Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Tamrat G. Giorgis
10 July 2007
The United States (US) government is soon to erect perhaps its largest single structure in Africa, in the compound of its Embassy in Addis Abeba, which is also one of the three largest embassies it has on the continent. When the construction is completed in three years, the four-storey building is projected to consume a total investment of 140 million dollars.
This investment will be one of two such projects in the Horn of Africa; the US government also plans to build a brand new Embassy in Djibouti City, projected to cost 100 million dollars.
Clearing works inside the Embassy compound in Addis Abeba has already begun, although the construction contract is due to be awarded to an American firm in October 2007, according to senior diplomatic sources. The firm to be awarded the project is, however, expected to sub-contract much of the local component to local construction firms, and anticipated to offer job opportunities to over a 1,000 people, according to these sources.
"More than the employment opportunities, we at the Embassy are very excited for the technology transfer this project will bring to local companies," Donald Yamamoto, US ambassador to Ethiopia, told Fortune.
The four-storey building, depicting a ship, will be erected right in front of his residence, on the vast green area. It will serve as offices to the various bureaus the Embassy has inside the compound.
The US Embassy in Addis Abeba was moved from its previous location in Mercato, a.k.a. American Gibe, to its current location in 1945. The white building that serves as the ambassadors' residence, recently renamed after President Theodore Roosevelt, was first built in 1920 by the Japanese, who used it as their first legation before they were expelled from the country for their support of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia.
It was during President Roosevelt's reign in the White House that the US started a diplomatic relationship with Ethiopia. Mr. Robert P. Skinner, the US's consul-general in Marseilles, France, visited Emperor Menelik's court in Addis Abeba in December 1903.
The Americans, however, took the Embassy compound and its buildings, which also incorporate two tukkals, after promising Emperor Haile Sellasie that the residence and the tukkals would always be preserved.
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