FORTUNE+ VIDEO SPONSORED CONTENTS ADVERTORIALS FORTUNE AUDIO Fortune Careers TRADE AFRICA Election 2026 New TIME REMAINING UNTIL ETHIOPIA’S NATIONAL ELECTION 0Days 0Hours 0Minutes 0Seconds



SLIDING ROOFS


SLIDING ROOFS

A makeshift cafe around Senga Tera caters to the coffee needs of the residents from a nearby building. The tilted corrugated roof masks cosy accommodations. Addis Abeba is home to a vibrant informal economy providing hundreds of thousands with daily income and employment. According to a recent study by the African Cities Research Consortium, the capital generates 29pc of Ethiopia’s urban GDP and 20pc of national urban employment. Since the early 2000s, the government adopted a two-pronged approach towards informality marked by mandatory business registration and reorganization of micro and small enterprises.  

[ssba-buttons]

In-Picture

DIG ZONE

A fleet of heavy-duty excavators, bulldozers, and dump trucks lines the muddy banks of a river near the German Square area. The concentrated presence of machinery signals the scale and speed driving the city's Corridor Development Program. The aggressive infrastructure push is reshaping the capital's urban form, but the intensity of earthworks at the river's edge also exposes a fragile tension. Rapid transformation and environmental protection sit side by side, each pulling against the other...


In-Picture

BROKEN LIN

A heavily damaged utility pole lies across a pedestrian sidewalk in the Gofa Camp neighborhood, with loose wiring exposed and a crushed metal sheet fence nearby. The scene points to a disrupted urban landscape where basic infrastructure repair has lagged behind visible damage. The lingering wreckage underscores growing concerns over delayed responses to hazardous public property failures...


In-Picture

VEST WAIT

Revenues Bureau personnel, identifiable in branded vests and body cameras, stand in a dense commuter queue at the Qera taxi terminal. Their roles are rooted in field enforcement and policing the informal economy, yet their off-duty reality looks no different from the citizens they regulate. The capital's strained public transport system turns routine commuting into a shared struggle, where municipal employees and the wider workforce wait side by side, exposed to the same delays, congestion, a...