You aren't wrong.

People extorted will say they had to pay a bribe, which places the blame on them (the one that bribes) rather than the one extorting them.

Paying cops to pass a checkpoint is considered a cost of doing business.

People don't want to burn the ballroom at a luxury hotel built on stolen public land, they want an invite to party there.

Corruption isn't hated enough. Yet.

Existing and potential capacity going to Bitcoin Mining will be big for Kenya, but a small fraction of MARA's capacity. And MARA's capacity itself is just a fraction of the global bitcoin mining scene.

There's very little detail shared publicly as to what will actually be done as a result of the MARA DIGITAL agreement.

Ironically, many of the power purchase agreements (PPAs) involving the parastatals and power producers (who oftentimes are not an "arm's length" away), have been very opaque as well. Quite often it is years or decades later (if ever) when it is exposed what the actual agreements were and what payment flows ultimately resulted.

But essentially, these are mostly "take or pay" power purchase agreements. For example, consider the Lake Turkana Wind Farm in which Google was initially backing. Once they had completed the construction, there was hundreds of MW of wind capacity sitting idle ... for years, as the high voltage transmission lines for carrying the power to the national grid were not completed in time. But that wind farm continued to receive the income for that capacity, as "take or pay" means exactly that -- where or not you consume the power you have the option to take, you pay for it regardless.

This means there are pockets of excess capacity in various parts of the country where these Take or Pay agreements currently are resulting in paying without taking. In those instances, the cost of consuming the excess power is essentially zero, because it has already been paid for.

If I had to guess, I would say that is the opportunity that the MARA DIGITAL seeks to leverage.

The other wildcard is the capacity brought in to Kenya from the north -- the hydroelectric dams including the GERD (Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam). That electricity is available at a cheaper cost than what can be produced domestically. But the demand within Kenya isn't there yet. The transmission lines are completed, but there's no buyer today for those kWHs. With a very young population, Kenya's economy will eventually consume all of that capacity, but today, there's little ability to profit from the immediate access to vast amounts of cheap power. Enter MARA DIGITAL. (And if you are wondering why MARA isn't in Ethiopia instead, ... well, that country today has multiple simultaneous civil wars, in various stages of hot conflict.)

Here's more on the Take or Pay (versus Pay when Taken) argument:

Is it there and I'm just not seeing it?

Bitnob

(and maybe even Strike, whose "Send Globally" service is delivered through Bitnob, for the countries in Africa where Strike will send.)

Also, for the "Africa-Wide", where's LocalCoinSwap -- the most widely used self-custody exchange on the continent? Maybe their shitcoin-focus disqualifies them, I don't know. RoboSats and Bisq should be in there too, though I believe their volume in African countries to be at minimal levels.

But other than the Bitnob omission, this is a very comprehensive and accurate list.

Geez, ... typo, of course.

Should have read:

10,000 MW (10 GW) and 2,000 MW (2 GW)

If there was the demand, in the Great Rift Valley, which cuts through Kenya, there is over 10,000 GW of continuous geothermal electric generation potential that remains untapped.

All of Kenyan demand for power combined though has not yet exceeded 2,000 GW of consumption at any one point in time.

So building additional geothermal generation capacity is hampered by the demand for additional capacity in which the energy produced would be in demand, 24x7.

If an additional geothermal plant was constructed and came online today, the only time of day where there is unmet demand is in the evening, (e.g., 6pm - 9pm), when the sun goes down on the country's solar generation plants but the demand for power remains high thanks to televisions, lights, etc. So what happens is they hold off on constructing of that very expensive geothermal generation plant until they have demand for its power 24 x 7.

Bitcoin mining can subsidize the early days of a new plant, where bitcoin mining is a paying customer for the remaining 21 hours per day, albeit at a significantly lower cost per kWh than what the consumers pay.

All bitcoin mining operations, including this one in Kenya, consume power. How does something that consumes power then power households?

The problem is that while Ms. Sigalos produced a great video, some editor at CNBC totally misunderstood what was said in the video.

The company previously has said that they have a mining op that helped to subsidize a mini-hydro generation plant, and that generation plant serves 5,000 households.

So technically, that might be electricity delivered to a previously unserved area, thanks to Gridless's subsidy (thanks to bitcoin mining of the unused capacity), but that isn't a Gridless bitcoin mine itself "powering" any households.

Here's the video from the article OP shared, but in a standalone article:

Or the same video, sans advertisements, on Twitter:

Inside the dish is a circuit board, with among other components, a webserver (for configuration).

There is an external Starlink designed router that most people use with their starlink, however the router is not required (if you have a different source for the power), and would not be the device that is used to deem the location of the dish.

But opening the dish to remove the board probably is not something easily done without risking causing damage, etc. Sending the entire dish would be easier for the user, but much more expensive and prone to problems with customs at the border.

It was just an idea, not something well thought out at this point.

I believe the criteria is that the dish must check in from the home country, not just that it isn't active somewhere else.

But if you had two and can ship one back to the homeland to check in there, that would probably work. I don't know if there's problems bringing in the dish as freight. I suppose you could remove the board and just ship that -- customs would likely not figure out what that is a component of.

Starlink is THE solution for the tens of thousands of people who have no other option to communicate online, so I suppose having at least some approach like this to keep the signal is better than having no communications whatsoever.

The gov't in a number of African countries own partially or fully their mobile telecom network operators (e.g., Republic of Kenya owns 35% of Safaricom).

Starlink gives the opportunity to not be beholden to the mobile data network where broadband (e.g., cable network, fiber, etc.) isn't otherwise available.

https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-satellite-access-crackdown-e09f3e4e [Archive]

Guess not.

Starlink To Users In Africa: Service Terminated In Unauthorized Locations Apr 30 #509705 https://www.starlinkhardware.com/starlink-to-users-in-africa-service-will-be-terminated-in-unauthorized-locations/

Now show me the percentage for a $20 payment, or a $2 payment.

It's bizarre to me how these legacy remittance players still are patronized by those getting milked the most.

TIL

There are many more people who speak Nigerian Pidgin than those who speak Kiswahili.

[Source]