A MULTIPURPOSE CITY PARK SYSTEM AND HOUSING SCHEME

Urban Renewal through Riverine Human Ecology in Addis Ababa

DRAFT – NOT FOR CIRCULATION

A concept paper
By Mizanekristos Yohannes
A Greener Services Lem Limat Proposal

March 2015, Addis Ababa

1
Contents
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 1
THE GEOGRAPHY OF ADDIS ABABA’s WATERSHED ....................................................... 1
THE STATE OF HOUSING AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN RIVERINE COMMUNITIES .... 2
....................................................................................................................................... 3
THE STATE OF ADDIS ABABA RIVERS AND STREAMS ..................................................... 3
THE RESEARCH AND INTERVENTION CHALLENGES ....................................................... 4
STAKEHOLDERS AND JURISDICTIONS ............................................................................ 4
APPRAISING RIVERS AND STREAMS FOR URBAN RENEWAL ......................................... 6
IMAGINING THE POSSIBILITIES ...................................................................................... 9
FINANCING THE SCHEME ............................................................................................. 10
THE DIASPORA AS A SOURCE OF HARD CURRENCY..................................................... 10
PREPARING FOR ECONOMIC IMPACTS ........................................................................ 11
LINKING FOOD SYSTEMS OF ADDIS ABABA ..................................................................... 12
TO SURROUNDING AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY............................................................... 12
PROJECT COMPONENTS .............................................................................................. 20
Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... 22

2
 MULTIPURPOSE CITY PARK SYSTEM AND HOUSING SCHEME FOR ADDIS ABABA
Urban Renewal through Riverine Human Ecology and Peri-Urban Agriculture
A concept paper
By Mizanekristos Yohannes
A Greener Services Lem Limat Proposal

INTRODUCTION
This proposal seeks to show how the socio-economic and the environmental engineering
challenges in the riverbank catchments of Addis Ababa can be addressed through the creation
of a network of riverine parks and community housing system. It relies on the construction of
a multifunctional green buffer along the banks of all major rivers and streams through labor-
intensive public works. The labor-intensity of the public works will extend the green buffer
through a protective chain of low-rise condominium homes built, owned and inhabited by
current residents occupying the riverbank slums. The multi-functionality of the parks will create
sustainable employment and business opportunities for the same local dwellers through
production and services that complement the recreational and environmental functions of the
park.

It is important to appreciate from the outset that the problems cannot be dealt with through
civil engineering and regulation alone1, but through public action combining social, economic
and environmental development that builds the right institutions, infrastructure and a broad
(riverine) tax-base2 to lend viability to stringent regulatory and enforcement measures. To this
effect, an integrated systems approach, ensuring that all critical interventions are marshaled
through research, planning and financing, such that one missing component cannot undermine
the viability of the whole.3

THE GEOGRAPHY OF ADDIS ABABA’s WATERSHED

Addis Ababa has three major rivers, Akaki Major (tiliqu), Akaki Minor (tinishu) and Kebena, each
with an extensive network of tributaries of rivers and streams spread throughout the city. The
major tributaries adding up to almost 100 km within the city limits are known by their
traditional names: Buche, Kurtume, Kechene, Ginfile, Kebena, Bantiyileku and Kostre. A
watershed of some 1,462 km2 drains into the Akaki basin including 240 km2 rural and 540 km2
urban.4 The basin drains further south into the Aba Samuel wetland and further still into the

1
(Berhe, 1988)
2
(Carlyne Z. Yu)
3
(Y. W. Zhao, 2007)
4
(Tenalem Ayenew)

1
Awash River. Addis Ababa rural begins at an elevation of 3200 ASL sloping down to a low of
2060 ASL over a north-south distance of some 40 km. 5. The overall topography of the city can
be described as a half coliseum walled by Entoto and Sululta mountains to the North forming a
basin that levels off at Akaki-Kaliti sub-cities to the South. However the topography is naturally
terraced forming a checkerboard of plateaus connected by gentle to steep dips and hills
throughout the city.

THE STATE OF HOUSING AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN RIVERINE COMMUNITIES

The 2007 Census puts the population of AA at a little over 2.7 million comprising more than
650,000 households6. The population growth rate is 2.9% of which the natural growth is 1.2%
and migration contributing the other 1.7 %.7 No targeted census or housing and living-standard
survey (HLSS) exists for the population of riverside communities. Depending on what
parameters are used to define the riverside catchments of Addis Ababa it is not only quite high,
but likely to be harboring – judging from casual observations of housing quality along rivers and
streams – a high concentration of the poorest of the poor. We can estimate that there is a total
of 2000 hectares of land stretching within 100 meters on each side of the major rivers and
streams. From the 2014 CSA projections we estimate a median density of 93 households per
hectare or 186,000 households dwelling along rivers and streams or 23% of the total population
of Addis.

Unemployment in Addis Ababa has been fluctuating between 23% and 28% between 2009 until
2014. (CSA 2014), while poverty rate fluctuates very little from 40% with women and new
entrants in the labor market facing the most severe forms of poverty. The unbearably rancid
toxic and pungent atmosphere along the rivers and the fact that AA City codes forbid building
within 50 meters of river banks has created slums where the poorest squatters are
concentrated.

