A Hotel, a Dynasty, and the Long Afterlife of Ethiopian Property
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By Endex, Ethiopian Tribune editor in chief
In the Mexico district of central Addis Ababa, where concrete modernity jostles uneasily with imperial memory, the sale of the Wabi Shebelle Hotel marks more than a routine commercial transaction. Completed in 1960 and now acquired by Sheikh Mohammed Ali Al-Amoudi, the hotel’s transfer of ownership closes a long, unresolved chapter in Ethiopia’s uneasy relationship with private property, monarchy, and the state.
Wabi Shebelle was built at the height of Emperor Haile Selassie I’s modernising ambitions. The hotel was not merely another hospitality venture; it was conceived as a source of income for the children of Prince Mekonnen, the Emperor’s son who died tragically in a car accident. In that sense, the building was both personal and political, a blend of dynastic responsibility and developmental optimism. At the time, Addis Ababa was positioning itself as Africa’s diplomatic capital, and hotels were instruments of national projection as much as commercial assets.
The overthrow of the monarchy in 1974 severed that lineage abruptly. Under the Derg military regime, Wabi Shebelle, like much private property associated with the imperial family was nationalised. Ownership became ideological rather than legal, and value was subordinated to revolutionary symbolism. What had once been a private income-generating asset was absorbed into a command economy that neither invested in nor preserved it adequately.
The hotel’s eventual return to the heirs during the EPRDF era was part of a broader, halting attempt to reconcile socialist expropriation with market reform. Yet restitution did not bring closure. Like many returned assets, Wabi Shebelle remained caught between sentiment and strategy. The heirs inherited not only bricks and mortar, but also decades of deferred maintenance, regulatory uncertainty, and political sensitivity.
Several attempts to sell the property failed. At one point, a prospective buyer reportedly offered more than two billion birr, an extraordinary sum by Ethiopian standards, but negotiations collapsed. Later, the value of the property declined after part of its land was taken for Addis Ababa’s corridor-development programme, a reminder that urban renewal in Ethiopia often proceeds with scant regard for historical continuity or private ownership. Even a near-purchase by a private bank fell through once it became clear the building would be repurposed primarily for financial services rather than hospitality.
The eventual buyer, Sheikh Mohammed Ali Al-Amoudi, is no stranger to Ethiopia’s economic landscape. Through MIDROC Investment Group, he has become one of the country’s most consequential private investors, straddling mining, agriculture, manufacturing and hospitality. His acquisition of Wabi Shebelle therefore carries both commercial logic and symbolic weight. It reunites a historically charged asset with a figure who has often functioned as a bridge between Ethiopia’s political elites and global capital.
The transaction was signed by Prince Beede Mariam Mekonnen on behalf of the sellers, and by Mr Jamal Mohammed, Chief Executive Officer of MIDROC Group, for the buyer. While the sale price has not been publicly disclosed, the emphasis has been placed elsewhere: preservation. MIDROC has announced that the hotel will be renovated without altering its historic character, and will operate under the Marriott Autograph Collection, a brand that trades precisely on narrative, heritage and distinctiveness rather than uniform luxury.
This matters. Addis Ababa’s recent redevelopment has often favoured demolition over adaptation, erasing buildings that once anchored the city’s memory. To retain Wabi Shebelle’s architectural and historical identity while upgrading it to global standards is to make a quiet but consequential argument: that Ethiopia’s past need not be an obstacle to its commercial future.
For MIDROC, the renovation offers reputational as well as financial returns. For the Mekonnen family, it provides a dignified exit from an asset whose emotional significance has long outweighed its economic utility. And for Ethiopia more broadly, the sale underscores an unresolved truth: property in the country is never merely property. It is history made tangible, politics rendered in concrete.
That Wabi Shebelle has survived revolution, nationalisation, restitution and urban redesign is itself remarkable. That it will now be reborn as a high-end hotel within a global brand network suggests a partial reconciliation between Ethiopia’s imperial inheritance and its market-driven present. Yet the story also raises quieter questions. How many other restituted properties languish, unsold and underused, because legal certainty remains fragile? How often does development proceed by subtraction rather than preservation?
In the end, Wabi Shebelle’s sale is less about who owns the hotel today than about what Ethiopia chooses to do with its past. The building has outlived emperors and regimes alike. Its next chapter will test whether memory can be monetised without being erased and whether history, in Addis Ababa, can finally be treated as an asset rather than an inconvenience.
