What we’ll try to do in this article is ask (and answer) why so many developers feel comfortable excluding a country of over 128 million people. What makes Ethiopians so easy to overlook as a viable user base?
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You ever go into Play Store and try to download an app, until you’re hit with the message “This item isn’t available in your country”? Happens to the best of us, right? But when it happens too often, even with free apps, you start thinking, ‘Do they not want people of my country to use these apps?’
What we hitherto refer to as “The unsupported region problem” isn’t just a technicality; it’s a quiet digital exclusion. One that’s rarely explained, even more rarely addressed, and often invisible to those who don’t experience it. Behind that message is a cocktail of licensing constraints, monetization priorities, regulatory guesswork, and plain old neglect.
Frankly speaking, there are many reasons as to why Ethiopia might get labeled as an “unsupported region,” and each app or platform probably has its rationale. In this article, we won’t pretend to have all the answers, but we’ll try to unpack some of the likely explanations. What we’ll try to do in this article is ask (and answer) why so many developers feel comfortable excluding a country of over 128 million people. What makes Ethiopians so easy to overlook as a viable user base?
Poor Countries Finish Last
You’ve probably guessed what we’re about to say, and you’d be right. Ethiopia is ignored because it’s poor. Or more importantly, because it doesn’t have sufficient internet access. Compared to its peers (like Uganda and Rwanda, which have a similar per capita income), digital adoption in Ethiopia is lagging. We are by no means defending the platforms, BUT, when you launch a platform in a country, you probably have to set up customer support, maintain availability, etc, all of which come with a cost. And for a country that has such a low internet user base, that cost might not just be worth it.
But, here’s the problem. Ethiopia’s internet users were estimated to be 24.83 million in 2024. That’s higher than the population of some countries (like Switzerland, which rarely faces such kinds of problems). So, what’s the real issue here? One argument may be that Ethiopians spend less time (2-4 hours) online than the global average (7 hours). For ad-based or engagement-driven platforms, this lower usage could mean fewer clicks, less ad revenue, and shorter user sessions. In other words, Ethiopians may be seen as less lucrative users simply because they’re not online long enough to monetize effectively.
Sometimes when platforms start out free, they don’t plan to stay that way. They might introduce monetization with perks once they have built a solid user base. Despite its growing economy, the purchasing power of its citizens has been declining.. So, companies may not see a monetizable future in Ethiopia. “No free lunch,” as the saying goes.
There’s also one other reason. But to explore this, we might have to put our woke caps on.
The R-Word
Economic explanations aside, the fundamental question remains: “If I have a platform, and if it’s free and I can make it available to everyone, why wouldn’t I?”. In some cases, geopolitics comes into play. If your country has a bad diplomatic relationship with the country the app is based in, then it might be restricted. Sanctions imposed on Russia, for example, have disrupted major online services like GooglePay and Coursera. But from a diplomatic standpoint, Ethiopia’s doing quite well. So, again, why the restriction?
There’s a famous adage, called Hanlon’s Razor, that says “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence”. So, when we accuse these platforms of racism, we’re actually accusing them of ignorance. This ignorance towards Ethiopia (or Africa in general) might lead to thinking that it’s okay to exclude these countries from these apps because it’s not like they’re gonna use it, right?
These biases may be unknown to the people who practice them too. It's not always overt discrimination. It can be a quiet, unchallenged assumption embedded in the product decisions made in Silicon Valley boardrooms or Berlin startup hubs. When African countries aren’t even considered during a rollout, it’s not necessarily because someone said “leave them out,” but because nobody thought to include them in the first place. That kind of ignorance may not wear the face of racism, but it reinforces a system where entire populations are treated as digital afterthoughts. And that, in effect, is just as harmful.
Ethiopians Will “Crack” A Way Open
The funny part about all of this is that Ethiopians (and other countries that suffer from the unsupported region problem) have found a way to access these apps: Digital Piracy. “Cracked” versions of applications are now widely available on the internet, and users are overcoming restrictions thanks to them. In some cases (like Spotify until recently), even premium versions of applications are being pirated.
So, to summarize, app developers have restricted access to Ethiopia for whatever reason, and Ethiopians have somehow found a way to access them. This begs the question, What are they (the app developers) getting out of this? If people are going to use your app anyway, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to experience the official, optimized version you built? In that case, you might as well make it available.
