Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa Bishoftu Airport financing looking more promising following road show

The difficulties that the operators of African airports (usually governments) have in attracting foreign investment are well documented. They range from inadequate route networks, to poor airline business type mixes, to lack of non-aeronautical revenue streams, to lack of transparency, to trade union opposition to corruption.

Occasionally an opportunity arises that bucks the trend of such negativity, and even offers the prospect of being a tipping point beyond which African airports can be taken seriously by western investors.

One of them has been the new Bugesera Airport, a facility to serve Kigali, the Rwandan capital, but that is taking a long time to build.

Now it looks as certain as anything can be in Africa that the Abusera/Bishoftu airport will be built near Addis Ababa. Groundbreaking took place on 10-Jan-2026, marking the beginning of the first phase of development.

It will complement the existing Bole airport, which was the third busiest in Africa in 2025.

While not intended to replace Bole, its price tag of USD10 billion-12.5 billion (as much as the new Mexico City airport would have cost, had it been completed) suggests that it will do that eventually.

Ethiopian Airlines believes Bole has become too small and overcrowded, that it has been expanding the airport for several decades, but it has reached the point where further upgrades are impossible.

Now the search is on for funding, to ensure that it does not meet the same fate as the Mexico airport. That funding could come in the form of debt, equity and loans and numerous promises have been made already.

A road show held in Morocco in Dec-2025 garnered some positive feedback and interest. But so did one for the Bugesera greenfield airport in Rwanda in 2016, and that isn't finished yet, a decade later.

What it needs is a cornerstone investor to be installed rapidly, but such entities usually want a slice of the action in the form of a large slug of the equity.