Hence, urban renewal measures and development of the network of rivers and streams in Addis
Ababa should not only be one to enhance the aesthetic and environmental/ecological value
through a cleanup effort, but integral to and primarily one that raises living standards of the
riverine residents to more decent levels8. It is more importantly an economic development task
than it is a civil/environmental engineering one, two colossal undertakings that should be seen
as mutually synergistic, rather than exclusive9.

5
(Tenalem Ayenew)
6
(Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia, 2007)
7
(CSA, 1995)
8
(Urban River Basin Enhancement Methods (UBEM), 2004)
9
(Carlyne Z. Yu)

2
THE STATE OF Addis Ababa RIVERS AND STREAMS
As an unplanned city that has changed its “master-plan”
several times since its first charter, it is not clear if there is
any logic or method to the way that the zones and
neighborhoods are organized within this natural
topography10. However, it is clear that the rivers and
streams that weave within the gorges and basins of the
terrain have not been tapped for their functional or esthetic
values. On the contrary, households and industries alike
have found them convenient as a natural sewer network
Figure 1: Polluted recharge risk points of
and solid waste disposal outlet, including open defecation and aquifers and intensity of rivers and streams in
dumping of fecal matter using plastic bags by numerous Addis Ababa’s watershed. (Tenalem Ayenew)
households that lack access to toilets11.

This convenience, however, comes at an alarming cost in terms of high levels of chemical and
organic pollution that can contaminate the aquifer system under the city and major rivers like
the Awash downstream12. Chemicals, including heavy metals from factories and pathogens
have been found to accumulate in commercially grown vegetables watered by these streams.
Air pollution associated with foul smell and a high rate of respiratory diseases among residents
of the river banks is equally alarming. Transformation of these streams from hazardous to
beneficial should therefore be an indispensable part of any master-plan and regulatory
framework serious about human development.

Besides household released grey-water, solid waste and open defecation, industrial effluence
from some factories upstream is said to be a major contributor to pollution. Agricultural
activities, including fertilizer and pesticide use in modern horticultural and small holder farming
have also been identified as sources damaging the ecology of the rivers. As AAWSA has not
kept up with water demand from the expansion of the city area, high-rise construction and the
population growth, drawing water from these rivers, private wells and broken mains for
washing, bathing and even cooking is quite common throughout the city13.

10
(UN Habitat, 2007)
11
(UN Habitat, 2007) (ENDA Ethiopia, 1999) (Girma Tadesse, 2006) (Girma Tadesse, 2006) (Dry Waste Management in Addis Ababa City
(Draft), 2004)

12
(Malifu, 2006)
13
(UN Habitat, 2007)

3
THE RESEARCH AND INTERVENTION CHALLENGES
The basin draining into the rivers and streams of Addis Ababa is well surveyed and understood
but poorly managed and regulated. It is an imperative of
all water related environmental works, that entire
watersheds be wholly examined before embarking on any
partial improvement of the system. That’s because the
flow of rainfall from any point of the basin to the nearest
surface or underground water body – be it rivers,
streams, lakes or aquifers – suspends or dissolves all
harmful and beneficial substances along its way. Surface
runoff on barren slopes creates sedimentation by
washing away top-soils and depositing it at the bottom of
the basin. This causes murkiness of rivers and lakes and
accumulation that eventually dries up the riverbeds. A
green blanket or erosion-preventing structures on the
same basin would enable cleaner runoff, percolation and
filtration of rain water before it reaches the water bodies.
Figure 2: A transect showing fissures
that enable polluted recharge of Similarly, unregulated industrial or agricultural activity at
acquifers (Tenalem Ayenew) the top end of the watershed will send all manner of
pollutants downstream including permeation into underground aquifers and springs14.
Therefore, a top to bottom survey of the basin, followed by a similar flow-chart of
environmental works and regulation of upstream sedimentation and pollution is advised.

STAKEHOLDERS AND JURISDICTIONS

Launching a massive environmental and social development scheme of Addis Ababa river basins
requires cooperation among all levels of jurisdictions including the upstream rural ones within
the watershed. The cooperation should be toward the creation of an integrated and logically
sequenced scheme, while also distributing the works and benefits to each
jurisdiction/community. Addis Ababa rural to the north is largely agrarian, with very few
outlying industries that impact on rivers and streams15. As indicated above, anything done to
regulate erosion and pollution will be win-win for both upstream and downstream
communities. However, there will be individual firms and operators that may incur losses
unless the public compensates them. Addis Ababa rural jurisdictions to the North may be as
many as 15 Peasant Associations whose land-use plans and farming and drainage structures
will require some form of regulation and reconfiguration. In any case the farming communities

14
(Tamiru Alemayehu, 2003)
15
(Girma Tadesse, 2006)

4
surrounding Addis have also not been coordinated to take full advantage of the market for food
and other non-food agricultural products as proposed in the second section of this proposal.

Table 1: Population of each sub-city 2014 (From CSA 2014 – 2017 Projection)

%
Subcity Area (km2) Population Density Map
Population

Addis
7.41 297,793 40,187.99 9.32
Ketema[18]

Akaky
118.08 211,380 1,790.14 6.62
Kaliti[19]

Arada[20] 9.91 246,680 24,892.03 7.72

Bole[21] 122.08 360,387 2,952.06 11.28

Gullele[22] 30.18 312,096 10,341.15 9.77

Kirkos[23] 14.62 258,035 17,649.45 8.08

Kolfe
61.25 500,163 8,165.93 15.65
Keranio[24]

Lideta[25] 9.18 235,246 25,625.93 7.36

Nifas Silk-
68.3 368,883 5,400.92 11.55
Lafto[26]

Yeka[27] 85.46 404,336 4,731.29 12.66

526.47 3,194,999 6,068.72 100.00

5
There are 10 sub-cities with populations tabled above. It is important to enumerate the
demography of the households, businesses and institutions that sit on the river banks, including
occupancy per unit, employment, income and asset holdings.

