Ethiopia begins construction of the largest airport in Africa at a cost of $12.5 billion

Ethiopian Airlines on Saturday officially kicked off a $12.5 billion project to build what officials say will be Africa’s largest airport when completed in 2030 in the Ethiopian town of Bishoftu. The state-owned airline was awarded the contract to design the airport, which will include four runways, in the town, which is about 45 kilometers southeast of Addis Ababa.

“Bishoftu International Airport will be the largest aviation infrastructure project in the history of Africa,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on the X platform. The airport will include enough space to park 270 aircraft and a capacity of 110 million passengers annually.

The Prime Minister added that this exceeds four times the capacity of the current main airport in Ethiopia, which will reach its maximum limits in dealing with current air traffic within two or three years.

Director of Infrastructure Development and Planning at Ethiopian Airlines, Abraham Tesfaye, told reporters that the company will finance 30 percent of the project, while lenders will finance the rest.

He said on the site that the company has already allocated $610 million for engineering excavation work, which is scheduled to be completed within a year, with the main contractors starting work in August 2026.

The estimated cost of the project was initially $10 billion.