Skip to content

Addis Ababa ranks the 6th dirtiest city in the world

Posted on by Elias Kifle
Addis Ababa ranks the 6th dirtiest city in the world
Addis Ababa ranks the 6th dirtiest city in the world

Run by a corrupt, violent government, Addis Ababa ranks the 6th dirtiest city in the world, according to Mercer Health and Sanitation Index. Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, faces one of the worst sanitation problems on both the continent of Africa as well as in the world. The lack of adequate sanitation programs results in infant mortality, low life expectancy and the transmission of water-borne diseases… Read more >>

32 thoughts on “Addis Ababa ranks the 6th dirtiest city in the world”

  2. Where is all the development woyane is talking about. This is hardly a middle class neighbourhood woyane is boasting of about its successful economic management has brought about. It seems to me woyane is successful in mismanaging the economy. This picture tells it all.

  4. Thank you Elias for displaying this horifying site in Addis Ababa utterly unfit for humans to live in. Considering also the number of jobless in the city and hoplessness of the youth, the quality of life in Addis Ababa should be the worst in the world.

  9. What have been spreading throughout Addis Ababa and Ethiopia at large since terrorist TPLF came to the city is not health and wealth but disease, death, poverty and terrorism. How can the people work and develop their country where there is nothing but a rule of terror by TPLF militia? Things continue to get worse before they get better. TPLF is committed to perpetuate terrorism as the only strategy to stay in power and that became all the more clear to TPLF after its debacle at the hands of the Ethiopian people in May 2005 election. The only way to break with poverty and backwards is to forge a united front of the Ethiopian people and get rid of the terrorist group. It is only under genuine peace, freedom, justice and democracy that Ethiopia can develop. Otherwise the talk of development without putting necessary precursors (freedom, justice and democracy) in place is a daydream and a futile propaganda exercise by terrorist TPLF to divert the attention of the Ethiopian people and the international community away from TPLF terrorism and plundering of the country. In a related development terrorist TPLF is going to appoint Taye W/Yesus, chief of its terrorist militia who masquerades by pseudoname Kuma Demeksa, as a mayor of Addis Ababa after holding a sham election in the coming May. Taye is a tigrian operating under pseudo name Kuma Demeksa and in charge of the Oromo section (responsible in executing terrorization of the Oromo people) in the TPLF terrorist group. His main responsibility as a mayor will not be developing the city but terrorizing the residents of the city so that they will submit to the TPLF terrorism. Aster Mamo, another OPDO (Oromo section in TPLF) lieutenant, will be apponited as the ‘speaker’ of the rubberstamp ‘Addis Ababa city council’.
    Tebaber

  11. Don’t tall me new york is clinect city in the world as you see the picture here one part of addis ababa there is 10 more places in bronx and brooklin b/c i live there.so that is not a big deal,we are trying to chage sheger .

  12. it is not a matter of cleanness or not. At least we can see pople already washed their cloth. The major message from the picture shows the level poverty. So can we see the difference between poverty and sanitation as well the impact of desprate poverty after the so called economic growth

  13. They say: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

    In the old days when modern technology with its all gadgets was unknown in Ethiopia, when there was no electricity, where there were no cars, no factories, no medical wastes, and other agents that pollute the water and the air, my mother fetched water from the river for drink, dry woods from the forest for cooking, and took the white ashes (nech amed or hamukistie) from the hearth (midija) outside the house and put them on the same spot where our neighbors brought theirs and put them on the same place where my mother put hers. After some times, the piled up ashes became like a small hill where I and my little brothers used to play with them by rolling our bodies over them, but we never got sick because these ashes from the dried woods, unlike the ashes in Addis Ababa, had no chemicals in them and the same thing with the water we drank and the food we ate.

    When we killed two or three cows for a wedding or teskar, the carcasses of the dead animals were consumed by the candors (yetimb amora), and nothing was left on the ground, only some bones, and even those meatless bones were consumed by the hyenas during the night time. In this way, the area was clean and tidy. In the same way, the human waste in our village was eaten up by birds, chickens, and some insects, and nothing was left on the ground, and that was the way our ancestors lived then.