Furthermore, data on land and housing title holdings, legal status of occupancy, rental status
and homelessness along the banks will be sin qua non to planning the scheme. Additionally,
riverside slums have to be mapped together with contiguous interior slums to develop
integrated renewal programs. Finally, access to and source of services for riverside dwellers,
such as water and sanitation, health, education, markets, banking and quebele affiliation will
be necessary as a baseline and planning tool.

The main labor source for the construction of works and housing and city park system should
be residents of the river banks, particularly the poor and the unemployed. Housing
developments and compatible SMEs along the river banks should also serve as the principal
constituency that protects the city park eco-system.

APPRAISING RIVERS AND STREAMS FOR URBAN RENEWAL

It is, so far, obvious that city planners and other urban development agencies have not been
too conscious of the value of the rivers. Hence, data on the rivers and streams are virtually
non-existent except general lamentations about their polluted state. Like roads and other built
and natural spaces, there will be a lot of catching up to do in mapping and naming (or
numbering) rivers and streams by some logical scheme and taxonomy that makes it easy to
identify and communicate location, morphology, length and water-flow characteristics.

Figure 3: The map on the left shows most of the tributaries of the two Akakis appearing with their green lining in the
satellite image on the right. Central Addis Ababa and the Akaki Well Fields shown in rectangular boxes are considered high
contamination zones. (Tenalem Ayenew)

6
Similarly, natural assets within each micro-basin, such as flora, rock formation, soil types and
topography will have to be documented descriptively and quantitatively for each tributary,
segments and their banks. The multifunctional concept of the development scheme will make
use of these data in determining what particular function will be suitable for each segment of
the riverside park system as well as the design of the infrastructure – such as bike routes – that
will interlink each of them into one whole. The engineering schemes and architecture should
be designed to make maximum use of the materials – rocks, soils, trees and other plants – for
landscaping and housing construction in a manner that fits well with the labor intensity and
job-creation objectives envisaged above.

A PARADIGM SHIFT IN HOUSING and URBAN DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

Despite the boom in high-rise and condominium buildings, 70% of Addis Ababa remains
covered by what the city administration acknowledges to be slum dwellings inherited from
the past. The housing and urban development strategy of government is in need of a
fundamental revision if the goals of eliminating urban blight and poverty are to be achieved at
a more accelerated rate. The housing sector is the main growth driver in most economies.
Although the guiding agreements in international cooperation, such as MDGs, have failed to
recognize it, poor housing or homelessness is the most severe form poverty and a multiplier
of all the other causes and consequences of misery including disease, malnutrition, ignorance,
fear and hopelessness.

Historically, societies and governments that have resolved to eliminate housing poverty have
also succeeded not only in finding abundant financial, material and human resources for rapid
implementation, they have also succeeded in creating employment and income opportunities
among the poor and also enabling them to attain assets in the form of home equity – a
virtuous circle. Neglect or policy mistakes in addressing housing poverty, on the other hand,
have generally led to unstable, polarized and insecure urban growth that perpetuates and
expands misery, even in the midst of prosperity – a vicious circle. The current policy
orientation of AA Administration may be headed toward a dismal future – despite genuine
intentions of reducing poverty and fostering shared growth – of degenerating into perpetual
urban blight. Misguided notions of modernity and development that tend to measure urban
growth vertically pushes policy makers to aspire toward emulating New York City or Dubai.
However, most urban planners in LDCs, including Ethiopia, do not realize that their vertical
aspiration might only lead them to Manila, a city that is now widely recognized as modeled
after hell, especially for the poor. Although the hazards of vertical urban development in
cities like Addis have been well articulated by numerous academics and architects, we
condense the main points of criticism below, if only to stress that this project – AA Rivers, that

7
is – goes beyond criticism by offering a compelling and comprehensive alternative to steer the
new Addis Ababa master plan away from Manila, and toward Amsterdam.16

 Emphasis and prioritization of high-rise construction for business, institutional and

condominium housing is constraining horizontal and broad-based urban renewal and
housing supply that could be built at a much faster rate, at a much lower cost and
with employment opportunity for many more architects, builders and workers;
 Hi-rise orientation is concentrating wealth among the highest income groups by
prioritizing allocation of finance to very few real-estate developers that also cater only
to high-income buyers and renters. A more distributive mortgage lending program
could readily fractionate current loans for single high-rise construction projects into
hundreds of smaller loans to a broader group of borrowers. By raising the number of
small homeowners, the supply of affordable but decent rental units would also
increase for low-income households due to supply pressure.
 Hi-rise development drives inequality. Market failure in the housing sector has severe
consequences of creating a homeless underworld due to banks and the private sector
targeting only the highest income groups.
 Hi-rise orientation has led to hyper-inflation of land-lease prices through speculative
competition for policy-induced land and housing scarcity;
 Hi-rise urban development is slower in creating employment and wage income than
low-rise development for the same quantity and size of housing units built;
 Hi-rise development is the slowest in creating demand to promote backward and
forward linkages to manufacturing and rural production17.
 Hi-rise development remains (due to #5) import intensive and a needless drain on the
country’s scarce foreign exchange resources. 70% of high-rise building cost is sunk
into finishing, most of which is imported.
 Hi-rise development is slow in eliminating slums, beautifying a city and expanding
green space.
 Hi-rise development is a source of growing traffic congestion due to commuter
concentrations and lack of parking space at points of origin and destination; (e.g. 2000
workers trying to arrive to one point from four directions; or 5000 workers leaving
and returning to one condominium neighborhood every day at the same times);
 Hi-rise buildings are energy inefficient, generate heat and undermine private and
public green space development;
 Hi-rise buildings pose a higher fire and earthquake risk and present impossible
challenges to emergency services; (see AA rivers as fire-hydrant feeders)

