The crowded Sebategna area near the Autobis Tera bus station is filled with eventful scenery of traders, drivers and travellers coupled with piles of trash on the sides of the street. Children that migrated from rural areas scramble to make a living selling peanuts, hauling goods and picking leftovers from the vegetable market nearby. The stench of wet trash does not seem to bother them as they toil around to make ends meet and survive the day. At night some find themselves sleeping on the streets while those that manage to earn money share small rooms with as many as six people.

It has been two months since Melkamu Gasha made his way from Arba Minch town in Southern Regional State to the capital in search of greener pastures. The 18-year-old wanders the streets of the capital in search of work during the day and pursues opportunities as a daily labourer, a scrape living. His five roommates also hang around the area. All are school dropouts from the same town, who fled their homes due to economic constraints.

"We heard there was work in Addis," Melkamu told Fortune.

At night they share a five-metre square room around Shiro Meda paying 1,800 Br monthly rent. Although destitute, they do not intend on returning to their hometown empty-handed, putting a burden on their families.

"I am not going back," Melkamu said.

A study on rural-to-urban migration conducted by the CHR Michelsen Institute (CMI) in 2014 suggested that at least one-third of villages in the Southern regions had a member of the household migrate to urban areas particularly Addis Abeba and Hawassa cities. Close to 21pc of these migrants are under the age of 18 and engaging in the informal sectors of the economy.

Atlaw Alemu (PhD), an economics lecturer at Addis Abeba University, believes the nature of migration in Ethiopia has changed course. He said people used to flee from rural areas then, to escape poverty but now, it is to save their lives. According to Atlaw, migration is no longer just from rural to urban, rather from one regional state to the other.

"It is no longer economic, but a matter of survival," he told Fortune.

People fleeing by thousands to the capital is not the least bit surprising to the economist as the proliferation of ethnic conflicts in several parts trumps economic pressures. Considerations of statistical rigour in terms of planning are secondary to a country walking on the brink of disaster year-round, according to the expert.

A 27-year-old man Mahder Mebratu arrived in the capital a month ago from the war-stricken town of Adigrat in Tigray Regional State. He was an employee of an Agro-Industry with a monthly income of 7,000 Br before the war broke out.

"Those days are long gone," he reminisced as the company he used to work for was decimated during the war.

The Hydraulics Engineering graduate says he will do anything to make a living at this point. He lives with his uncle in a room he shares with two cousins while he seeks work. Even though employment prospects appear slim and life is expensive in the capital, the aura of relative safety Mahder is all too sweet to abandon anytime soon. He feels lucky to have survived the war and make it through the treacherous path to the capital 600km away.

Under the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the International Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) has tracked internal displacement data since 1998. On its annual report in 2021, 5.1 million new internal displacements in Ethiopia were registered, the highest number of newly displaced people for a single year in a country.

The economic constraints and internal migrations resulted in Addis Abeba being overpopulated. The last national census was conducted 16 years ago, with the census commission at the time reporting 2.7 million residents. Since then, the country has experienced several socioeconomic transformations in the time span that could contribute to extreme changes in the demography.

The protracted war, food insecurity, inter-tribal conflicts and spiked-up unemployment coupled with rapidly declining arable land are some of the reasons that lead to the influx of copious people in urban areas.

The casted shadow can be observed in several aspects of Addis Abeba's socioeconomic makeup with decision-makers in the administrative apparatus basing the population size data on information from the Ethiopian Statistical Services (ESS). The data projects the capital's population to be 5.1 million by 2037.

The population estimate of the capital for the year 2022 stood at 3.8 million people, a per capita of 263.15 Br. The figure suggests the current population estimation has an increase of 1.1 million people from the last count over 15 years ago.

The calculation factors in birth and death rates and "inter-regional" migration, according to Hailmariam Teklu, head of the population studies department at ESS. He expects the actual figure to be a little north of the estimations they provide to respective executing bodies.

Despite remaining in the dark about how many people exactly live in the capital, Parliamentarians allocated 100 billion Br in the fiscal year.

"Our budget can't account for the actual migration," said Mebratu Gebre, budget director at Finance Bureau of the City Administration.