Ethiopian Airports Enterprise broke ground in early 2025 on a new $12.5 billion airport at Bishoftu, 40 kilometres south-east of Addis Ababa. At full build-out the facility is designed to handle 110 million passengers annually, making it the largest aviation infrastructure project on the continent and one of the largest in the developing world.1 Ethiopian Airlines, the anchor tenant, already operates more than 150 international destinations from its existing Bole International base.
The strategic question for East African connectivity is no longer whether Addis Ababa is becoming the continent's hub. It is what Nairobi, Kigali and Dar es Salaam intend to do about it. Ethiopian's network has already absorbed a meaningful share of long-haul traffic that would otherwise have transited through Nairobi. The Bishoftu programme will widen that gap structurally.
Why the Bishoftu programme matters
Hub airports do not compete on terminal aesthetics. They compete on the capital ecology that surrounds them: sufficient runway and gate capacity for sustained network growth, predictable customs and immigration throughput, the ground transport infrastructure that connects the hub to its capital city, and the airline that provides the route network that makes the hub useful. Ethiopian Airlines has been building the route network for two decades. Bishoftu provides the physical capacity to absorb its growth for two more.
The closest functional comparison is Dubai International's relationship with Emirates between 2000 and 2020. Dubai built terminal capacity ahead of Emirates' route network. Emirates built the network into the capacity. The combination created the world's busiest international transit airport. Bishoftu is the same wager. The difference is that Bishoftu is being built in a continent where most other governments are still managing the previous generation of infrastructure.
The continental hub will be where the runway is built, the airline is competitive, and the visa is easy. On present trajectory, that is Addis Ababa. Reversing the trajectory requires capital decisions that have horizons of decades, not budgets of years.
What Nairobi has, and does not have
Jomo Kenyatta International Airport processed approximately 8 million passengers in 2024. The capacity ceiling on present infrastructure is approximately 9 million. The second-runway and terminal expansion programme has been at tender stage for more than five years. Kenya Airways has had a sustained loss-making period and operates a route network materially smaller than Ethiopian's. The hub competition is not lost, but the gap is widening, and the capital decisions required to close it are political more than technical.
Four moves that cannot be deferred
First, financial close on the second runway and terminal expansion within 12 months. The tender has been at decision stage for too long; further delay surrenders the strategic competition by default. Second, recapitalisation and route-network rationalisation at Kenya Airways focused on regional and intra-African connectivity rather than long-haul competition with Ethiopian on European routes the airline cannot win commercially. Third, alignment with Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda on a coordinated EAC aviation policy that prevents Ethiopian from picking off member states bilaterally. Fourth, accelerated visa-on-arrival and electronic travel authorisation across all African source markets — a low-cost, high-impact move that can be executed within nine months and that compounds with the other three.
None of these moves is novel. All have been on Kenya's tourism and aviation agenda for the past decade. The Bishoftu groundbreaking changes the deadline structure. Decisions that could be deferred when Addis Ababa was a competitor cannot be deferred when Addis Ababa is becoming the hub. The cost of further deferral is not measured in lost market share. It is measured in the structural relegation of Nairobi from a competing hub to a connecting station.