16
The Netherlands being one of the densest populated countries in the world (540pp/km2), Amsterdam, its main commercial center, is known as a
low-rise city, with very high per-capita green space where citizens enjoy the a high quality of life. Manila and Amsterdam are symbolic of two
opposite trajectories of urban development, one to be avoided the latter to be pursued.
17
Due to backward linkages, i.e. inputs into housing construction, and forward linkages, durables and semi-durables that are procured by occupants
after completion, the housing sector creates the largest multiplier effect of any other sector. Enlarging effective demand for housing is therefore key
to leveraging these multipliers to promote industrial development.

8
  Hi-rise residential buildings undermine neighborly social cohesion and communality,
which leads to harboring crime and other anti-social responses by disillusioned youth.

There are few decision-makers and citizens who disagree that the current strategy presents all
of the foregone disadvantages, most feeling helpless and powerless to change or regulate the
persistence of these dismal policies and their interest groups. It behooves us, therefore to
not just show pitfalls, but also illustrate the possible outcomes of implementing our proposed
alternatives. Fortunately, there are quite a few computer aided tools that can produce
predictive comparisons of both scenarios – the current model and the one we are proposing –
through images that show data and renderings.

IMAGINING THE POSSIBILITIES

Finally, it will be necessary to do appraisal and forecasting studies showing what the potential
water levels are and what productive functions these rivers and parks enable, including
transport, sports and recreation, fisheries and irrigation of urban agriculture, crafts, food and
livestock markets, art and entertainment venues. Forecasting the productive potential of rivers
and streams will require modeling of the structures necessary to maintain higher levels of flow
and cleanliness of the water, including hundreds of check dams, waterfalls and cascades (for
oxidization) canals, ponds and lakes, solid waste traps, artificial wetlands, locks, viaducts,
culverts, etc.18 There are numerous case studies and examples, including ancient ones that can
provide lessons as to the engineering and functional possibilities of developing these rivers.

For a spatially sensitive project such as this, there will be a very high promotional and
educational value to be gained from overlaying all the data and design concepts on a GIS and
3D CGI platform that enables visualization for planners, decision-makers, citizens, donors and
financiers. Other renderings can go a long way in showing the ultimate vision of the scheme
and creating the political resolve to implement it. One can show what Addis Ababa would look
and feel like:
When rivers flow clean and their banks are turned into parks;
When poor residents are employed and earn enough to afford their own homes;
When slums are transformed into beautiful and sustainable dwellings;
When all income groups are mixed in each neighborhood;
When children have safe and green spaces as playgrounds;
… and all the other possibilities that one could wish for.
It will be these imagined renderings that citizens together have to aspire to engineer into Addis
Ababa’s future. As the nation’s capital – more importantly as Africa’s capital city –
transformation of Addis Ababa into a socially just, environmentally sensible and aesthetically

18
(Y. W. Zhao, 2007)

9
refined urban center is an important collective duty and an example for others to follow and
posterity to praise.

FINANCING THE SCHEME

These are going to be costly undertakings requiring mobilization of large sums of funds and
human resources. By adhering to a discipline of local resource intensity, including technical
knowhow, labor and materials, it is possible that the transformation can be financed mostly in
birr. This project is proposed mainly as a public sector undertaking in which the government is
the main borrower and employer, with much of the construction being public works in nature.
For the condominium housing, the city administration is also going to be the main lender (or
guarantor), as well as financier of construction cooperatives to equip them for the works. This
can readily be achieved by shifting budgets already earmarked for high-rise condominiums
which have become import intensive and quite slow to transform the decrepit urban landscape.

Much of the financing and operational schemes can be adopted from the highly successful
cobblestone movement, as well as the inter-woreda feeder roads program under the GTP.
These have already proven the holistic transformative effects of labor and skills intensive
approaches in upgrading construction and living standards.

After completion of the project, there will also be a large number of SMEs and cooperatives
that will require financing to establish their businesses in the parks and riverside
neighborhoods. However, Addis Ababa City Administration can mobilize financing with great
confidence as the cost-recovery opportunities will be quite abundant. These public works will
generate predictable revenue sources including an improved property tax base, land lease,
interest on mortgage loan repayments, user fees, business tax and divestiture of government
owned houses (Kebele and Kiray Betoch). Deflationary effect of housing supply will also reduce
the wage inflation pressures in the civil service, while also attracting and retaining high
performing staff in government.

