Ethio telecom has launched the eighth round of its nationwide Green Legacy seedling-planting programme, adding 250,000 trees while continuing to expand renewable energy across its telecommunications infrastructure. More than 3,500 employees and partners took part in the simultaneous planting across Addis Ababa and the company’s 18 regional offices.
The reforestation effort sits inside a broader “Green Operator” strategy linked to the company’s three-year “Next Horizon: Digital & Beyond 2028” plan. Over the past seven years Ethio telecom has planted more than 4.6 million seedlings at 889 sites, reporting an average survival rate of 82.7%. Cumulative spending on environmental programmes now exceeds 159.9 million birr, with more than 42.4 million birr allocated to this year’s activities. The latest campaign is expected to create around 2,000 temporary jobs in seedling production, planting and maintenance.
On the infrastructure side, the operator has commissioned 190 fully solar-powered telecom sites, 867 hybrid solar-and-battery systems and 1,114 lithium-ion battery storage units. These investments have cut diesel-generator running time by up to 40%. In the most recent financial year the company added 215 solar-powered sites and modernised 774 existing stations, bringing total installed solar capacity to 39.72 megawatts.
Ethio telecom has also entered Ethiopia’s emerging electric-vehicle charging market. Since February 2025 it has opened nine ultra-fast charging stations capable of serving 108 vehicles at once. By July 2026 the network had delivered more than 481,000 charging sessions and roughly 11.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, which the company estimates avoided about 15.4 million kilograms of CO₂ emissions.
The combined approach reflects a wider pattern among African telecom operators: network expansion is increasingly paired with efforts to reduce diesel dependence and operational emissions, particularly in off-grid and rural areas where grid power is unreliable or unavailable. For Ethio telecom, the dual focus on reforestation and renewable-powered sites is presented as both an environmental contribution and a practical way to improve service resilience while controlling energy costs.
Ethiopia’s national Green Legacy Initiative has planted billions of trees in recent years as part of a broader climate and landscape-restoration agenda. Ethio telecom’s participation, while smaller in absolute scale, embeds the operator’s network footprint inside that national effort and links digital infrastructure more directly to local environmental and employment outcomes. How consistently the solar and hybrid sites perform over time, and how well the newly planted seedlings are maintained, will determine the lasting impact of the programme.
