côte d'Ivoire's suppliers
  37. 37. China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric
68.9%

Electric cars' share of China's car exports to Ethiopia by value in 2025, up from 39.6% in 2023.

5.3%

Petrol cars' share in 2025, down from 60.2%; hybrids, mostly plug-ins, took 21.8%.

5.6x

China's car sales to Ethiopia grew from $12.6M to $70.9M in two years, as Ethiopia restricted petrol and diesel car imports.

Source: UN Comtrade, China's exports of cars (HS 8703) to Ethiopia, 2025
the numbers & method
China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric. Source: UN Comtrade, China's exports of cars (HS 8703) to Ethiopia, 2025.
Electric (M)Hybrid (M)Petrol (M)Other (M)
20235.00.07.60.0
202426.63.914.30.6
202548.915.43.82.8

Claim types Fact · Interpretation

UN Comtrade, annual goods trade, reporter China (156), exports to Ethiopia (231), HS 8703 (motor cars) and its subheadings, primaryValue (FOB, current US$), read from the Comtrade public API (2025: the source link; 2023 and 2024: same query with those periods). Ethiopia does not report recent trade to Comtrade, so China's own export records are used. US$ M, 2023 / 2024 / 2025: all cars 12.574 / 45.424 / 70.901; electric only (870380) 4.985 / 26.641 / 48.870; hybrids (870340 + 870360, petrol hybrids and plug-ins) 0 / 3.896 / 15.436 (plug-ins 14.860 in 2025); petrol only (870322 + 870323) 7.568 / 14.274 / 3.784; other = all cars minus the parts shown (870390 and unlisted subheadings) 0.021 / 0.613 / 2.811. No diesel cars recorded. Units in 2025: 5,287 electric of 7,861 cars (67.3%); 2023: 225 of 1,121 (20.1%). Shares and ratios are progrss calculations; values not adjusted for prices. Ethiopia restricted imports of petrol and diesel cars from 2024 (context, not shown in the data). Takeaway 3's reading is an interpretation. Related: plate 096 (Nepal imports twice as many electric cars as petrol cars). Licence: UN Comtrade data, attribution required.

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