አዲስ አበባ ቤቴ: Reflections on the Violent Restructuring of Addis Ababa

Anyone walking and driving on the streets of Addis Ababa can’t help but be marvelled by the rapid changes in the city’s landscape. No matter where in that big city you are staying, electrified streets, parks and fountains, and (re)construction everywhere has become the norm. Recently, being back in Addis, to spend time with fellow Global Africans and scholars from around the world that seemed to be impressed by the city, I found myself giving an alternative tour – this is where X used to be, the demolition here must’ve ruined Y, and so on. Attachment and nostalgia of those of us raised by the city of Addis Ababa – in a myriad of ways primarily dictated by our class position but never confined and divided by it – is a bias that may make many of us become resistant to any changes. But the disdain to the constant and often violent urban restructuring, shared by most that live and make a living in Addis Ababa, is beyond a common discomfort of a new economic-political regime attempting to mark its rule. It is the reality that the glitz and glam at the surface of the city does not reflect the increasing hardship and struggle in most peoples’ homes and spaces of work. 

For the first time since I’ve lived in that city, everyone, even the once middle-upper-classes, are either actively attempting to leave or consistently talk about the daily struggles of survival. The only “positive” feedback I received – from a night shift taxi driver that also has a 9 to 5 job and moved to the city at the age of 13 – was that the people needed to be shaken up to work harder (referring to having to get a second job to make ends meet) and that when the eventual political changes come, people will benefit from the current shifts. A sentiment that may be easier to share perhaps when you were not working on the edge of poverty to begin with: the need to get more than one source of income, the juggling of two or more jobs excluding housework, and being unable to afford rent and school fees may be new only to those with some level of economic security. But the demolition of your home, workspace, or both, the being pushed out to the outskirts of the city, and the unreliability of the city administration is now shared among most in the city.

The Addis Ababa City Structure Plan  colloquially referred to as the Corridor Project, has not only created a dusty city with unending construction, but a more unequal and precarious city with sharp restrictions on where its labor force can live and how it can survive. The regime’s fascination with cities like Dubai seem to have become manifest in attempting to recreate a city where its labor force is out-of-sight and their living and working conditions out-of-mind. The mass demolition and related eviction in a city of almost 6 million is not only pushing labor outside the city but continues to threaten the survival of the relatively economically stable residents, whereas it seems to promise the annihilation of any form of economic and social power for the city’s working people. The contradictions in the city have not been this vividly clear in decades: you catch a taxi – to which you had to stand in line for 25 minutes to pay at least triple the amount you paid 4 years ago – that rides on electrified streets with newly planted palm trees and grass that is religiously watered, only to get home and find that it is not your neighborhood’s turn to have water and it’s been 3 hours since the electricity went down (assuming you have a house). Lack of water and electricity is not new, but the high frequency of the lack and the increased billing for these services is new and happening in the backdrop of electrified streets with fountains and green areas with constant watering. When I asked my mother to explain the changes we are witnessing she used a few phrases: “changes that do not consider human beings”, “making Addis Ababa for the rich”, “projects meant to further impoverish the impoverished”, and “I do not feel growth, I feel force.” And just to get her to say more, I added “what about the public bathrooms being built,” she responded “mmm, are they even free? Even so, what have people eaten that would require bathrooms?”

Indeed, she is not wrong, and the administration may actually agree with some of her phrases, like Addis Ababa being a city for the rich. The Addis Ababa City Structure Plan, which is one of the public documents that outlines some of the changes taking place, seems to argue that the changes in the city are important “in bringing the national economy to the level of middle-income countries; and in the process, improve the living standard of the city’s residents.” Although the latter seems far out of reach, the government has been able to achieve a bubble that allows those that visit the city to admire its growth and resemblance to a high-income country. The changes in Addis are not unique in the context of a global capitalist system, where urban space is continuously optimized for the needs of transnational corporations and investors. In fact, the Prime Minister’s excitement to provide tours to newly built parks and museums to foreign delegates and party officials, explains how the city is being reconstructed “To attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and to make the city-region [a] favorite destination for tourists.”[i] At a time when the country is experiencing some of its highest inflation rates in decades, the Special Projects outlined in the city plan include more than ten 5-star hotels, recreational facilities like golf courses, high standard shopping malls and specialized hospitals in affluent neighborhoods. In this case and witnessing all the newly built but inaccessible spaces to the city’s working population, one is forced to admit that the city is being rebuilt to service capital (in the form of tourists, FDI, foreign corporations, etc.). Whether the planners and executioners of the city plan understand that foreign capital will not “in the process, improve the living standard of the city’s residents” is irrelevant, because what we are sure they understand is that changes in the city have already cost so many lives and livelihoods.

