Infrastructure part 2, housing

When I first arrived and started trying to learn more about the housing projects just down the street, I found this article reporting on the late-February opening of over 20,000 new condominium units, including some in our neighborhood. The article reports that, "With an average population growth rate of 2.7 percent, Addis Ababa needs 600,000 additional housing units in the coming decade alone, according to the Addis Ababa City Housing Development Office." Since then, I have heard that the city has pledged to build 1.3 million housing units in the next 7 years - a VERY ambitious number!

As part of this campaign to provide housing, the city has launched a series of financing programs (described here). The goal is to make housing affordable and accessible to the city's large population of what I would call a lower middle class, people who have steady work but don't make enough to save up for a house purchase. Without this kind of public support, locals have told me that purchasing land and building a house is affordable only to the quite well-off.

As a result, there is a lot of interest in the current program, and for the past week people have been lined up all over the city to sign up for this opportunity.  Although there are many banks in Addis, only one, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, is authorized to administer this program at its branches. The bank reports that nearly 400,000 people have signed up so far.


For many Addis residents, those with some money saved or access to some financial support, these programs will provide a chance to secure a housing upgrade. For the wealthier, there are many more options, and the building boom shows no signs of abating. Just behind the college (on the other side form the condo buildings), a new street of comfortable villas has just been completed - and more are going up throughout the neighborhood.

Here is a description of the building boom in Addis from the Economist: "Addis has one of the higher densities of slum dwellers in the world. But their geographical pattern is unusual... Addis is 'more of a scrambled egg'." (Read the article for an explanation.)

Next up: roads and transportation

Update on Infrastructure, pt 1

In garbage and recycling news, the collection barrels were deemed inadequate, and thus were emptied to avoid, I was told, encouraging people to make use of a temporary and insufficient system. Students and staff, a university official explained, are meant to take care of their own waste (which mostly means tossing it on the ground or over the campus fence). It's unclear when - or even if - a new system will be put in place. For the time being, those of us living on campus are on our own if we don't want to just toss our garbage onto the pile (likely to be burned). A decidedly negative development as we prepare for Saturday's fun run event that's raising money for waste disposal!

On a lighter note (pun weak but intended), it turns out that some of last week's frequent power outages were part of planned upgrades to a nearby major transmission line. That said, the campus started the day without electricity.