THE DIASPORA AS A SOURCE OF HARD CURRENCY

Although not verified through research19 a large part of the remittances from the Ethiopian-
American and European Diaspora is known to be directed at investments in the housing
sector. It is also likely that housing on leased land can be easily marketed to an even larger
segment of the Diaspora in the US, Europe and the Middle East. Housing that emphasizes
local input and labor intensity can net a lot of hard currency for the country if lending and
home-ownership programs are specifically designed for the Diaspora. (At this writing AA City
Administration has allocated resources for 12,000 Diaspora returnees.)

Current trends among Diaspora returnees show an undesirable pattern of segregated colony
formation, often in gated communities in the suburbs, thus undermining the uniquely

19
See proposal for research on Ethiopian-American Diaspora

10
integrated settlement tradition that Addis Ababa is known for. Making home-ownership
opportunities in the proposed riverine communities would also help to end the isolated
clustering of returnees and wealthy residents.

Although local inputs and labor intensity enable majority financing of the project in Birr, some
inputs toward construction of decent housing and park system will require technology
transfer toward growing the industries that provide high-value building and construction
inputs such as ceramics, bathroom fixtures, lighting fixtures, alternative roofing materials, etc.
Additionally, the forward linkages of the housing sector also require extensive technology
transfer to build industrial capacity toward production of a large variety of durables, semi-
durables and consumables. This includes everything from refrigerators, stoves and
furnishings to brooms and detergents that every occupant will want and afford to purchase.

Diaspora remittances can easily fill the foreign exchange gaps required to mobilize the
technology, expertise and equipment to bring housing-related industries to Ethiopia.

PREPARING FOR ECONOMIC IMPACTS

The release of and multiplier effects of these funds will have considerable impact on the macro-
economy, particularly inflationary impact, as employment wages will inevitably create such
pressures in local consumer markets. However, as a program largely targeting the poor, the
three inflations to be watched are food, transport and housing/utilities, in that order. It is said
that those living below the poverty line in Addis Ababa (over 40% of the population) spend a
minimum of 50% of their income on food while transport and housing take 15% and 8%
respectively20. Low-cost homeowners are known to spend up to 70% of their incomes to repay
their down-payment and mortgage loans, while sacrificing expenditure on food and other
essentials. Mid-level civil servants are also said to split their incomes in three equal parts
between food, shelter and transport, leaving 10% for clothing and other needs.

The increase in the housing supply will temper a significant part of the inflationary pressure by
siphoning back earnings into mortgage debt servicing as well as creating a deflationary supply
pressure on cost of housing and rents. However, economic governance of Addis Ababa rural
would have to be geared up for much higher levels and more coordinated food production to
also ensure a supply-side mitigation of food price inflation. (See separate paper on Atikilt Tera
attached)

20
(CSA and MOLSA, 1996), (UN Habitat, 2007)

11
 LINKING FOOD SYSTEMS OF ADDIS ABABA
TO SURROUNDING AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY
A Proposal to Transform Food Markets of Addis Ababa

The linkages of the agricultural and agro-forestry sector to the urban market have structural
flaws that stem from poor planning and irrationality of established legacies. The main
manifestations of these structural flaws are to be seen in the lack of efficiencies in logistics
and distribution, disintegrated value-chains and multipliers in the market for perishables.
Consequently poor quality and waste in produce retail, and lack of hygiene and sanitation at
almost all food markets and outlets, including restaurants remains an endemic feature of the
city’s food system. The structure also makes it nearly impossible for effective and efficient
regulation, inspection and enforcement of the food sector to protect the overall nutrition and
health security of the public. The result is that farmers’ production and income from urban
markets are needlessly constrained by pervasive bottlenecks in finance, infrastructure, inputs
supply and logistics. Opportunities that can maximize productivity and access to domestic
urban markets are thereby squandered. By the same token, urban consumers suffer from
poor nutritional status related to lack of adequate dietary intake, variety, quality and food
safety that is essential to a balanced diet free from pathogenic contamination. The
inefficiencies in production and market structure are also the supply-side causes of high food
prices.

The phenomena of the structural problems in the urban food economy can be witnessed
instantly at Atikilt Tera of Arada Sub-city, the oldest and largest fresh vegetable and fruit
outlet in Addis.

Logistics and distribution: Atikilt Tera is located in one of the most congested parts of the city
in terms of traffic and population density. It hosts 10.21% (280,000 ppl.) of Addis Ababa’s
population while covering only 1/30s of the land area. It is at once the truck depot, wholesale
center and retail center of vegetables in Addis including a considerable number of side-walk
gulits of poor women selling to poor consumers who can’t afford bulk purchases. The
location is made worse by sitting at the gate of Addis Ketema (Merkato) surrounded by other
congested markets such as Somali tera (auto salvage), Mestwat tera (window glass and mirror
market), a major gas station and a concentration of building materials and tools shops. Atikilt
tera also straddles a major route of mini-busses traveling east-west and north-south. While
these traffic congestions are a major impediment to efficient logistics of farm produce, it is
possible that retailers, if not wholesalers, might view it as an enlarged market opportunity.

Disintegrated value-chains, linkages and multipliers: Agricultural sub-sectors require more

integration, coordination and organization if they are to make the most efficient use of by-
products and services that rely on one initial product. For instance, the poultry sector should
be able to capture incomes not just from meat and eggs but also from chicken feathers (for

12
pillows and blankets). Likewise, the beef sector should be able to capture maximum incomes
from skins and gelatin derived from bones and scraps. However, extraction and processing of
these by-products requires a much higher level of aggregation and quality control of the
primary produce, namely the abattoirs. Similarly, the waste from vegetables can be used as
animal-feed, bio-gassed and then composted to extend the value chain to its limit while also
avoiding the horrible state of sanitation at Atikilt tera.

