City Secures Qoshe, Displaces the Shadow Workforce

Jun 7 , 2026. By HELINA HADGU ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

For more than half a century, the Qoshe landfill operated as an unmanaged, open dumping ground. The Addis Abeba City Administration has now begun physically fencing the perimeter and establishing police checkpoints, transitioning the site into a controlled municipal utility to stop illegal dumping and protect nearby residential quarters from toxic environmental spillover. The enforcement drive at Qoshe is anchored in a record of severe public risk, such as the 2017 landslide that claimed more than 116 lives.

The Addis Abeba City Administration has begun securing and physically fencing "Qoshe’s" perimeter, changing what long functioned as an open dumping ground into a controlled municipal utility.

According to the authorities, the plan is meant to stop illegal dumping, curb crime, regulate access, and protect nearby residential areas from toxic environmental spillover. But high wire fences and police checkpoints are also redrawing the economy of a community that has lived off the city’s discarded materials for generations.

City officials say formalisation cannot be delayed. Its urgency is tied to Qoshe’s record of public risk, including the March 2017 landslide that killed more than 116 people and exposed the danger of unmanaged urban waste heaps.

“Defining and protecting the perimeter is a critical first step toward safer operations, reduced public risk, and long-term environmental recovery,” Wondimu Seta, deputy mayor and the city’s general manager, told Fortune.

According to Wondimu, the facility demands strict control over access and logistics.

“Qoshe requires disciplined management, strict environmental safeguards, and accountability,” he said. “By securing this site, we're taking control of our public infrastructure to protect surrounding communities and ensure the phased and technical rehabilitation of the entire facility.”

For many residents, such as Hana Adane, Qoshe has been a labour market, a settlement, a survival system, and an informal recycling chain in which scavenging could pay for food and rent.

Hana has spent all 30 years of her life beside Qoshe, the landfill that has received Addis Abeba’s rubbish for more than half a century. Her parents settled on the edge after they married. Over time, she and her four brothers replaced the old structure with a brick one, adding family rooms and small shops for rent.

“This is where I grew up, got married, and have children,” Hana told Fortune. “I've neighbours who are completely dependent on that landfill.”

For Hana, the fence has arrived before an alternative economy. Expecting the crackdown, she tried to move her neighbours into formal business. She and nine neighbouring residents organised a cooperative union and prepared the documents required for a trade licence for a compost manufacturing enterprise. They planned to turn municipal bio-waste into a legal and safer source of income.

“We've all the necessary documentation,” said Hana. “But nothing is going on. We're just waiting in bureaucratic silence.”

City officials are expected to issue formal eviction orders to clear buffer zones, though operational details remain unclear.

“I'm not sure where we will go at this point,” Hana said. “I might find a small place to crash in for a bit because my husband has a stable job that doesn’t involve scavenging. But I worry deeply about my neighbours’ future if we're forced to scatter elsewhere.”

Urban specialists say the city’s goals are understandable but incomplete. According to Efrem A. Tesfahunegn, an urban specialist and former country project manager for the Cities Alliance at the United Nations Office for Project Services, Qoshe is both a residential settlement and a workplace.

“For an ecosystem like Qoshe, which functions simultaneously as both a dense residential hub and a primary workplace, physical fences and police checkpoints are blunt instruments,” Efrem told Fortune. “While the Administration’s goals to halt illegal dumping and curb illicit activities are valid, actual environmental rehabilitation can't happen by simply prohibiting and locking out the community that depends on it.”

The cost of that exclusion is measured in households such as Tigist Debasu’s. At 47, she is a single mother of four and one of the 10 partners in Hana’s cooperative. Her family came to the capital through necessity. Her husband migrated from Sedi Wereda in Debre Marqos 15 years ago. Two years later, Tigist followed with their two sons, building a makeshift life at the landfill’s edge.

Nine years ago, her husband died in a scavenging accident inside the waste mountain. Tigist then pulled her two eldest sons out of school so they could forage with her and help keep the family fed.

“We know that it's a very tough, toxic environment to work in,” Tigist told Fortune. “I don’t have any other choice but to do this to survive.”

But for Tigist, who pays a monthly rent of 4,500 Br, the loss was immediate as police cut off access to the site.

“I've kids to feed,” she said, weeping. “If I can’t work inside the perimeter, I don’t know what my family’s future is going to be.”

Solomon Abebe, 19, came from Gamo Gofa at 14 to follow his brother. For almost four years, he has been scavenging and selling the materials he found to the informal recyclers in Mercato.

“This is what my friend and I do for a living,” said Solomon, who shares a 4,000 Br a month small shack made of plastic sheeting and corrugated iron sheets with a friend.

Since the fence went up, they have no plan.

“After the landfill fence went up and police started prohibiting us from entering, we've been completely clueless on what to do next,” said Solomon.

Residents estimate that 140,000 to 150,000 people live in and around the dumpsite. The enforcement drive has rippled beyond the fence into the informal economy. Tsegaye Chekole, 39, who lives across the street from Qoshe, saw hunger already appearing among families who depended on daily picking.

“People who depend on the landfill for daily food are hungry now,” he said. “This hazardous work was better than being a beggar on the streets. The local community could try to feed them, but individual charity can never be enough to sustain thousands of people every single day.”

For some former residents, like Bereket Aschalew, 52, who once lived near the trash lines before his title deed was exchanged for a resettlement plot elsewhere in the city, the wall is overdue. He sees the crackdown as environmental protection.

“I think the landfill fence is vital for the environment to permanently stop the illicit activities and safety hazards that have plagued this community for years,” Bereket said. "The profound relief I felt when I finally received the chance to relocate to a new and clean neighbourhood was unmatched by any feeling I've ever experienced in this world.”

Efrem argued that the city can reduce risk without tossing the informal workforce. He recommended micro-start-up capital, dedicated processing spaces outside danger zones, and formal supply chains with manufacturers. Cooperatives could divert organic material into automated anaerobic digestion for biogas and composting, while high-density plastics and glassware could be channelled to recyclers in Mercato and Aqaki-Qality.

“By formalising these informal operations into licensed partnerships, the city can secure a dual structural benefit,” Efrem told Fortune. “It guarantees dignified, insulated, and safer employment for thousands of marginalised citizens, while simultaneously providing the cleaning agency with a disciplined workforce to execute a clean, sustainable, and long-term rehabilitation of the landfill compound.”

Whether Qoshe becomes a rehabilitated utility or a fenced-off symbol of poverty will depend on what comes after enforcement. For Bereket, the wall promises safety. For Hana, Tigist and Solomon, it has closed the only economy they knew before another one was ready.

PUBLISHED ON Jun 07,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1362]