Bishoftu Airport, Ethiopia

Nothing against you, JK, but I’ve always found it a bit cruel to reduce Ethiopia just to its famine. It is an ancient country with a unique and rich history, and uniquely for Africa, has been able to mostly resist the colonial land grabs that carved up much of the rest of the continent. It is also the home of one of the oldest still existing branches of Christianity in the world, the Ethiopian Church dating back to the 3rd century AD.

It’s also worth noting that aviation was important in Ethiopia even before the famine. Post WW2, the country invested heavily in building up airports, setting up flight schools and a technical training school to allow the state carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, to be less dependent on facilities in other countries. It probably didn’t hurt that from his reinstatement right up until his death, emperor Haile Selassie was a champion of aviation in the country.

From what I can see, this project actually makes a good amount of sense. Ethiopian Airlines is one of the largest airlines on the continent, they’ve spent the last two decades building Addis Ababa up as a major transit airport for Africa, with the only real limitation being the capacity at the current airport. The other major hub airports in Africa, Johannesburg and Cairo, are on the periphery of the continent, and none of the airports in West Africa are anywhere near the scale of even the current Addis Ababa Airport.