The Long Taxi to Take‑Off: Ethiopia’s Reform Agenda Meets American Caution

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By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

The spectacle unfolded with predictable diplomatic grace. Ahmed Shide, flanked by technocrats bearing reform credentials, presented Ethiopia’s latest infrastructural dream to Christopher Landau: a New International Airport that would, we are told, cement our nation’s place as the aviation crossroads of Africa. The pitch was delivered with the earnest confidence of a government that believes it has finally learned to speak the language of international finance. One wonders whether Washington was listening, or merely being polite.

Let us be clear: the airport itself is no fantasy. Ethiopian Airlines has become our most undeniable success story, a rare state enterprise that operates not as a patronage vehicle but as a genuine commercial force. Bole International Airport, conceived in a different era, now strains under passenger volumes that have tripled in barely more than a decade. The airline’s ambitions, continental dominance, global connectivity, cannot be realised from an infrastructure choking on its own success. A new airport is not governmental grandstanding; it is commercial logic.

But logic and timing are not always companions. The government presents this proposal at a moment when our macroeconomic foundations resemble less a platform for launch than quicksand requiring constant attention. Inflation persists in double digits despite official assurances of moderation. Our foreign reserves hover perilously around two months of import cover a figure that would alarm any serious economist. The birr continues its choreographed decline, and our Chinese creditors loom large in the fiscal shadows, their patience neither infinite nor unconditional.

So when Minister Ahmed speaks of American finance and engineering expertise, we must recognise this for what it truly is: an attempt to escape a creditor relationship that has grown uncomfortably singular. For two decades, Chinese state enterprises have reshaped our physical landscape, railways, roads, industrial parks, often on terms whose opacity matched their generosity. Now, with Beijing reassessing its global commitments and Ethiopia nursing debt obligations that constrain every budget negotiation, Addis Ababa seeks new partners. The turn to Washington is less conversion than diversification.

The Americans, credit to them, have responded with the diplomatic equivalent of “show us the money.” Landau’s acknowledgment of our reform progress came wrapped in the careful language of private-sector engagement—code for demanding the very things Chinese lenders rarely insisted upon: transparency, enforceable contracts, predictable regulation, political stability. These are not unreasonable requirements. They are, however, uncomfortable ones for a government whose recent history includes civil conflict, internet blackouts, and human rights controversies that have tested Western patience.

The reform narrative our ministers presented is familiar to anyone who has followed multilateral lending discussions: fiscal consolidation, monetary discipline, private-sector-led growth. These phrases roll easily off official tongues, honed through countless meetings with IMF delegations and World Bank missions. But rhetoric and reality maintain an uneasy relationship in Ethiopian political economy. We have announced reforms before. Implementation has proven the harder discipline.

Consider the government’s infrastructure record. The Addis-Djibouti Railway operates, yes, but profitability remains elusive and maintenance costs mount. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam stands as both national achievement and cautionary tale years behind schedule, billions over budget, diplomatically toxic. These projects reflect a pattern: ambition announced with fanfare, execution plagued by complications the initial projections somehow failed to anticipate. Why should the airport escape this trajectory?

Yet dismissing the airport as mere governmental overreach would be equally mistaken. Aviation represents one sector where Ethiopia possesses genuine competitive advantage. Ethiopian Airlines contributes approximately three percent of GDP and supports employment networks extending far beyond its direct payroll. The hub-and-spoke model upon which this success depends absolutely requires infrastructure capable of sustaining growth. Without the airport, we risk strangling our most successful enterprise in the cradle of its own expansion.

The question, then, is not whether Ethiopia needs this airport but whether Ethiopia can deliver it. The government has offered no detailed cost projections, no financing structure, no clarity on whether this will be public-private partnership, sovereign loan, or some multilateral arrangement. This absence of specificity is not encouraging. Large infrastructure projects require not only vision but mathematical precision, risk assessment, and honest accounting of what we can afford versus what we aspire to build.

The government’s simultaneous push for banking sector liberalisation and telecommunications reform suggests awareness that credibility requires more than promises. Foreign investors particularly American firms unaccustomed to the patient opacity of Chinese state capitalism will demand evidence of regulatory consistency and judicial independence. They will scrutinise land rights frameworks, labour relations, currency policy, and a dozen other factors that determine whether contracts mean what they claim to mean.

This is where the airport proposal transcends infrastructure and becomes geopolitical theatre. Washington views the Horn of Africa as strategically significant, a region where Chinese influence has grown uncomfortably dominant from the American perspective. Supporting Ethiopian infrastructure allows the United States to deepen economic engagement while promoting its preferred development model: private capital, governance standards, environmental commitments. But American engagement will be conditional, calibrated by risk assessments that weigh Ethiopia’s potential against its instabilities.

For Addis Ababa, the calculation is equally complex. We need Western goodwill for ongoing IMF negotiations and access to concessional finance. We need to demonstrate we are not simply a Chinese client state. But we also need to maintain domestic political control and manage nationalist sensitivities about foreign influence. The airport becomes the stage upon which these contradictions must somehow be reconciled.

The Ethiopian public, meanwhile, observes with practiced scepticism. We have heard grand infrastructure promises before. We have watched costs balloon and timelines extend while benefits concentrate in familiar hands. The government must therefore communicate not merely the vision but the mechanics: Who will build? Who will profit? Who will bear the costs if projections prove optimistic? Transparency is not simply a Western imposition; it is the foundation of public trust in expensive national commitments.

What unfolds here is larger than an airport. It is Ethiopia attempting to rewrite its economic model while managing the geopolitical consequences of past choices. It is a government seeking legitimacy through reform rhetoric while grappling with implementation challenges that rhetoric cannot solve. It is a nation at the intersection of aspiration and constraint, hoping American capital can bridge the gap.

The airport may eventually rise concrete and steel testament to Ethiopian ambition and American partnership. Or it may join the lengthening list of projects whose promise exceeded our capacity for delivery. The difference will be determined not by ministerial presentations in Washington but by the unglamorous work of building institutions, honouring commitments, and managing the distance between what we announce and what we achieve.

For now, the proposal stands as exactly that: a proposal, polished and presented, awaiting the cold arithmetic of feasibility studies and risk assessments. Whether it becomes monument or mirage depends on questions the government has yet to answer publicly. One hopes the enthusiasm for American finance is matched by appetite for American scrutiny.

The challenge, as always, is ours to meet.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Ethiopian Tribune