For the past few months, Addis Ababa has resembled a building site. Construction workers are tearing down old buildings, digging up roads and laying foundations, while machinery hammers through the night, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed forges ahead with an ambitious plan to make the Ethiopian capital “the best city in Africa”.

Renewing Addis Ababa has been at the heart of Abiy’s agenda since coming to power in 2018. He started by renovating Meskel Square, Ethiopia’s most important public space, building modern public parks and revamping the Prime Minister’s office. Recently, however, the pace of construction has increased.

Addis Tomorrow Economic Zone

On 14 August, Abiy announced his latest project: the ‘Addis Tomorrow Economic Zone’, a futuristic complex of gleaming, glass-fronted high rises, interspersed with trees and centred on a crystal blue lagoon.

Like other developments, it is aimed at attracting overseas visitors and investors. This is a key plank of Abiy’s liberal economic agenda, based on building up mechanised agriculture, services industries and tourism while moving away from aid.

“I humbly urge all of you to work hard to prosper Ethiopia and free it from begging, and we will pass on to our children a prosperous city and country, just as we have long envisioned, planned, and desired,” Abiy said at the project’s inauguration.

Across Addis Ababa, other developments have been built at a dizzying speed. These include a modern public library, a new mayor’s office, sub-Saharan Africa’s tallest skyscraper and a host of luxury apartment blocks. Old government buildings are getting a facelift, while roads are being widened to make new bike lanes that zig zag across the city.

In some places, residents are even being told to replace old curtains. In Addis Ababa, historic buildings have been demolished and replaced with a vast new conference centre featuring a shopping mall, cinema and museum.

To the south of Addis Ababa, a new airport is being built to accommodate up to 100 million passengers a year, four times the current airport’s capacity. The new hub is designed by the office of  late renowned architect Zaha Hadid and will cost $5bn-$6bn. In the hills to the west, construction of a vast new palace complex is underway, costing a rumoured $12bn. The financing is murky, but the United Arab Emirates is believed to be funding much of it. When lawmakers quizzed the finance minister last year, he told them it was not their concern because the money was not coming from the budget.

Crucially, Abiy has also lifted old restrictions on foreigners owning property, opening real estate up to private investment.

Addis Ababa in the footsteps of Dubai

“It seems almost every week a new project is being announced,” says an Addis Ababa-based architect. Like several others interviewed for this article, he declined to be named citing fears of retaliation.

Abiy’s approach to developing Addis Ababa marks a break from that of the former Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime, which governed from 1991 to 2018. Though it poured money into developing large-scale social housing and a light railway system, residents of the capital often complained the EPRDF prioritised rural areas.

By contrast, Abiy appears to be staking future growth on beautifying the capital and turning it into a world-leading city that can host summits and draws free-spending tourists.

“This is the blueprint for his entire development project,” says an Ethiopian researcher. “It’s elite-led urban development that’s intended to trickle down.”

Abiy has referenced Dubai as a model. In his 2023 book Generation Medemer he wrote: “Beauty is part of the development and wealth of a nation…The UAE has created a better and more beautiful country for its people. This has become an additional source of revenue for their economy. The grand hotels, malls, luxurious real estate developments, transport and recreational facilities have made the country a hub for major business organisations and wealth from around the world.”

It is not clear whether this strategy will bring success.

Critics point out that Ethiopia lacks the UAE’s oil revenues. It is mired in a deep economic crisis:

• Inflation is currently at 27%
• The government faces a $26bn reconstruction bill from the 2020-2022 Tigray war
• In December, Ethiopia defaulted on its only government bond
• In July, it secured a $3.4bn bailout package from the International Monetary Fund after agreeing to painful reforms, including floating its currency
• It is also hit by a drought and floods that have wreaked the homes and livelihoods of millions of farmers and pastoralists
• Last year 20.1 million Ethiopians needed food aid. Most went hungry as the UN only received 36% of the $4bn it needed to assist them

Moreover, vast parts of the country are unstable. Although the Tigray war is over, a new conflict has erupted in the Amhara region. In the Oromia region that surrounds Addis Ababa, kidnapping has become rampant as the government battles rebels there. Many residents of Addis Ababa feel too scared to leave the city owing to insecurity.

‘The rest of the country is going up in flames’

“Developing Addis like this is rooted in a faith that people will come, at a time when the rest of the country is going up in flames,” says the researcher, who warns the capital risks “becoming a playground, an island surrounded by conflict” more connected to other world cities than the nearby countryside.

“That’s not necessarily a prosperous future,” he says.

Meanwhile, prices are rising steadily for normal Ethiopians who are being priced out of housing in the centre of the town. “Addis is turning into a city that’s affordable only to those who earn their money in foreign currency and everyone else is being pushed out,” says the researcher.

Few of Abiy’s developments were preceded by public consultation. In many cases, shop owners were given a few days notice before their premises were shuttered. Residents were forced to move from their homes in the city centre to new, half-finished apartments on the fringes of the city, far from schools and other services.

This is fuelling resentment among residents. “I feel like politicians came in and highjacked our city,” says one resident. “So much money is being spent and it could have been spent so much better on other things like schools and hospitals.”

Marco Di Nunzio from the University of Birmingham, who spent several years studying Addis Ababa, asks: “Who is providing the financial backing for these developments and who will be buying them? It’s certainly not going to be individual homeowners or small businesses, the costs will be way too high.” The risk is, Di Nunzio argues, that they will be bought up by large international companies and funds with ready capital.

The price of this type of development, Di Nunzio warns, could be Addis Ababa’s identity. “There’s a big sense of loss among residents,” he says. “The vibe, the mood, the community. All these could just become a thing of the past”.