Coming from Negele Arsi in Ethiopia, I have settled in Manchester but return every year to our capital city of Addis Ababa and from there to my home town. In recent years, I have been taken aback by the scale and pace of transformation of the capital. As a gift to my home country, I wanted to bring together some independent academics and journalists who know about urban renaissance to visit and to write a book of our impressions. I led a group in late 2025 and went again in early 2026.
We called the book The Remaking of Addis Ababa. It was printed beautifully by the Holywell Press in Oxford and then we launched it on 15th May 2026 in the Adwa Memorial Museum with an audience of 2,500, presenting 1,000 copies to Mayor of Addis Ababa. There was huge publicity in Ethiopia.
The city authorities, the media and the public appreciated my initiative and they especially welcomed the idea of asking independent experts in the regeneration of communities to assess their progress. One of my co-editors is Professor Simon Lee who has helped to transform the landscapes of universities and cities, and who has visited Ethiopia in each of the last three decades.
Our book is currently in English but there are plans for it to translated into some or all of the five official languages of Ethiopia, including my first language, Afaan Oromo, and to produce new editions as developments continue. Perhaps one day there will be an Oromo Review of Books.
