Perspectives on the Changes in Addis Ababa

creatives can and have felt the city changing

A few months ago, I had an idea for an article slightly bigger than this blog. It was as if I’d just woken up from a long sleep when it occurred to me, in a small but instantaneous way, that I no longer felt a sense of home in the city where I was born and raised. I woke up one weekday morning and could not think of a place to go to feel some comfort or a sense of inspiration.

It used to be so that that before “the recent changes in Addis Ababa”, we had a relationship with this city. There were things happening and there was a sort of cohesion to the way we lived, something to look forward to everyday, new friendships to be made, new types of artistry to discover and learn about. Life in Addis Ababa was Davy Jones’ Flying Dutchman and we, the sailors, attached to the ship, inevitably becoming part of the greater vessel.

It wouldn't be too far fetched to say some social fabric has been destroyed since, leaving those of us who came into adulthood watching culture blossom in small crevices in the city unsure of where to go to feel at home again. Despite all the “progress”, it felt like the beacon that fueled our collective philosophy, our art, and our budding legacy had been diminished.

When I couldn’t find myself being moved into action, I asked a few friends and acquaintances if I could pick their brains to figure out where they were going in Addis to feel inspired. I was going to write a personal commentary from my perspective. But I don’t think I could possibly contain the real spirit of their answers if I tried to paraphrase these words to you. So I decided to share their responses with you, the contexts unedited, only rearranged for grammar. To maintain their comfort, I will keep all of the messengers anonymous.

[Inspiration] I guess sometimes [my work] is inspired by the people in Addis. The life they have and their understanding of it.
[Culture] Jazz Village and The Lab represent two different realms of the city to me and visually, Studio 11.
[Recent changes] made me realize that what makes the city and has the power to inspire it’s history mostly (buildings, areas and the natives, names of areas, traditions in place to keep that society thriving) is not it’s development. So I mean, the city has become more beautiful but beauty isn’t as rich as authenticity when it comes to providing perspective, especially as a creative. So it feels like a place that’s been scrapped of most of its reality and been stamped with artificial beauty.

- Musician , Male

Before the changes, the city felt livedin, full of memories and history and it had its own identity separate from the tribal politics of today.
I identify as an Addis Abebe more than anything else (even Ethiopian). That’s where inspiration used to come from, (because I felt like I knew my city). But not anymore.
I don’t really get inspiration from the city anymore or from any other city either. I’m more inspired by conversations with people, or books, or music and things like that.

- Filmmaker , Male

Sometimes I do [find Addis inspiring]. Especially the Addis I grew up in. There had been people I looked up to that went to the university and growing up, all I aspired to do was go to Addis Ababa University. I think that inspiration itself emanated from having the exposure too.
The culture of the city is not only it’s own. It’s an amalgamation of different cultures too. It has its own vibrance. “ከተሜነት”. But this has to be a city where you hear both the Ethiopian and the Maltese national anthem on the same stage.
The art that made me feel good happens maybe when I do gallery visits. We have very few for such a big, continental capital. There have been a re-showcasings of works done before 50 years by Alle School of Fine Arts. That was beautiful. There are artists that still use their voices to narrate our everyday lives. I love watching [plays at the] theaters too and I feel hopeful for upcoming artists. It is sad that we have no more than three theaters yet we graduate theatrical arts majors every year.
I see Addis Ababa’s culture as semi-urban. So I would say it is in the everyday life, it is in the eyes of the sugarcane seller that feels remorse for the school kid who gives him money, with little hands pleading for a little more while he [the sugarcane seller] too may later go to tej bet to give that same money to fill the honeywine to the tip of the neck. It is in chanting Menelik on Adwa Day at Arada Roundabout. It is giving money to your enqutatash girls and hoyahoye boys instead of home baked goods or even on top of it. It is in the card games in hazen bet dinkuans, it is in the coming of age boys standing at the sefer streets. It is in the elaborate wedding eskistas and the limousines. It is in a lot of elements.
I have been to different cities in the country. The mind-set of the people of ArbaMinch, I found it to be very helpful towards strangers and for them to have a very strong sense of belonging requires for some event like the Walias playing or being frustrated over the AU road closures.
I love semi urban cities and always imagined myself retiring to Qobo, hanging out at it’s lively Saturday market — cities like that take their breath from the markets that take place on either Saturdays or Tuesdays.
I have family in Nazret and spending my childhood summers there, I feel like I belong there too but Addis has something that ties you to it beyond being born here.
I kind of felt out of place when Arat Kilo was being torn down — some of the buildings I grew up in and frequented in adulthood. So I changed the routes I was taking to work for about three months and even when going to church. I wouldn’t be looking into much of what was being built. Then after some months, my neighbour and friend asked me to take a walk and I didn’t even know there was a fountain at my own sefer. I had to take photos! That friend of mine left our sefer two months following that walk because their house was below the fountain included in the corridor development plan. I find the new sefer she is at very far and still haven’t visited her.
I saw Koye Feche recently, and was amazed at how many people have moved to that area in the past four or five months. It is a long commute, I think. I like the pavements and the walks I take but then again it is daunting sometimes to have people I lived together with and services I depended on, disappear.

