For years, the dream of competitive car racing in Ethiopia has arrived in brief, noisy bursts, an improvised street circuit here, a weekend rally there, before slipping back into silence. Nearly a decade has passed since the country last hosted a widely recognized car race, and the engines that once echoed through parts of Addis Ababa have long gone quiet.
Now, Ethiopia’s motorsport revival is being routed somewhere unexpected: not onto new asphalt, but onto computer screens.
At the compound of the Ethiopian Motor Sport Association (EMSA), a half-dozen racing simulators have been installed, their bucket seats and digital dashboards standing in for the tracks the country does not have. For association officials, the machines represent a pragmatic response to decades of stalled ambition, a way to train drivers, identify talent, and keep the sport alive in a country where building and securing a permanent racetrack has proved elusive.
“For many years, passion was never the problem,” said Addis Alemayehu, president of EMSA. “Infrastructure was.”
The simulators, donated by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the global governing body of motorsport, arrived nearly a year ago. But they were only installed last month, after the association secured faster internet access and a suitable space to house them. EMSA now plans to open the facility to young drivers and hobbyists for training and competition.
This aligns with surging African momentum in digital racing, exemplified by the second annual Africa Sim Racing Festival in 2025, which expanded categories for console and PC competitors across the continent, and the FIA’s MENA Esports Championship on Gran Turismo 7, drawing participants from North Africa southward. Ethiopia’s own EMSA sealed a 2025 MOU with Switzerland’s Maffi Racing to bridge sim-to-real talent exchanges, channeling virtual skills into tangible opportunities for young drivers, a vital nod to the association’s 1,400 members hungry for structured pathways and financially feasible tracks.
Cost has also long been one of the biggest barriers to the sports’ evolution in Ethiopia. Preparing a competitive car can exceed one million Birr, drivers say, once safety equipment, imported parts, and modifications are factored in. For top racers, a full season can run into the millions of Birr, even before accounting for the price of the vehicle itself. Each race requires additional registration and logistics fees, while breakdowns, a cracked piston, a failed cylinder head are paid for entirely out of pocket.
In that context, simulators offer something radical: access.
Globally, sim racing has evolved from a gaming niche into a recognized motorsport discipline. The sector’s momentum is undeniable: the global racing simulator market is projected to reach $2.04 billion by 2030, fueled by esports and pro training. Professional drivers use simulators to prepare for real-world races, and the FIA has formally incorporated esports into its development programs. In Ethiopia, where costs, safety concerns, and road closures have repeatedly stalled the sport, the appeal is less about novelty than necessity, a digital lifeline to sustain passion amid fiscal barriers.
A single race weekend can cost hundreds of thousands of Birr, drivers say, once parts, safety equipment and transport are factored in. Organizing events adds further complications: securing roads, ensuring spectator safety, navigating permits and absorbing the risk of accidents.
“There is talent here, but there are no tracks,” Addis told Shega. “Simulators allow us to train many drivers safely, without shutting down streets or risking lives.”
Not everyone is convinced that digital racing can replace the visceral pull of real competition.
Naol Tuli, a young driver who races a modified Toyota Corolla hatchback, says simulation can sharpen skills, but not satisfy the instinct that draws people to motorsport in the first place. “Driving is in my blood,” he said. “Smelling the fuel, hearing the engine, that’s the addiction.”
Preparing his car for competition can cost more than 100,000 Birr, he said, even before entry fees. Still, he believes Ethiopia could support real racing again if investment followed talent. “We don’t lack drivers,” he said. “We lack infrastructure and support.”
EMSA officials point to recent success in lower-cost disciplines as evidence that talent exists. At continental go-kart competitions last year, Ethiopian racers won six titles across different categories, including three won by young women, a result the association cites as proof that broader access can change who enters the sport.
For now, the strategy is to use simulators as a gateway: to introduce young people to racing, build technical skills and create a pipeline that could, someday, justify larger investments in physical tracks and events.
Ethiopian motorsport once held far grander ambitions. In the 1960s, rallies snaked across hundreds of kilometers of countryside in events like the Ethiopian Highland Rally, attracting international teams and drawing crowds under the patronage of the country’s Crown Prince. Ethiopia briefly stood as an unlikely hub of African motorsport.
That era ended abruptly in 1975, when the Derg regime banned racing as an elite pastime. The sport largely disappeared for nearly two decades. It resurfaced after the re-establishment of EMSA in 1992 and Ethiopia’s admission to the FIA in 2005, but has remained constrained by chronic obstacles: limited infrastructure, high costs, and scarce sponsorship.
Today, the sport survives mostly through short-lived city circuits, scattered rallies and small go-kart tracks, sustained less by commercial backing than by personal devotion.
Whether simulators can reverse that pattern remains uncertain. But for a generation of aspiring drivers who may never have seen a professional race in their own country, the digital tracks now flickering to life at EMSA offer something rare: a starting line.