Ethiopia 2025 – Africa & Affari, Nigrizia

“Addis Ababa means ‘New Flower.’ Today, Ethiopia’s capital is indeed transforming into something entirely new—yet in that transformation, it may be losing part of its soul.

Since 2022, the government’s Corridor Development Project (CDP) has reshaped this city of more than six million people. With a cost that is still unclear but certainly over half a billion dollars, the vision is ambitious: not just to ease congestion with wider roads and new infrastructure, but to present a bold, modern image of Ethiopia itself—an image meant to attract investment and accelerate capitalist development.

The city has been transformed into a kind of “Dubai of the Horn of Africa,” with highways, skyscrapers, cycling lanes, fountains, and vast gardens. Iconic squares like Meskel, Yekatit 12, and Mexico are unrecognizable, while historic neighborhoods such as Piassa and Kazanchis have been demolished. What remains—both old and new—has been repainted in uniform grey and white, erasing much of the city’s visual memory.

For months, especially during the second phase of the CDP, Addis was nothing but an open-air construction site. Beyond the dust and disruption, the costs of this revolution are deeply human. Thousands of demolitions and forced evictions have pushed families from the city center to the outskirts, where jobs harder to find, and daily survival even more difficult.

The project divides opinion. Many Ethiopians welcome modernization, seeing it as a step toward global relevance. Others, however, feel excluded—convinced that the CDP is a project for the rich, not for the poor majority. To them, it has erased much of Addis Ababa’s historical and cultural heritage, inflicting a wound on the collective memory of the city. Some argue that erasing traces of the past—including reminders of empire and even the brief Italian occupation—might be necessary. But many more see it as a loss too great to justify.

Addis Ababa is not the first capital to gamble on radical change. Yet here, the stakes feel higher: an ambitious government vision to turn Addis Ababa into a model of development for Africa colliding with economic fragility, social disequality, and cultural identity.