Construction has begun in the town of Bishoftu on what Ethiopia says will be Africa\u2019s biggest airport and the continent’s largest aviation infrastructure project.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed laid a ceremonial plaque on Saturday marking the start of work at the site located 45 kilometres south-east of the capital, Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
When it reaches its full capacity in 2030, the travel hub will be able to handle some 110 million passengers a year.<\/p>\n
At an expected cost of $12.5 billion dollars, the airport will feature four runways and have parking facilities for up to 270 aircraft.<\/p>\n
That is more than four times the capacity of Ethiopia\u2019s current main airport, Bole, which can handle up to 25 million passengers annually.<\/p>\n
It is, however, expected to reach saturation within three years.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Abiy said this “multi-airport strategy\u201d aims to future-proof Ethiopia’s role as Africa’s leading air transport gateway.<\/p>\n
He added that it will strengthen Ethiopian Airlines’ global competitiveness, enhance African connectivity, and expand trade and tourism corridors.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia hopes to attract foreign tourism despite the ongoing armed conflict in its two most populous regions – Amhara and Oromia – with Bishoftu located in the latter.<\/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
Funding sources for the Bishoftu hub includes the national carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, international financiers, and the African Development Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Construction has begun in the town of Bishoftu on what Ethiopia says will be Africa\u2019s biggest airport and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[65],"class_list":{"0":"post-21468","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\/21468","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=21468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}