Poor quality and waste in produce retail: Warehousing, cleaning, sorting and crating nearer
to the source of farm produce reduce post-harvest losses, quality control and grading for
more rational pricing. Value chains can be extended through recycling of waste as animal
feed, small-scale processing to make preserves such as marmalades and tomato pastes and
sun-drying of over-ripe produce into condiments and flavoring. Crates and baskets made
from bamboo and reeds are not only good for transaction efficiencies in graded pricing but
also important multipliers in terms of job creation and income generation. The environmental
value of such farm based packing materials which are returnable, reusable, repairable and
bio-degradable are the answer to the excessive use of plastic bags which are a major source
of solid waste and chemical pollution (festal) that can and must be effectively banned by
regulation.

Lack of hygiene and sanitation: The nutrition value gained from food can be reversed or
cancelled by diseases stemming from contamination at numerous points of the value chain.
The least detectable form of contamination are the organisms and chemical solvents which
enters the edible parts of fresh food from polluted soil and water on the farm. Vegetables
and fruits cultivated on farms that are subject to urban pollution should be banned while peri-
urban rural farms should be inspected to guard against indirect susceptibility to urban
effluence. The second source of contamination is in primary produce handling during
warehousing, sorting, crating and transportation. Bruises and gashing that might be caused
from impact and over-piling often leads to putrefaction and rot that leads to food poisoning.
Furthermore, urban retailers are often poorly equipped to properly dispose of rotten produce
leading to unsanitary dispersal and decomposition in the streets and floors of market places
such as Atikilt Tera.

The worst form of contamination, however, is that of the public mindset and ethos of
citizens/consumers, suppliers as well as decision-makers and regulators, who, after living with
a legacy of unsanitary and unsightly public spaces, are desensitized into ontological
acceptance of such conditions as natural or intractable. This insensitivity extends itself into
private and restaurant kitchens in the form of careless food handling and unhygienic
preparation and eating habits. These two combined acculturations lead to pervasive
unsanitary and unhygienic social behavior that adds to the overall disease burden and poor
nutritional status of urban dwellers. The cycle repeats itself through low levels of human
resource development, a weak and listless workforce doing what it can to survive in private

13
spaces and caring even less for public spaces. The challenges of cleaning places such as atikilt
tera are less of engineering and management decision as they are a task of transforming the
public ethos and sanitation culture.

What is to be done?

While Atikilt Tera is a microcosm of the general problem of the urban food economy and
market structure, the solution requires us to regard the larger picture of Addis Ababa and its
rural watershed as a food basket and nutrition source as well as the water source necessary to
sanitize Addis Ababa.

Rationalizing the rural-urban food market:

Six large sub-cities of Addis Ababa share borders with rural woredas that have agro-forestry as
the main feature of their economy. Arada, Addis Ketema, Cherkos and Lideta combined are
roughly equal in space to Gullele, the smallest peripheral sub-city, while hosting 43% of the
population. Housing densities in the peripheral sub-cities are less and less as we approach
the peri-urban rural areas, while small farms and forests cover a large part of these areas
within the AA jurisdiction. The question is, how can farms be organized, coordinated and
intensified to dedicate their produce to their adjacent sub-city?

Farmland
Farmland

Farmland

Farmland

Farmland

Farmland

This will require coordination of all actors in the perishable food value-chain to be
geographically clustered as suppliers of each sub-city with wholesale processing and logistics
depots scattered along their shared borders. The rural and city administrators should be able

14
to develop infrastructure, including warehouses, packing houses and logistics, as well as the
licensing, regulatory and subsidy measures that ensure producer market access, consumer
protection and food security. Research institutions, Farmer Training Centers (FTCs) and
extension services will have to be mandated to design programs that enhance productivity,
diversification and coordination of producer cooperatives to ensure a steady and abundant
flow of food produce to each of the sub-cities during all seasons.

Livestock and other animal produce should be better integrated through peri-urban facilities
that enable aggregation, quality enhancement and control for food production and other
multiplier value chains. For instance, fattening, dipping and de-worming facilities and
abattoirs at the periphery of Addis Ababa can help to maximize the weight per unit of carcass
as well as quality of skins for tanneries. Aggregation at abattoirs also helps to add value
through meat packing to extract large volumes of bones and scraps to supply gelatin factories
as well as bone meal for fodder and fertilizer use. Aggregation of chicken meat packing can
also do the same, while extracting down for production of pillows, cold-weather clothing and
blankets. These are all scattered and lost through private slaughtering and unsanitary
disposal along with other solid waste. To accommodate customary and ceremonial
slaughtering needs of urban dwellers, the live animal corals and live chicken cages should be
setup along the urban river parks (proposed above). Restaurants and grocers should not be
allowed to slaughter their own live animals.

Fish farming initiatives have been launched by MOARD but have not taken off as widely as the
water resource potential of urban and rural rivers allow. These also require a broader
intervention to establish the fisheries value chain as an important source of protein and
micro-nutrients for the urban population. The expansion of the sector should take precaution
to ensure that fish cleaning and packing plants are kept outside of urban centers and
aggregated to process waste into useful agricultural inputs and energy.

