The Addis Abeba City Roads Authority (AACRA) has short listed 15 foreign companies engaged in road construction projects in various parts of the country for the award of the huge Africa Avenue (Bole Road) upgrading project.

ACCRA has already requested the companies to express interest, and five of them have already responded. The Japanese KAJIMA Corporation and the Chinese China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) International are among those who have shown interest to undertake the project.

KAJIMA is constructing the Gohatsion-Dejen 50Km road, which includes the first ever extradosed bridge in Ethiopia on Abay River. CRBC Addis a local subsidiary whose parent company is in China, constructed the city's Ring Road and one side of the Megenagna-Ayat Village road. It is also constructing the Mesqel Square-Kality and Arat Kilo-Megenagna roads. CRBC Addis, on the other hand, is constructing the Mille-Chifra, Serdo-Afdera and Dansha-Weldiya roads.

AACRA will, thus, present the expressions of interest by these companies to its board, chaired by the City's Mayor, Kuma Demeksa, in the next few weeks. The companies will then enter into auction for financial and technical aspects.

"We have chosen construction companies active in Ethiopia because they have already mobilized construction materials," Fekade Haile (Eng.), general manager of AACRA, told Fortune. "They also know the system and we believe they can handle the project better."

This news is hardly something local contractors would like to hear. Eney Construction Plc, for example, is a local firm that would have wanted to handle the project, which was initially awarded to it. Three months down the line, however, the Bole road project was taken away.

Eney had won the tender AACRA had floated for the project on July 7, 2008, after outbidding CRBC Addis.

The 4.3Km wide face lift planned along Africa Avenue would stretch from Mesqel Square to the Ring Road bridge near Bole International Airport. A pass over has also been designed for the section of the road in the Olympia area.

It would involve a complicated task of digging tunnels and levelling the road all the way from the airport to the main square of the town. Designed by Eskinder Zewdie (Eng.), the road would be expanded to a 56m width from the current 40m, while the island would be narrowed down to a concrete blockade separating the two lanes on each side.

The road would have three bypass bridges - the one in Olympia, one in Wello Sefer and another in front of Worbek Building, the latter incorporating a 300m long bridge. Near each bypass, there would be side roads on each side as well.

After it had awarded this project to Eney, AACRA's management later felt uncomfortable with its own decision. The main explanations given for this discomfort were that Bole Road has the highest traffic in the city, and that it is the international gateway to the capital, as well as to the rest of the country from Bole International Airport.

The management, thus, shared its concerns with the Board, which decided to snatch the project away from Eney.

In fact, not only Eney was affected by the Board's deliberations. Midroc Construction also lost the project for the construction of the remaining side of the Megenagna-Ayat Village road following the Board's decision at the same meeting held on October 20, 2008.

Though the upgrading of Bole Road has been listed as one of the 132 projects AACRA has to undertake in the current fiscal year, there has been no actual progress so far.