Ethiopia: Big demand for housing, hotels

Anyone who has visited Addis Ababa recently will have noticed the city is like a big construction site. Ethiopia’s capital is undergoing a major construction boom with halfway-done high-rise buildings on every corner. A newly constructed metro line cuts through the city, and is one of many infrastructure projects being rolled out by the government. Driving outside Addis Ababa new residential buildings are coming up to house the burgeoning population.

“There are about four million people in Addis Ababa so there is big demand for decent housing as people’s incomes increase,” says Samuel Getu, director at Get-As International. Dugda Construction is one of its sister companies.

There is also a rising demand for commercial and retail real estate, says Getu, pointing to the growth of the private sector and entry of foreign companies.

Shortage of rooms

In June the group will open the 140-room Ramada Addis Hotel – a part of the Wyndham Hotel Group – which will become Ethiopia’s fourth internationally branded hotel. Sheraton, Hilton and Radisson Blu are the only big chains currently open in the city. And although it is sometimes described as the “diplomatic capital of Africa”, Getu says Addis Ababa faces a severe shortage of hotel rooms, often exposed when delegates jet in for international conferences and events.

“We have just about 8,000 hotel rooms which is very little compared to Moscow in Russia where there is one hotel alone with 5,000 rooms or with Dubai where the city has more than 100,000 rooms,” he explains. “We are also putting up a tourist resort outside Addis. Our aim is to open more hotels and have a total of 1,000 rooms within our group.”

Several other international hotel brands are also planning to open in Addis Ababa in the near future.

Read more at: How We Made it in Africa