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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
A Guardian reporter

Dismay in Addis Ababa as ‘the soul of the city’ is razed for development

A woman sits among the debris of demolished buildings in the historic Piassa neighbourhood of Addis Ababa.
A woman sits among the debris of demolished buildings in the historic Piassa neighbourhood of Addis Ababa. A government redevelopment project is transforming the area, and people are being forced to move. Photograph: Michele Spatari/AFP/Getty Images

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.

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