Construction has commenced in the town of Bishoftu on what Ethiopia claims will be Africa\u2019s largest airport and the continent’s most extensive aviation infrastructure project. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed laid a ceremonial plaque on Saturday to mark the beginning of work at the site, situated 45 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
Financing<\/p>\n
The project was expected to cost $10 billion but was later revised to $12.5 billion due to inflation and other modifications.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian Airlines will sponsor 30 percent of the construction, while the remaining 70 percent will be funded by other international institutions.<\/p>\n
The Africa Development Bank has already issued a $500 million loan and is leading efforts to raise $8.7 billion.<\/p>\n
Lenders from the Middle East, China, Europe and the United States have shown interest in financing the mega project.<\/p>\n
Capacity<\/p>\n
The new airport is expected to accommodate 270 planes at any given time, with a capacity of 110 million passengers per year.<\/p>\n
The state-owned airport will have four runways and will be the largest aviation infrastructure in Africa.<\/p>\n
The new airport will handle 60 million passengers annually in the initial phase. Later, the capacity will increase to up to 110 million passengers annually.<\/p>\n
The project includes a multi-lane motorway to link the new facility to the capital and a 38-kilometre high-speed railway, which the premier says will reach speeds of up to 200 kph.<\/p>\n
Why Bishoftu and not Bole?<\/p>\n
Bole International Airport is expected to reach saturation within three years.<\/p>\n
Bishoftu has four times the capacity of Ethiopia’s current main airport, Bole, which can handle up to 25 million passengers annually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Construction has commenced in the town of Bishoftu on what Ethiopia claims will be Africa\u2019s largest airport and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[65],"class_list":{"0":"post-20933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ethiopia","8":"tag-ethiopia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20933","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=20933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}