In addition to primary food produce, agro-forestry based non-food products including timber,
firewood, charcoal, hay, basket and fiber crafts and weaving should be encouraged as
environmentally sustainable import substitutes through market protection and promotional
measures. For instance, regulation and prohibition of plastic bags could boost the market for
grocery baskets (zembil).

More horizontal and low-rise oriented renewal of Addis Ababa’s slums requires architectural
and civil engineering designs that maximize use of local inputs such as stone-masonry,
eucalyptus and pine timber, bamboo and fibers, clay roofing and daub and mottle risers, in
line with the rich building tradition and abundance of these materials. Many of these can
provide income opportunities to peri-urban farmers as well as the urban unemployed, while
rapidly expanding the supply of affordable housing. Many of these materials are often
available and can be processed on or very close to construction sites, thus reducing logistics
and energy costs.

15
These technologies also enhance the urban aesthetic while also freeing up scarce and
expensive concrete and iron to their best uses such as public and private water and sanitation
systems, rivers and streams improvements, pavements and bridges and high-occupancy
public structures such as theaters, libraries and administrative buildings.

Stimulating and coordinating the rural farming and non-farm economy to serve the food,
nutrition and housing needs is an important element in developing and enforcing land use
plans in Addis Ababa’s rural watershed. The rivers, streams and aquifers of Addis Ababa
depend on increased runoff that is relatively free from pollution and sediments. Hence,
terracing, tree planting, plowing contours, enclosures and green buffers along rivers and
streams are key to improved quality and volume of flow into Addis Ababa’s vast network of
rivers and streams.

What will become of Atikilt-teras of Arada and the rest?

Atikilt tera can serve as a showcase of the new urban renewal and development model
proposed above, benchmarking a holistic economy in which the agrarian sector is seen to
supply abundant food and nutrition as well as the resources for decent housing and
sanitation.

Indeed, the renewal of Atikilt-tera can be such that a number of farming cooperatives in the
periphery are allowed to supply as much of the building and furnishing materials to create an
aesthetically pleasing and environmentally sanitary food market place. At the same time, the
location can be designed to become a farmers market supplied by the same farmers’
cooperatives. Some of the spaces can also be made into a food-court where fresh produce is
also served as traditional and exotic fare from numerous small kitchens. Other food-related
craft and utensils can also be sold here as well.

A combination of rules and regulations that can be applied to all other Atikilt teras can be
introduced at this site. For instance, rules can be set such that all produce is cleaned and
crated before being transported to the city. The use of plastic bags can be prohibited while a
market for baskets and other reusable, repairable and bio-degradable baskets can be
encouraged. Waste disposal should be minimal and emptied trucks can be used to send
produce waste back to the farm along with exchanged crates. Some produce waste can be
marketed and sold to those who breed animals, including piggeries, sheep and goat sellers,
etc. Small scale processing of preserves can further minimize the volume of waste from
rejects, while sending some to food court kitchens will also do the same. Leafy vegetables
that are kept in water buckets also keep longer. Therefore, the stalls should be built with
water points and sinks to water leafy vegetables.

Barcode technologies can be used to identify each stall so that the coops can share weighing,
pricing and payment transactions through common checkout counters. For instance, the

16
seller simply lists the items and their weights on a standard invoice sheet and places a
barcode on the sheet. The cashier then scans the barcode that the buyer submits and rings
each item by weight indicated on the invoice slip. The buyer then returns to the stall and
hands a receipt slip to the seller upon which time the produce is already bagged. The seller
and the cashier settle at the end of the shift by summarizing the total sales of each stall. This
will speedup checkout and reduce the cost of transactions. Use of this technology means that
the architecture of Atikilt Tera has to accommodate common checkout counters and
electronic payment systems, ATM registers and safe-deposit boxes. Onsite banks can also
facilitate cash withdrawals by customers and deposits by vendors. Shared checkout counters
also serve to gather aggregate data on the economics of nutrition, while also facilitating tax,
rent and fees collection from vendors and cooperatives. It is possible that Atikilt tera can
even have consumer coop entitling members to discounts and other information privileges.

Traffic management:

One of the efficiency constraints of Atikilt tera lies in traffic congestion caused by the shortage
and poor design of parking spaces and that the streets are also thoroughfares to other major
destinations such Arada and Merkato. An enclosure around the shops to ensure exclusive
access on foot and the introduction of shopping carts will easily put an end to the
entanglement of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. The other problem is that deliveries are not
scheduled nor properly accommodated to separate them from shopping hours. With the
introduction of standardized crates and fixed delivery hours, deliveries can be made more
efficient and cleaner. For instance, delivery without crates is one of the reasons for the
wasted produce and decomposition that keeps Atikilt tera unsanitary, unsightly and foul
smelling.

Storage of wholesale produce and empty crates:

Atikilt tera has both wholesale and retail sellers mixed together. Regulated delivery hours will
require separate loading docks and storage of large volumes of fresh produce and empty
crates for exchange. These warehouses can be owned by the cooperatives and used
exclusively as wholesale outlets to the retailers. This separation of wholesale and retail is also
the answer to the congestion and sanitation problem of Atikilt tera, while ownership of trucks
and warehouses by cooperatives will add incentives to rural producer cooperatives by
eliminating middlemen to encourage compliance with coordinated production targets and
quality benchmarks.

