Ethiopia’s planned airport on the outskirts of the capital is still years from becoming a reality, but Ethiopian Airports Enterprise chief executive Tewodros Dawit can already envision how grand it will look.
“The airport we are planning to build is going to be huge. Very huge,” Tewodros said one recent afternoon as he examined project plans in his office in Addis Ababa. “It will be one of the biggest airports in the world. I don’t know what other countries are planning in this regard for the future, but no country has created this much capacity so far in Africa.”
Ethiopia, once known for epic famines that sparked global appeals for help, has a booming economy and big plans these days. The planned airport is one of several muscular, forward-looking infrastructure projects undertaken by the government that have fueled talk of this East African country as a rising African giant.
Photo: Reuters
Addis Ababa increasingly looks like an enormous construction site, with cranes and building blocks springing up in many corners of the city.
Britain, long a source of charitable aid for Ethiopia, last month announced that Ethiopia’s growing economy means the time has come for “transitioning support toward economic development to help generate jobs, income and growth.”
Over the past decade, Ethiopia’s economy has grown at an average of 11 percent, more than double the rate for sub-Saharan Africa, according to UN figures. The growth is fueled in part by huge public expenditure on energy and infrastructure projects that make the country attractive to long-term private investment. The projects are being funded mostly through loans obtained from partners such as China, India and the World Bank.
Tewodros said the planned new airport would have the capacity to handle up to 100 million travelers per year, a figure that he said dovetails with the ambitious plans of national carrier Ethiopian Airlines. He said the new airport would relieve Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, whose passenger terminal is undergoing a US$250 million expansion amid growth in passenger numbers from 900,000 in 2000 to more than 7 million last year.
The old airport has been engulfed by residential areas — a major reason behind the decision to build a new airport on the capital’s outskirts.
Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest based on fleet size and its most profitable, has been rapidly expanding over the years as it focuses mostly on the booming Africa-Asia market, according to the aerospace consulting firm CAPA Aviation Centre.
“Ethiopian’s expansion in Asia has been much faster and its pursuit of Asia-Africa transit passengers is much more aggressive” than its big rival, Kenya Airways, the firm said.
Ethiopian Airlines now has daily non-stop flights to the Chinese cities of Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. China has become Africa’s biggest trading partner.
Tewodros said the planned new airport, expected to be complete within a decade, would cost several billion US dollars, but offered no specific figure.
The government is still assessing potential financiers, with a loan from Export-Import Bank of China (中國進出口銀行) a strong possibility.
The government is expected to announce in the coming weeks which of three locations under consideration has been picked as the site, Tewodros said.
“It is only natural that Ethiopia plans on having a mega airport, not only to host Ethiopian Airlines, but also to host a lot of transit traffic that passes through Addis,” said Zemedeneh Nigatu, a managing partner in Ethiopia with accounting firm Ernst & Young who is also a consultant for Ethiopian Airlines.
The country of nearly 90 million people earned about US$3.2 billion from aviation-related services last year, four times more than the traditional coffee exports, Zemedeneh said.
“Already, aviation is a major part of the Ethiopian economy and this is a financially feasible project,” he said of the new airport plans. “The country should keep its eye now on Gulf airports and carriers that are its competitors.”
Other projects recently completed or under construction include the US$475 million Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit project aimed at addressing the lack of public transportation options.
Behailu Sintayehu, who led the railway project, said the 34km-long system would have lines going under and above ground with the capacity to transport 15,000 people per hour in each direction. It becomes operational in less than two months, he said.
Road construction is also underway in many parts of the capital.
“The country was preoccupied with fulfilling its basic needs in the past. Now it has become ambitious and is undertaking massive infrastructure projects by itself,” said Abel Abate Demissie, a researcher with the think tank Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development.
Abate said the projects underscore what he called Ethiopia’s “I can do it attitude” amid the African stereotypes of poverty and scarcity.
Ethiopia’s famine in the 1980s was so severe it spawned the 1985 Live Aid concert to raise funds to combat it. Today, the country has increased capacity to feed itself.
Ethiopia’s government has injected an average of 14.7 percent of government spending on the agriculture sector since 2003, according to Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency. Agricultural production of cereals has increased by 45 percent between 2006 and last year, it said.
Abate singled out the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile River as the crown jewel. The US$4.2 billion dam is expected to produce 6,000 megawatts, making it Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant and giving Ethiopia the capacity to be a major exporter of electricity to neighboring countries.
NOT JUSTIFIED: The bank’s governor said there would only be a rate cut if inflation falls below 1.5% and economic conditions deteriorate, which have not been detected The central bank yesterday kept its key interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive quarter, aligning with market expectations, while slightly lowering its inflation outlook amid signs of cooling price pressures. The move came after the US Federal Reserve held rates steady overnight, despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut borrowing costs. Central bank board members unanimously voted to maintain the discount rate at 2 percent, the secured loan rate at 2.375 percent and the overnight lending rate at 4.25 percent. “We consider the policy decision appropriate, although it suggests tightening leaning after factoring in slackening inflation and stable GDP growth,”
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
Greek tourism student Katerina quit within a month of starting work at a five-star hotel in Halkidiki, one of the country’s top destinations, because she said conditions were so dire. Beyond the bad pay, the 22-year-old said that her working and living conditions were “miserable and unacceptable.” Millions holiday in Greece every year, but its vital tourism industry is finding it harder and harder to recruit Greeks to look after them. “I was asked to work in any department of the hotel where there was a need, from service to cleaning,” said Katerina, a tourism and marketing student, who would
i Gasoline and diesel prices at fuel stations are this week to rise NT$0.1 per liter, as tensions in the Middle East pushed crude oil prices higher last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices last week rose for the third consecutive week due to an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, as the market is concerned that the situation in the Middle East might affect crude oil supply, CPC and Formosa said in separate statements. Front-month Brent crude oil futures — the international oil benchmark — rose 3.75 percent to settle at US$77.01
RSS