    When I was in Ethiopia, I visited Amba-Gishen-Mariam, a Church on a hill in Wollo province. Every year, thousands of Ethiopian Christians make a pilgrimage to this beautiful Church where Abune Michael, the Bishop of Wollo and a close friend of Empress Menen, wife of King Haile Selassie, used to live. Early in the morning, I saw hundreds of those pilgrims using the open field as a toilet because there were no restrooms on this beautiful hill. By the time these pilgrims left the church for their homes, they left tones of human wastes behind. On the third day after most of the pilgrims had gone home, I saw hundreds of candors hovering in the sky and landing safely on the ground where the human wastes had been piled up for three days. Within few hours, all that piles of human wastes were gone, eaten up by those beautiful birds – the candors. It was an extraordinary thing to watch the candors clean the ground and leave in the same way they came. They would never show up again until the next year, and they had been doing this for hundreds of years perhaps.

    The people of Addis Ababa may benefit using electricity, computer, laptops, cars, bicycles, televisions, radios, hair saloons, refrigerators, washing machines, electric ovens, hair driers, medical equipments, and all the hard wares that modern technology has brought for them.

    The problem is, however, where do they put them when all these gadgets get old and out of use? The candors and the hyenas could not consume them as they do to the human wastes and to the dead animal carcasses in the countryside. The human wastes in Addis Ababa go through sewages, but the Woyanne government is not ready to build adequate sewages for its citizens in Addis Ababa except for the people of Mekelle. If, however, the people of Addis Ababa are allowed to use the open field as their toilets, then the candors might have come and consumed them, but since Addis is a very crowded city, the candors may hesitate to come and pick up the human wastes left behind on the open field; they may be too scared for their safeties. Therefore, until the Woyanne government finds a solution to the sanitation problem from the human wastes, from the disregarded technological gadgets and from the medical and factory wastes, Addis may in fact rank the second or worse the first dirtiest city in the world. When that happens, children and the elderly may die by thousands every month from the diseases born from the filthiness of the city, and if such things continue for a long time, the OAU head quarter may be moved to the other African cities, perhaps to Mogadishu, Somalia or Nairobi, Kenya.

    One advantage of having a filthy city is that it will attract not just flies, rats, but tourists in thousands, not to live in the city but to take pictures of this dirty city and sell the picture to the holy woods. So Meles is still the beneficiary of the money collected from the filthiness of Addis Ababa.

    When a person from another country comes to visit Addis Ababa, his Ethiopian guide will tell him ahead of time to cover his mouse and his nose with his handkerchief to protect himself from the bad odor that comes from Addis Ababa. Any way, whether it is filthy or neat, Addis Ababa belongs to Meles Seitanawi until someone more powerful than Meles himself comes and overthrows him, cleans the city and govern it according to the law of the city drafted, approved, and signed by the democratically elected city officials.

  14. i know we are a third world country but the people of Ethiopia needs to learn in how to keep the environment clean. in addition, the government needs to play the big role here. men i can/t even argue over this we are dirty……

  15. oh woyane caders i just saw your incridble economic growth..i thought you guys have been lying…no you guys are right, what a magnificient builidings, economic growth and childern are playing in a magnificent green land with soficiticated computreized games…wow…..can you tell us more please…

  17. Evils not only have murderous hands, they have dirty hearts too. The crimefamily don’t have the heart and the mind to work for the public, rather it has twisted mind and it has the hearts of stone too.

    Only Ethiopians take care of their cities and their surroundings.

  18. #14, just for your information: Ethiopians are not dirty. Dirty and filthy is the crimefamily that drenched in Ethiopians blood.

    Yes, a responsible and democratic government collaborate with the citizens it represents to do publicwork. Only Ehiopians do care of themselves and their surrounding to keep things going in the right direction. However, while the crimefamily is controlling everything and the life of millions, it is difficult for the people to focus on a varieties of problems to solve. Again, and however,the major goal of Ethiopians must be and is to eliminate the robbers form the surface of Ethiopia because these creatures are not only disease causing viruses, they are distructive forces.

  19. Ethiopians love music and have a distinct taste for the one and the only motherland, Ethiopia. Ethiopians have good stamina and have won many gold medals in world sport competitions; and now are ready to raise their beloved country’s unique flag in Beijing Olympics in summer 2008.

    Victory has always been synonyms with the history of Ethiopia and her commendable people since time immemorial as the world and the global communities knew it all. Ethiopians are good fighters.

