Reuters Videos <\/p>\n
Tue, January 13, 2026 at 2:21 AM EST <\/p>\n
STORY: Ethiopian Airlines on Saturday officially started a $12.5 billion construction project for what officials say will be Africa’s biggest airport once finished in 2030. It will be located in Bishoftu, a town about 28 miles southeast of the capital, Addis Ababa.The airport will have space for 270 planes and handle up to 110 million passengers per year.That’s more than four times the capacity of Ethiopia’s current main airport, which will run out of capacity in 2\u20133 years.The airline told reporters it would fund 30% of the project, and lenders would finance the rest.Abraham Tesfaye is the Infrastructure Development & Planning Director for Ethiopian Airlines:”Various financiers from Middle East, China, Europe, and the U.S. have been involved. So, we will put all these as a pool and access it from there. What I want to emphasize on this is that Ethiopian Airlines invested $610 million on this initial construction. The airline will avail this from its coffers within one year.” Other creditors include the African Development Bank, which in August pledged a $500 million loan and lead efforts to raise $8.7 billion.While the government has pledged resettlement support for communities displaced by the new hub, some residents remain worried: “With the current high cost of living the youth is the one in trouble. They have given our parents houses but the youth got nothing. Renting a house is very expensive. Finding a job is also difficult because some are educated and some are not, so the future of the youth is at stake.” Ethiopian Airlines is Africa’s biggest carrier.It has added routes and grown revenue over recent years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reuters Videos Tue, January 13, 2026 at 2:21 AM EST STORY: Ethiopian Airlines on Saturday officially started a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,12693,12692,12694,6048],"class_list":{"0":"post-20360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-african-development-bank","10":"tag-biggest-airport","11":"tag-construction-project","12":"tag-ethiopian-airlines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}