- Art Lover , Female

I don’t know if Addis is inspiring to be honest. I just am there and because I have to create, I will. It’s not because it is inspiring to me that I make things about the city. It’s because I have ownership of the city and it’s mine and I was born here and for some reason, I am here still and that’s why I keep creating. Not because it’s necessarily inspiring. But because it’s my own and it’s home. I think what motivates me is that it’s mine and I’m from here.
I used to be moved by Addis growing up because it was a very social place. People had a lot of respect for one another. There was a lot of social currency and Addis was such a humorous place. People had jokes, you know, at every corner, people were cracking jokes. If you mess up, or if you do anything, people just scold you. I found that very comforting. For me, Addis is the nostalgia of this playful humor at every step where you’re a kid. When you grew up, the older people just always scolding young people, being lighthearted, that’s how I remember it. That’s the thing I love about Addis — well, what I used to love about Addis.
And then everybody started taking shit too seriously.
Other cities are different from Addis, like, Addis is home. If I had to explain Addis as someone who hadn’t been there, I would say it’s from the 70s. Like the people are from the 70s but the city is in the 2000s, you know? The architecture and the city don’t match, especially now how the city is being set up and the way people dress, the way people move, how people interact with each other, it’s very backwards and the city is being set up and the way people dress, the way people move, how people interact with each other, it’s very backwards and the city looks modern so it’s very jarring. In that way, there’s no city like that that I’ve been to, ever.
Other cities match their people. They look like their people. The city and the people are in alignment so in that way, I think Addis is very different. I feel moved by other cities for different reasons, you know. It’s beautiful, or the people are stoic, the people are warm or the infrastructure is very different. I don’t know. It’s very different when you move but Addis is very unique in the sense that there’s nothing like it. It would say it’s a really weird place where the city looks modern but the people are not.
[About Culture] The city has culture? I don’t know. It’s tough. The city’s culture is hustle. That’s how I would explain the city’s culture. Everybody’s hustling, everybody’s here to work, everybody’s here to run around. It’s busy. It’s overwhelming, it’s loud, it’s chaotic and it’s very on-the-go, very rushed. Definitely the opposite of slow living.
I think the best way to experience Addis is to sit by a listro and get your shoe cleaned. And you just look at the people. That’s the best way to experience Addis. So you can get the feel of the city. You can go to the posh places, you know, go see art, go to the curated spaces like nice cafes but that’s not really where the heart of the city is. If you just grab a chair at one of the shoe shine kids, that you just listen to their conversations and look at the people when somebody’s trying to park and he’s being yelled at and someone’s trying to cross and she’s being catcalled, like that’s the city’s culture for me right now. That’s how I imagine it.
The recent changes in the city have made me feel very, very disconnected. I feel like an alien in the city. Like I don’t recognize the people that are in the city, sadly. When I grew up, people felt familiar, the places felt familiar, everybody looked like my uncles, my aunties, there was a lot of trust, you know?
Now it feels like it’s a lot of strangers and it sounds bad to say but I feel super disconnected with the city. Everybody’s hustling, everybody’s focused on what you can do for them and how you can do something for them. Or they’re afraid of you. They think you’re gonna take something from them. The trust is not there anymore. The trust I grew up seeing is not there anymore so I feel severely disconnected from the city.
But you know with the corridor project and in some of the places that it’s been developing, it seems very hopeful because people are outside again, they’re out late. You don’t see people out after 9pm, right? Ahun I feel like they’re outside, they’re walking so it feels a little bit more lively.
In terms of who lives in Addis, I can not mop it anymore because you know, it’s not the same people that lived there when I was growing up. Five years ago and now, it’s very different people. It’s because of the war. People have migrated to the city and there’s a lot of foreigners. There’s a lot of “non-city people” in the city.
Addis is still my ride or die. Still love it. I still vibe with it. It’s definately not a city for the faint hearted. It’s so rough out here. Definitely hard, but if you want your character to develop and for your character to be tested, it will make you a better human being. A stressed one, a strained one but definitely changed for the better because you know, you build discipline and character and you learn to work smart. And it’s home.
It’s a mess but it’s home.

