Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Hilina Aelmu
26 May 2009
Felekech is one of the residents of Kebelle 07/14 waiting on the district office's inevitably request to vacate the house that she has lived in for 36 years to make room for development.
For a family as destitute as Felekech Tessema, 48, a resident in Lideta District, Kebelle 07/14, her small muddy house was welcoming to strangers. Located on a dusty, gravel road a few metres off Chad Street, in front of Lideta Cathedral, her six square metres home, with a tiny bedroom annexed to it, is crammed.
Made of wood, with cracks in between allowing a penetrating light, the door reveals the passing of age from when the house was first built, along with the two other houses next to it.
Felekech has lived in this house, first rented from a landlord 36 years ago - a year before the Ethiopian student-steered revolution led to the nationalization of extra houses and urban land a few years later.
The monthly rental fee of seven Birr has remained the same ever since it was reduced by half when the newly formed kebelles took over the administration of houses rented out by individual landlords for less than 100 Br.
Nevertheless, it is still home to nine her family members, including her husband who retired from the army hospital, where he had served as a guard. Felekech's entire family used to depend on a monthly income of 300 Br, where she contributed to her husband's 200 Br retirement income by baking bread for sale. She is no longer in business, for she cannot afford the increase in the retail price of wheat.
The destitution is evident even to an irregular visitor; it is only dispelled by the warm reception from Felekech. Even though she has a few chairs lined up behind the wall on the side in front of the door, she is humbly to offers as a seat the boxes covered with fabrics but that also serve as beds to some of her seven children, all but one still in school. Others share the double-deck bed that has a dominating presence in the "living" room.
Felekech's house is only one the many houses in this kebelle. Of the 1,070 homes located in the area, the majority of them are squatter settlements the city authorities would like to demolish and replace with the skyscraper condo apartments designed to accommodate people of the middle income group.
All of this is going to change soon when the Lideta District Office blows the whistle for the relocation of the dwellers, to free 260,000Sqm of plot in the area for the implementation of the first of the five local development plans (LDPs) across the city.
The Addis Abeba City Administration is keen to offer a surgical facelift to districts, including Addis Ketema, Kirkos and Bole. The facelift is what a senior administration official described as "building a city within a city." Although there are different models of local development plans in urban management, the administration of Kuma Demeksa has chosen the approach where the city develops housing and invites private developers to get onboard by building other facilities, such as hospitals, schools and modern markets. Lideta District is a pilot project of what is to come.
The city administration is prepared to put a total of 236 million Br towards developing Felekech's neighbourhood; it will finance the construction of 2,044 units of condos designed to accommodate middle class families. Almost all the blocs, designed by a private architectural firm, TELDA Consult Plc, will have four storey housing projected to cost 150 million Br. The administration plans to raise 20 million Br from leasing shops to businesses; however, the big portion, 800 million Br, is hoped to come from the lease of 85,000Sqm of plots to private developers, according to senior administration officials.
But city officials need to do a lot of work before they pursue their desire. Unlike their predecessors, this time around, they want to make the relocation of the local communities as accommodative as possible.
"If there was any project where the government negotiated with residents conscientiously, this is the one," a senior administration official told Fortune.
City officials claim they have offered several options to residents that will be relocated from the area: they could be moved into kebelle owned houses in other neighbourhoods; they could get housing in one of the low cost condominium houses built by the city; or they could stay in temporary shelters up until the middle income group condos are built should they be able to afford to buy flats in them.
This message has been conveyed to residents through a series of township meetings officials have conducted over the past three weeks, after the local development plan was officially launched on May 6, 2009. More than 47pc of the residents in the kebelle have made a choice to be sheltered and come back to the two bedrooms condominium flats to be built by paying 25pc of the down payment, officials at the Lideta District told Fortune.
Felekech will not be one of these. Although she has attended two of such meetings held inside her kebelle, she is not aware of the options the city claims to have offered these residents. She is rather deeply concerned with the rumours that her family and many others in the area will be relocated to far away places, perhaps to the outskirts of the city.
"We don't know where they are going to take us," Felekech told Fortune.
She wants to resume her small business of selling bread; sadly, she cannot help but worry that being away from the people she has lived with for more than three decades would be bad for her family. It is not that she abhors seeing the area transform and develop.
"But we would like to be around so that my children could get some work during the construction phase," she told Fortune.
The city administration is prepared to put a total of 236 million Br into developing Felekech's neighbourhood; it will finance the construction of 2,044 units of condos designed to accommodate middle class families. Almost all the blocs, designed by a private architectural firm, TELDA Consult Plc, will have four and five storey housing projected to cost 150 million Br. The administration plans to raise 800 million Br from the lease of 85,000Sqm plots to private developers, according to senior administration officials.
"I like the development of the area, of course," Felekech said.
The wish to see Lideta transformed is what Ayelech Tsehayu shares with Felekech. However, she has a more revealing story to tell. The house she owns was built by her grandfather on a plot granted to him by Emperor Menelik for his service, Ayelech recalled. Now in her late 70s, she never lived anywhere but in this neighbourhood.
She supports herself and her grandchild, whose parents died seven years ago, with the 500 Br she collects from renting a room out as a shop, alongside the main road. Hers is one of the 270 privately owned houses in the area that will be cleared out to give way to the new condos. These families too will be given the choice to develop their lot according to the city's plan should they have the ability, or be granted replacement plots elsewhere with compensations to their demolished homes.
"They will be given plots in one of the districts, such as Nefas Silk-Lafto, Akaki-Kality, Bole or Kolfe-Keranio," Samuel Tesfaye, owner of the City Government's Land Development and Relocation Core Process, told Fortune. "We will leave the choices up to the dwellers."
If there is one more thing Ayelech shares with Felekech, it is her inadequate information about the choices the city wants her to make. She knows that her house will be demolished, but not what will happen to her.
"I'm waiting for what is going to happen," Ayelech said. "What am I going to do with the money the government gives me? Am I going to buy food for my grandson? Am I going to pay for his school or build another house?"
With little support, except from her maid, Ayelech has been unable to move around for the past seven years. Short and stocky, she often leans on her side but remains seated on her bed. Her stick always nearby, and a pack of medication put alongside a bottle of Highland Water reminds her visitors of the fragility of her health. If it was not for her grandson, she would be determined to die inside a house she has cherished throughout her life and that was built by her grandfather.
But the neighbourhood is far from being a quiet residential quarter. It is intensely busy with non-stop traffic, and hyper active almost round the clock; there are cafés, restaurants, hotels, boutiques, jewellery stores and shops where fresh fruits and vegetables are available. Working in one of these small shops is Jilalo Shemsu, 24; he is a kiosk keeper in a business owned by his family.
This kiosk, earning Jilalo's family a daily revenue of 300 Br, is one of the businesses comprising 13pc of the houses to be relocated. Jilalo too appears to know little about the fate of these businesses, although he heard rumours that his kiosk would not last for too long. Should the city authorities encourage owners of these businesses to form associations in order to buy shops to be built on a 3,000Sqm plot, which the authorities hope will raise 20 million Br, Jilalo has not been informed.
"I've heard that they are going to demolish this area," he told Fortune. "But, I don't know what I'm going to do."
City officials, however, say owners of close to 300 of the small businesses have already formed an association.
Authorities in the city administration see the success of this project as a launching pad to move into other areas. Provided that this area is developed as planned, with residents like Felekech and Ayelech having their concerns addressed, they will move into developing a 25hct plot on Tesema Aba Kemaw Street, an area otherwise known as Goma Kuteba, and another 25hct behind Hotel D'afric, in the same district.
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