Ethiopia : The demolition of a historic district in the capital Addis Ababa, with people’s homes and livelihoods destroyed
In the heart of Addis Ababa, the historic, ramshackle neighbourhood of Piassa once teemed with shops and cafes. People would come from across Ethiopia’s capital city to buy anything from jeans to jewellery. Today it lies in ruins. Its distinctive stone houses, with their wooden balconies and slanting metal roofs, are almost all gone. In their place are jagged fields of rubble, picked over by workers with sledgehammers. People stop to stare at the wreckage. Some take pictures. But they do not stay long: the ruins are guarded by police carrying clubs. “I’m angry,” says a former resident. “It’s my heritage that’s been destroyed in front of my eyes, without any consultation at all. We were never told the plan.” The extent of the destruction of buildings in Piassa can be seen from a terrace in the Addis Ababa neighbourhood. Photograph: Michele Spatari/AFP/Getty Images For years there had been vague talk of demolishing Piassa, sweeping away the densely packed shantytowns that ha