-Photographer and Creative Entrepreneur , Female

[Inspiration] I don’t know if it was any physical place. Mostly, the thing that inspired me was seeing other people make art/express themselves. I still enjoy those things. I don’t know if I can say I am inspired by them anymore though. So I guess spaces where people made art collaboratively. Fendika before it got crowded as hell. Art galleries, open mics…
The contradictions of this city feels more glaring to me now. Especially after the war. And a lot of things feel surface level, if that makes sense. The city feels more superficial, in a way. And things feel less like they matter.
Not in the same way but it was inspiring to see other people making other types of art when I was in the UK. But as for where I go to feel that connection in Addis, I can’t say.
I guess I go to the same old places. I must be seeking inspiration at some level but it still doesn’t hit the same.
I have mixed feelings about the recent changes. I like walkability and big pedestrian roads, but all the shops and organically created communities are being destroyed and it feels like the city is turning into this big shiny empty thing. It feels constructed and inorganic to me .
I doubt pretty street lights would ever inspire me. Maybe if there’s a shift is people’s art, psyche, etc… who’s to say.

-Doctor and Writer , Male

It’s about the social contract. It feels broken. I was listening to some cassette tapes from the 90s earlier today and I was amazed at the quality and depth of feeling the artists incorporated into their music. Elias Melka was a genius. There was a lot of intentionality in the art that was being created ten, twenty years ago. Now, the social contract has been eroded.
Addis Ababa wasn’t accidental. Historically, it was created to be the place where anyone from any corner of the country could come, trade, and get a fair chance at success. The culture that some of the greatest artists created in Addis Ababa left physical marks in Piassa, in Kasanchis, Sidist Kilo… and now when all of that goes away, the new generation of creatives doesn’t know where to begin, doesn’t know where to get inspired, so they turn to the west. As a result, we get a loss of identity. We get imitative, unoriginal art that tastes like nothing.

-Musician , Male

I go Instagram to get inspired. Do you mean in the city? Like a space? I go to Atmosphere. Before, it was just an accumulation of a lot of people doing a lot of different things. Even as a bystander, you’d see people skating, making TikTok videos, I felt like I was in the midst of creativity when it was happening.
I’m a city girl. I like the city but it feels dull now. I don’t know what it is but people are not as happy as they used to be. I feel like everybody’s stressed about work, about life, about having to pay for stuff that the city’s become more… dull? Dead? I don’t know. You know, art is a luxury. I know it shouldn’t be, I know it’s a necessity but now it feels like creativity is a luxury. Events are a luxury. You don’t get to go to places and see things and get excited. It’s more about hustle now. Hustle, make money, survive. That shows in the city.
[Inspiration] I honestly don’t know. I get inspired when I hang out with my friends. We’re always coming up with projects and maybe people are doing that with their own groups. We don’t go to any particular place. We could be anywhere and we would talk for hours.
I get my creativity from people, I’m not gonna lie. I like a big discussion, a group of friends gathering at one place, wherever that may be.
Because I’m in the industry, I can talk about LinkUp, I can talk about the things Meedo Records is doing but I think I have a fear that that circle is very small. That the majority of Addis Ababa is not like us. Maybe I’m wrong but I think the creatives in Addis Ababa are just one big group — a couple hundred people, if that.
In Addis, there are certain events that people gather at but to be honest with you, I wouldn’t know what to tell a person that wanted to visit Addis Ababa. There’s nothing significant about Addis. I believe that events are the space where culture grows, I think events are where people come to experience different things and meet each other. I think that the gathering of people is what brings culture but that has become harder to do.
There’s no new culture being introduced. People wanna talk about how we’re westernizing ourselves but it’s because there’s something there that is attractive to us; there’s freedom in speech, freedom in expression, there’s freedom of self that you don’t have here.
The people who are supposed to be working on this either don’t care or have other priorities. People are too busy trying to survive to think about culture and art and music. There’s just so many things working against you. I just think people are tired.

- Event Organizer , Female

I guess in the end, I’m surprised that I am surprised. I tried to look at our current circumstances from a grander scale and in the way time and evolution works, change is inevitable. Even for a city like Addis. What makes this matter more to us beyond the personal losses, is that perhaps we don’t feel included in the change. The city morphed quickly, all around us and all the things that made it feel like home, are no longer there.

I’d like to think that beautiful things can be born out of less than ideal circumstances. I would have expected for there to be more to be said about the changes and more people saying them but I realize everyone is scared or tired. And I am also scared and tired. And I put this article together because I felt helpless and I struggled to muster any real fight against this wave of change. It feels like someone was force feeding me cake when I didn’t want any. And I am so deeply sorry, Addis, that I do not and did not have any fight or resistance in me.

Where do we go from here?

love,
Qal

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