Destination

This city was saved by planting an Australian tree.

In 1900, fifteen years after its founding, Addis Ababa had run out of firewood and there were plans to abandon it and move the capital 55 kilometres west. It proved unnecessary: the eucalyptus introduced in 1894 grew so fast that the following year the plan was shelved. Today the city has six million people, sits at 2,355 metres and is still ringed by the forest that saved it.

MRMaría ReyesDestinations editor
· 9 min read
The city seen from the top of the mountain above it: in the foreground, the edge of an earth track and, planted just behind it, half a dozen young eucalyptus with slim trunks and blue-grey leaves framing the view; lower down, the slope covered in trees and pale-roofed houses; and at the back, an immense urban plain stretching from side to side to distant hills, with a dozen tall towers rising at its centre above an unbroken fabric of low buildings, all of it wrapped in a blue-grey haze under a pale sky.
The city seen from the top of the mountain above it: in the foreground, the edge of an earth track and, planted just behind it, half a dozen young eucalyptus with slim trunks and blue-grey leaves framing the view; lower down, the slope covered in trees and pale-roofed houses; and at the back, an immense urban plain stretching from side to side to distant hills, with a dozen tall towers rising at its centre above an unbroken fabric of low buildings, all of it wrapped in a blue-grey haze under a pale sky.Pegel05·CC BY-SA 4.0

01 A capital without firewood

The city was very young. Settlement began in 1886 in the valley south of Mount Entoto, at a place called Finfinne; Empress Taytu Betul chose the site, Emperor Menelik II built his palace in 1887, and in 1889 it became the capital. The name means "new flower" in Amharic.

The problem was physical and had no way around it: at 2,355 metres, with a fast-growing population, firewood was being consumed far faster than the forest could replace it. The place chosen for the move was given a name that says everything, Addis Alem, "new world". Building started there. And then a tree intervened.

A narrow tarmac road curving up a forested slope, seen from the roadside: on the right, a bank with tall slim eucalyptus and a concrete pole strung with cables; on the left, a tree with reddish and green leaves in the foreground and, below it, the opposite slope entirely covered by an unbroken mass of eucalyptus in green and bluish tones fading into haze; a white four-by-four is parked on the tarmac, seen from behind; the sky is overcast, grey and uniform, with no sun.
The eucalyptus forest covering the slopes above the city. None of this was here a hundred and thirty years ago.Richard Mortel / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0  · CC BY 2.0

02 The tree that arrived in 1894

Eucalyptus was introduced to Ethiopia in 1894 and 1895, on the advice of two of the emperor's advisers — a French railway engineer and a British officer — precisely to produce firewood and construction timber for the growing city. It was an Australian species with no connection at all to the Ethiopian highlands, chosen for one very specific reason: speed.

It worked faster than anyone expected. Some landowners planted entire forests on their estates and, within a few years, the shortage of firewood and timber had ceased to exist. The year after the move was decided, the move was cancelled. Addis Alem stayed a town and the capital stayed where it was.

The interior of a young eucalyptus wood on the slope: dozens of slim trunks, their grey and ochre bark peeling in strips, rise straight and crooked from thick gnarled stools that throw up several stems at once; above, the crowns let light through between long greyish-green leaves; on the ground, covered in pale dry leaf litter, five or six bundles of cut branches lie tied and stacked in a row along a path.
Bundles of cut branches in the Entoto forest, ready to go down to the city. The stool resprouts and the cycle begins again: that is what saved the capital.Ji-Elle / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0  · CC BY-SA 3.0

03 What the forest left behind

A hundred and thirty years later, that decision is still the first thing you see on arrival. The slopes of Mount Entoto, which dominate the city to the north, are covered by an unbroken eucalyptus forest, and the tree also appears inside the built-up area, lined along streets and avenues. Addis Ababa is, to a large degree, a city of eucalyptus.

And it remains a working forest, not a park. On the slopes it is cut, tied into bundles and carried down to the city; the stool resprouts and within a few years there is timber again. That short cycle is exactly why the species was chosen, and it is what you still see walking on Entoto today.

The city's profile seen from a rise with green grass in the foreground and a metal fence of green and ochre slats crossing the frame: in the middle ground, a mass of dense trees with palms and broad-crowned species hides the base of the buildings; behind rise some twenty office and residential towers of varying heights, in grey, white and blue, several still under construction, with three yellow tower cranes working among them; at the back, a range of bluish mountains closes the horizon under a sky of large white cumulus.
The centre under construction, with the mountains behind. The city that had no firewood in 1900 is now close to six million people.Simfan34 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0  · CC BY-SA 3.0

04 How to visit it

The first warning is altitude. Addis Ababa sits at 2,355 metres, which makes it the fourth highest capital in the world and the highest in Africa. You feel it on the first day climbing stairs and walking briskly, so it is worth keeping arrival day for something quiet and leaving Entoto for the second or third.

The second is scale. With more than six million inhabitants, this is Ethiopia's most populous city and one of the ten largest in Africa, and it cannot be walked end to end. What does work is choosing pieces: the Entoto viewpoint and its forest, the market, the centre and one long afternoon of coffee.

And the third is a matter of how you look. There is no monumental historic centre to tour here, because the city is little more than a century old. What is interesting is something else: an enormous, young capital under permanent construction, planted above two thousand three hundred metres, which exists where it does because somebody got an imported tree right. Few cities have so concrete an explanation.

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Last updated · reviewed by the FlowTravel desk
MR

María Reyes

Destinations editor · Flowtravel

María looks in every city for the decision that explains its shape.

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