In pursuit of a modern capital, Ethiopian leader razes history
| Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
One evening in late October last year, hundreds of concertgoers streamed into the Fendika Cultural Center, dressed to the nines for an evening out at one of the most iconic music venues in Ethiopia’s capital.
For decades, traditional music clubs called azmari bets lined the road beside Fendika. They were the glittering centerpiece of Addis Ababa nightlife, hosting poet-musicians called azmaris, and more recently, crackling Ethio-jazz groups as well.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onEthiopian officials led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed want a modern capital. But as they demolish some of Addis Ababa’s most historic neighborhoods, residents are asking, at what cost?
Now Fendika was the last club standing. And beside the building, bulldozers were waiting.
Across Addis, a massive urban transformation is underway. In recent years, the government has flattened entire neighborhoods to make way for new skyscrapers, mega shopping centers, wider roads, and parks. “Infrastructure and aesthetics attract wealth,” explained Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last year, comparing Addis Ababa’s development to that of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “They have magnetic power.”
But for the thousands of people across Addis whose houses and businesses have been destroyed, the campaign to build a 21st-century metropolis here often feels more like a vanity project than like an effort to make life better for its inhabitants.
“The endless beautification of the capital ... has made us strangers in our own land,” says Henok Abraham Tekeste, a taxi driver who was recently evicted from his home.
One evening in late October last year, hundreds of concertgoers streamed into the Fendika Cultural Center, dressed to the nines for an evening out at one of the most iconic music venues in Ethiopia’s capital.
For decades, traditional music clubs called azmari bets lined the road beside Fendika. They were a glittering centerpiece of Addis Ababa nightlife. The smoke-filled pubs often hosted poet-musicians called azmaris, a kind of Ethiopian troubadour, and more recently, crackling Ethio-jazz groups as well.
Now Fendika was the last club standing. And beside the building, bulldozers were waiting.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onEthiopian officials led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed want a modern capital. But as they demolish some of Addis Ababa’s most historic neighborhoods, residents are asking, at what cost?
Across Addis, a massive urban transformation is underway. In recent years, the government has flattened entire neighborhoods – including some of the city’s most historic – to make way for new skyscrapers, mega shopping centers, wider roads, and parks.
“Infrastructure and aesthetics attract wealth,” explained Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last year, comparing Addis Ababa’s development to that of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “They have magnetic power.”
But for the thousands of people across Addis whose houses and businesses have been destroyed, the campaign to build a 21st-century metropolis here often feels more like a vanity project than like an effort to make life better for its inhabitants.
“The endless beautification of the capital ... has made us strangers in our own land,” says Henok Abraham Tekeste, a taxi driver who was recently evicted from his home not far from Fendika.
An urban face-lift
For more than a decade, the roar of construction equipment has been a backdrop to life in Ethiopia’s capital. One of the first major projects was a Chinese-built light rail, which opened in 2015, followed by a new wing of the city’s airport and several parks also financed and constructed by the Chinese.
When Mr. Abiy took over in 2018, he embraced the image of environmentalist, pledging that Ethiopia would plant 50 billion new trees by 2026 and create parks – accessible only to paying customers – around the capital. In 2024, Ethiopia became the first country in the world to fully ban the import of combustion-engine cars to support the transition to electric vehicles, although only half the population has access to electricity.
Meanwhile, over the past year, he has accelerated the pace of Addis’ “Dubai-ification.” This past March, Mr. Abiy announced that for the first time, foreigners would be allowed to buy land in Ethiopia, a move expected to attract investors primarily from the Gulf.
Over the following month, the government razed nearly the entire neighborhood of Piassa – a historic Italian and Armenian enclave that was home to Ethiopia’s first cinema (dubbed by some locals “the house of the devil”), the country’s first modern pharmacy, and the earliest Italian coffee shops, which have become a mainstay in the city.
Meanwhile, on a hillside perched above Fendika, a massive palace complex for the prime minister was rising from the earth. Mr. Abiy himself bragged that construction would cost as much as $10 billion, for a property that would include his official residence, a luxury hotel and guesthouses for foreign dignitaries, and three human-made lakes.
At the same time, a transit initiative called the Addis Ababa Corridor Project was bulldozing neighborhoods in order to reduce congestion by creating wider streets and dedicated bus lanes.
“A randomly built mud house does not constitute a historical heritage,” Mr. Abiy said to explain the demolitions.
Mr. Abiy’s rapid-fire development projects, conducted without public consultation, calls into question “whose vision is shaping the city’s future,” argues Ethiopian architect Nahom Teklu in a message to the Monitor on the social platform X.
Fendika, the cultural center, has faced pressure for years to move off its increasingly valuable land. But the crisis came to a head last year, when the Addis government announced it planned to demolish the complex to build a luxury hotel.
By that point, Fendika had been around in one form or another since the early 1990s, and had developed an international reputation for showcasing the diversity of traditional Ethiopian music. Its current owner, dancer Melaku Belay, got his start at Fendika in the late ’90s, when he was a teenager living on the streets. The club’s owner let him sleep under the bar, and he danced for tips during performances by azmari musicians.
In 2023, Mr. Belay and a group of Western diplomats who were fans of the center lobbied the government to stop its demolition. They won a reprieve, but it proved brief.
The end of Kazanchis
This past September, the government began delivering eviction notices across Kazanchis, the historically-Italian-neighborhood-turned-business-district where Fendika is located. Few places better illustrated the city’s current crossroads: Hip cafés serving lattes to diplomats and businesspeople stood beside outdoor stalls where vendors still roasted and sold traditional Ethiopian coffee to passersby.
Addis Ababa’s mayor, Adanech Abiebie, said the demolition of the old sections of Kazanchis, would “enhance the beauty and cleanliness of the capital, making it a comfortable and attractive place for its residents.”
Azeb Tadesse, a grandmother who had lived in Kazanchis for three decades, was given three days to vacate the property she says she has owned for many years. The warning was delivered with a coded message scrawled in red paint across her door.
Ms. Tadesse says she was warned that if she protested the eviction, she risked being accused of being against development. So she reluctantly moved into her sister’s housing unit in the suburbs. Now, she says, she feels like a “destitute refugee in my old age.”
Another former resident, Ayda Gugsa, now stays in a rundown two-bedroom rental unit on the outskirts of the city. She says she mourns the ease of life in Kazanchis.
“Where we are staying at the moment has no electricity, no functioning educational institutions for the children, and I am far from where I work,” she says.
Meanwhile, on Oct. 23, two days after Fendika’s final concert, excavators’ metal claws punched through the center’s roof.
But a few days later, Mr. Belay emerged on Fendika’s social media pages with an announcement. The government had given the center permission to rebuild – as long as they constructed a 20-story tower to match the other high-rises that would soon replace the neighborhood’s flattened homes and businesses.
This is “certainly not our first choice,” wrote Mr. Belay on a GoFundMe page to support the reconstruction, “but it is the government’s mandate if we are to keep Fendika’s location.”
In the meantime, he explained that Fendika would give concerts at a nearby venue that had survived Kazanchis’ demolition, the Addis Ababa Hyatt.