As a food-coop, Atikilt tera can also be built up to accommodate a meat, poultry, meat and
dairy market to create a one-stop shop for all groceries instead of just vegetables. This will
require the construction of cold rooms and ice production facilities, as well as specially
designed butcheries and fish cleaning facilities with all necessary packing and waste-disposal
amenities.

17
Similarly, scheduling major cleanup of Atikilt tera off high traffic hours will reduce congestion
and allow easy disposal of minor (continuous) cleanup during shopping hours. The market
will require a crew of cleaners, porters and security that is hired by Atikilt tera to be paid
through cost-sharing arrangements among all vendors.

Quality of service, in addition to shared checkout counters, can be enhanced by employing

uniformed porters that will cart or carry customers’ purchases from the mall to their cars or
public transport. Additionally, the mall can employ security guards (or police) to protect
vendors and customers from theft, fire, ambulatory emergencies and disturbances, including
surveillance of the space through CCTV cameras to enable prevention and rapid response.

To create all the above improvements, the whole Atikilt tera land area has to be
architecturally redesigned and developed, while making sure that some of the solid historical
structures are retained and renovated. Current boundaries may have to be extended by
adding adjacent government owned land that is being used by food and non-food vendors.
Hence a basement plus three story food mall, as well as parking, docking and warehousing
facilities serving the Arada and Addis Ketema markets will be possible and replicable in all the
remaining Woredas (wards).

Lideta and Kirkos Woredas also being small and having no rural sections will require their own
mall. These two malls can draw produce from all surrounding rural producers of Addis Ababa,
while the other six Woredas can be exclusively served by their own (adjacent) rural producers.
This form of coordination through local cooperative structures will enable greater planning
and targeting of urban food security and nutrition status as well as productivity, employment
and income status of peri-urban farmers. (The critical response to the early leak of the new
master-plan of AA was mainly based on claims that peri-urban farmers were losing out land
and market access under the tremendous growth of the city)

The even allocation of fresh produce markets will also create greater logistics efficiencies and
market-access of farmer cooperatives through dedicated re-distribution routs to supply
restaurants, neighborhood groceries and institutional kitchens throughout Addis Ababa,
generally through nightly placement, scheduling and prepping of orders. Phyto-sanitary and
regulatory efficiencies and effectiveness in health departments, and tax and licensing agencies
will be greatly enhanced by creating fewer and better organized wholesale outlets. Upstream
regulation will indirectly impact the broader downstream behavior and product of value
adders such as restaurants, small groceries and street vendors.

Finally, new value adders in the food sector will have greater potential to produce fresh
processed foods such as fruit preserves, breakfast cereals, sausages, cheeses, pastas, etc. ,
through emerging SMEs and farm-based operations that can substitute imports where scarce
hard-currency resources are wasted under the shortened value chains that prevail in today’s
agricultural markets.

18
19
PROJECT COMPONENTS

Research Phase
River morphology, watershed analysis and topography

Riverine community and housing and living standards survey; land ownership, legality and
land use survey;

Water quality assessment and sources of pollution

Riverine land hydro/geology, soil analysis and survey of flora and fauna and other natural
resources to be exploited for public works and housing construction

Sewer, waste, pollution and rain drainage courses and inlet points from the city, industries
and farmlands into rivers and streams

Survey of built environment along rivers and streams, including roads, electricity lines,
communication cables, water mains, sewer lines, solid-waste disposal sites and market places

GIS compilation of all of the above

Design Phase
Sewer, pollution and waste control options for all courses and inlets

Land-use planning, housing construction, temporary housing and resettlement schemes for all
reverine communities, including determination of carrying capacity of available space
(including domestic animals and livestock)

Design of land grading, embankment, landscaping, pathways and routs, and allocation of
multipurpose public and business sites

Architectural and civil engineering designs for housing development based on maximizing
local input and labor intensity

Architecture of business, institutional and service buildings, markets, livestock enclosures,

sheds and sports, recreation and cultural facilities and venues

Infrastructure for transport and parking, electricity, water, sanitation and solid waste disposal,
communications, fire-service, etc.

Socio-economic, regulatory and management programming

Human resource recruitment and development plan for all project components, including
institution-building for municipal park service and maintenance of subdivisions

Public education, promotional and mobilization scheme

20
Procurement, warehousing and overall security and insurance scheme against corruption,
theft and disaster of construction materials and equipment

Legislative and regulatory framework necessary for development of the project, particularly
with regard to environment and rights, privileges and obligations within cooperative property
and public assets

Programme design for Addis Ababa rural watershed management and food production goals
to ward off inflation

Appraisal of urban and rural fisheries development potential

Cooperation with Oromiya Regional State on coordination and joint management of projects

Detailed sequencing and coordination plan for project implementation

Financial and cost-recovery plan of the project

Economic policy for project development and post completion sustainability (modeling and
forecast)

Implementation Phase
Jurisdictional organization at Sub-city, Kebele and PA levels

Stakeholder mapping, registration of eligible workers, housing cooperative members and SME
candidates in each sub-city and kebele

Prevention of opportunistic migration from within and outside Addis Ababa

Recruitment and training of professional, skilled and casual labor to begin temporary housing
works (a container or other low-cost prefab) to shelter resident laborers, including food,
health, sanitation and other essential services for the workforce

Financing of cooperative housing and start of construction

Financing of environmental works and start of construction

21
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