The early phases of the restructuring included the banning of street vendors from using the streets to sell their goods and the mass rounding up of thousands of people living in temporary dwellings and shacks to temporary detention centers. Some of those rounded up were forcibly moved to their origin regional states or the outskirts of the city, some died from horrible conditions in the centers, some paid the guards to let them escape, and others we may never find out. After mass roundups came demolition of temporary settlements, kebele recreational facilities[ii], kebele housing, private homes, small-businesses, and forced relocations from key areas in the city. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission itself has been reporting of homeless youth being forcibly rounded up and taken to detention centers, alongside the disproportionate effect of the demolition of small businesses on disabled populations. The destruction of key areas, such as Piassa and Kazanchis, did not only lead to private and public home demolitions and a violent uprooting of social relations built over decades (maybe even centuries), but it has also closed down small businesses and destroyed economic ecosystems. If you take an area like Urael, where all that I have discussed so far has occurred in some form or another, one must understand how the demolition of kebele housing and small houses means that for every demolished house there are at least 2 to 5 individuals being displaced. If capable, these individuals were likely to work in the area, which once served as a storage space for small-scale retailers of ceramics and, therefore, created employment for young professionals (overseeing the storage spaces), precarious daily laborers (that usually load and unload the ceramics onto cars), street vendors (that serve the daily laborers), road-side sewers (that serve both daily laborers and street vendors in repairing their overworn clothes), and car owners (that get hired by the ceramic shop owners for transportation). And living in that area these working people take their children to nearby schools (many of which have also been demolished) and churches like Urael, which is now losing many of its parishioners and in the process, the meager amounts they are willing to give those that shelter by the churches, including the homeless, elderly, and mentally ill. 

The impact of forced urban restructuring, therefore, continues to be felt by the city’s mentally ill, professional class, precarious workers, petty traders, large homeless population, etc. Demolition and appropriation are happening in a city that already has a massive housing problem and has seen an increase of over 200,000 people over the last year alone as people flee war and underdevelopment in other regions of the country. In fact, the planned dispossession, displacement, and further commodification and repurposing of land in the capital city and other urban areas in the country cannot be divorced from the lack of state control over rural sites of accumulation experiencing armed struggles. Expropriation of land in the city is further complemented with new and increased taxation policies that are not only harming petty traders and upper and middle classes – some of which have been forced to close their businesses due to their inability to pay egregious taxes – but also those that are retired but somehow managed to hold on to their homes and now have no income to pay taxes for having walls and a roof. 

There is no need to romanticize the overcrowded, undermaintained, and underserved housing realities in the city and some of the places I mentioned. Many of the areas in Addis needed rehabilitation[iii], and some likely needed to be demolished. The working people of Addis Ababa deserve the parks, library, and better maintained streets and some are already putting good use to these initiatives, but these projects should complement not come at the cost of people’s lives and livelihoods. These projects that are apparently meant to eventually improve the living standards of the residents have failed at incorporating the experiences and aspirations of residents on multiple levels (including policy, planning, and execution). Sending people to detention centers, relocating them to places that are far from their workspace, or to unfinished housing without basic amenities shows that the driving force for these changes are not better living standards for the majority of the city’s residents, but at best for a narrowing affluent class. Considering the regions recovering from war and continued conflicts in other parts of Ethiopia, the increasing challenges of food production and reoccurring famine and drought in the East African region, and the global politico-economic uncertainty that indicates a looming financial crisis, the premature changes in Addis Ababa seem neither sustainable nor a priority. 

End notes