The Addis Ababa administration is apparently learning a couple of lessons from the political turmoil of the last three or four years as it is adopting a new direction or a new thinking as far as housing construction is concerned. It has learnt the lesson the hard way. It has now become that building high rises by evicting the original owners who are generally poor people, does not make renovation of the city a fair inclusive and palatable process.
The new message calls on building new condos by keeping the local residents on their original place and by allowing them to benefit from the renovation. This can indeed be taken as an important concession the city administration has made to the far neglected poorer residents. However, whether or not it fully addresses the demands of the local residents is another matter.
Last week, the deputy mayor of Addis Ababa, Engineer Takele Uma has announced the launching of the construction of tens of thousands of new housing units in the capital Addis Ababa in the coming two years, according to official media sources. These projects are believed to go a long way in alleviating the housing shortage in the booming Ethiopian capital as well as create new jobs for the thousands of unemployed youths.
It is also expected to stimulate other sectors involved in the project by creating linkages with small and medium enterprises that are subcontracted or outsourced in producing housing components. So, the new housing project is expecting to revamp the otherwise sluggish housing construction sector that is apparently hit by recent rises in the cost of construction materials as well from other supply side constraints.
Addis Ababa is not only a fast growing metropolis. It is also fast growing in terms of demographics. Although the housing and population census that was planned to be carried out this year could not materialize, Addis Ababa is believed to host more than 5 million people most of whom have no residential houses of their own.
The Real Estate business is generally booming although recent trends indicate in the direction of a cooling down caused by the hike in the cost of construction. Nonetheless, new villas and ultra-modern housing complexes are mushrooming in the outskirts of the city. The topography of the city is changing fast as high rise buildings in the centre are surrounded by new housing projects in the outskirts mixed with old shanty towns.
A few years ago, Addis was believed to have been dominated by shanty towns. According to figures published at that time some 80 percent of the capital were shanty towns particularly in the western and north-western parts of the capital. The latest figures are no available. A random visit to these areas would however suggest that old and ramshackle residential quarters are still standing there maybe for the last half a century or so according to some observers.
The areas around the biggest marketplace in Africa that is undergoing a major facelift, still consist of old houses without modern amenities that provide shelter to low-income residents that make a living in some way working around the market area. The same can be said above the north-western part of the capital known as Gulele area where new features are not visible and old structures still hold sway. The mud houses built half a century or so ago are still providing shelter to paupers in the area whose livelihoods are mostly linked to incomes from small business activities in the bustling Merkato.
These houses are so packed together and lacking in hygienic facilities that they are believed to cause a logistic and management nightmares to the city administration that is spearheading the modernization of the capital. New shanty towns are springing up further into the outskirts of the city. They shelter the ‘new poor’ who were pushed out of the center of the city giving way to modern buildings and posh residential quarters that came into being during the boom years.
While announcing the launching of the project for the construction of new condos for lower middle class residents, Engineer Takele Uma reiterated his administration’s decision not to evict former residents but undertake the rebuilding of new quarters where the previous residents would be the main beneficiaries in the areas where they have woven complex economic and social and networks.
The main shortcoming of previous such project was the eviction of the residents from their age-old habitats and selling the vacated plots of land to wealthier builders. This major handicap for which the city administration had earned the ire of many former residents and criticism from political quarters is expected to be rectified this time around.
It is to be recalled that some of the political earthquake that is now shaking the outskirts of the capital is caused by the reckless process of taking land away from the poor and selling it to the rich thereby causing a political backlash that grew so powerful that it finally led to the current change in perception and strategy. Engineer administration’s new approach of building new housing units without evicting residents, though it comes too late after the damage was done, can nevertheless be welcome because it sets a new direction for the future.
An important point the deputy mayor failed to raise in his inaugural speech was the fate of the controversial condos that were allegedly built outside Addis Ababa’s confines. Thousands of housing units were built in the south-eastern parts of the capital in the last few years but the transfer of these condos to their legal owners was stopped due to protests from farmers in the area who consider the land on which the houses were built as their own. The matter is still unsettled and the transfer of the condos is frozen until a just and legal settlement is reached.
When you drive along the new expressway stretching from the outskirt of Addis Ababa all the way to Adama, which is considered the administrative and economic capital of Oromia region, your eyes usually catch the rows upon rows of new and unfinished condos that stretch as far as the eye can see in the distance. These unfinished condos were there for the last few years seemingly the victims of rising construction costs or shortage of money to finish them and hand them over to the prospective owners.
These condos are built on wide stretches of formerly farmlands. Besides the legal dilemma of land ownership that they have already caused, these condos also create communication nightmares as transport facilities are not yet developed. Such problems would make life in those places far from being ideal for the average resident who commutes to work most days of the week.
Most government built condos suffer from similar shortcomings and the one thing the city administration should focus on is obviously the transport problem that is not only wasting the time, and testing the patience of residents. The cost of transportation, added to the ever rising cost of living, has also turned life into a daily torment for most of the residents of the capital.
One of the criticisms leveled against the current administration is its failure to provide sufficient transportation services to the hundreds of thousands of residents that travel in all directions in the capital every day. The problem is particularly acute during the morning and evening rush hours when residents go to work or go back to their homes.
The journey from home to work and back again becomes so exhausting that the first thing people think about once they reach their homes is to put some food into their mouth and go to bed as soon as possible, praying that the following day would not become even worse. The queues at taxi and bus stops are simply unimaginably long. You have to stand for hours before you board one of the rickety minibuses that crawl through the heavy traffic for a long time before it finally lets you disembark and you limp along the way to your home sweet home.
New roads are being built and older ones are being refurbished but they are not helping residents overcome the traffic and transportation nightmares. Roads take unnecessarily long time to be built and be opened for traffic. One example is the road currently under construction that is going from the departure point of the light railway system in Saris Abo area and stretching further down to the road intersection at Tulu Dimtu.
The project started late last year and was interrupted by the unusually heavy rains in winter. Construction has now resumed and many people believe it will soon be completed. A new overhead bridge is being built over that section of the ring road. Many people hope that another section of the light railway system will be built to link the area with another station at Tulu Dimtu.
If this hope is realized, it will certainly alleviate the transportation nightmare that is daily tormenting thousands of residents of Dukem and Bishoftu towns further south. And that would be the best gift the city administration would give to the commuters as it would also alleviate the present traffic congestion through Gelan condominium.
So, the basic lesson for the administration is that building new condos is good but it is incomplete without giving due attention to the transport and traffic challenges this process is likely to create. Most of all, building condos in the future without evicting the original residents of the areas under the pretext of renovation is a radical departure from previous practices whereby local residents were made the losers.
This might alleviate some of the grievances that are besetting this fast growing, bustling, chaotic but growing metropolis we call Addis Ababa.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday Edition 10 November 2019
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
