In one of the first major decisions taken by the current city Lease Board, around 2,700 Ethiopians living outside the country who formed housing associations are to be given 150sqm of land out of which 50sqm will be free from lease payments.  These potential residents, who live all over the world, organized themselves in 143 associations, each one having between 10 and 32 people.

These associations will take part in a lottery on October 25, 2006 to receive specific plots of land near the CMC housing complex, 10Km outside the city. 

The associations’ requests were officially granted during the Lease Board tenure of the previous Addis Abeba Administration, led by Mayor Arkebe Oqubay, but as it was a transitional period, no specific land was allotted for them.

It is only now that the Lease Board now led by Mayor Brehane Deressa has started evaluating and deciding upon land cases that the allocation can take place. The lottery will mark one of the first cases decided upon by the incumbent administration.

The associations originally requested 500sqm, but with a shortage of land zoned for residential development, the associations only received less than a third that much.

“We will notbe able to give them the total  area they requested for,” said an official from the Addis Abeba Land Development Administration Authority, “but we hope this will be enough to build residential houses.”

The officials said that the only remaining part of the preparation work is to relocate the farmers in the area and pay their compensation fees.

“Though it took more than two years to get the land, we are happy that we are getting the land finally,” said a President of one of the associations.

The CMC area beyond the Megenagna roundabout is booming and proving itself to be one of the premiere residential areas of the city, having already attracted the eyes of real estate developers like Ayat, Gift Trading, Sunshine Construction, Berta Construction as well as the existing CMC housing complex with its 502 houses.

As most of these real estate developers target high income clients, the Addis Abeba Caretakers Administration has allocated the biggest share of the total 62.2ht allocated in the CMC area to a mix of low and middle income condominium houses. These will be part of the 33,000 houses planned to be built on 87.8ht of land in the districts of the city in the current fiscal year.