    It has been a day-to-day-battle against the crime families and their associates since the invasion and now the struggle reached its acme with all Ethiopians determined to oust the crime families from their establishments and drive them into the dark and damp nakfa cave for once and for all.

    In fact, Ethiopians have nothing in common with those members of the crime family who look like human beings on the surface but devilish inside their stoned hearts and lunatics on their heads. Not only, members of the crime family drenched in the innocents’ blood, the bandits also have accumulated enormous wealth at the cost of the lives of millions.

    Addis Ababa has been left without its legitimate and legally elected leaders since 2005 election victory chiefly because the crime family refused to accept its shame ridden defeat by the people of Ethiopia and its refusal to handover the city and the country to the democratically elected social architects and city planners

    The brutality of the crime family has been manifested in many social ills it created to simply punish the people who directly to its ugly face said no during the 2005 election. It is sad and crime, as well to punish people and deny them the right to live in dignity in their own loved-country.

    In Ethiopia, the crime family and its associates and as well as the black rats enjoy exotic fruits, gourmet foods, and the blood of Ethiopians while robbing the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians of their resources and labor.

    The crime family of Meles Naziawi has no meaning, context, and social legality; it is simply there stretching its deadly tentacles to suck the blood of Ethiopians just like the stealth and deadly jelly fish consuming tons of fish and plankton and made the Japanese fishermen cry and cry. When left helpless and angry, the fishermen sort out the small catches of fish from the humongous jellyfish and cut the culprits into smaller pieces and toss it away into the bottom of the ocean. The crime family in Ethiopia is just like the jellyfish that cuts short the lives of the millions. It must be got ridden of.

  20. A city with 4 million peoples having no sewage system is like a human body without blood and nervous system. At one time it will choke the whole body. That is going to happen in Addis Ababa.

    The mayor and city of Addis Ababa and all concerned engineers including the whole population of Addis Ababa should come up with a long and short term solutions

    It is shame for all of us. Whether we like it or not as the current generation, all of us are responsible to come up with a good solution for this chronic problem of the great city.

    Just charge property and business owners to cover the cost of building the swage system. It does not matter who rules the city; it is a natural call and every body needs to go to a rest room. what it matters if you build million dollar mansions without any swage system?

    Most modern cities in the world had sewage systems as old as the cities themselves. What is going on in Addis Ababa city government?
    Things are stinky and we may die of smell and dirty lavatories from the city hall itself. Let us clean up after ourselves old men and ladies. Mayor Doc what are you going to do about it? Where did the 3000 year civilization go? Too much boasting but actions. What is happening the “superior race?”

  22. Ha Ha Ha Ha… We are seeing the “32% economic growth coming into the millinium” said by Mr Meles himself. Go ahead woyane, keep dividing your own people, but the PEOPLE will one day look at that flag and say, “we fought for that flag.” Enough said for all you “ye hadeg” peps.
    MELESE ALAMOW FERESE!!!!

  23. We, the youth Ethiopians, tried to clean our city but the Woyane Menga said NO as if they have something good for the city and the country. The dirty side of the city is a mirror of the dirty administration and unwillingness of the government to accept valueable comments and efforts from real Citizens. Anyways, Yebase-Ayamita…
    Edimie Lewoyane…we are dirty, under war and hunger

  25. What a mind set! It is important that we understand people make up the government. If everyone cleans their villages, then Addis Ababa won’t be where it is now. We will be stupid if we expect Meles to come and clean our villages. Do work Ethiopians! To share unbiased and scholarly opinions, visit meetalamoudi.com.

  27. ምኒሊክ ቆርቁረው
    ኃይሌ የቆፈረው
    ደርጉ የተኮሰው
    ወያኔ የገደለው
    ኣዲስ እና ሕዝቧን መሆኑን እወቀው

  28. It is sad to see what became of Addis Ababa. Once a great city with a future…now ruined to the ground. It is sad!

    I just took a look at the above picture and I couldn’t believe the state of affair. It does not even look like a village much less a city. The Addis Ababa I knew and grew up ….turned into such a horror show!!!

    It began by stealing the people’s vote…the world said nothing….now it is time to take revenge….the world supports them again. Most of all the men in that country, they have lost any sense of decorum, any sense of manhood. It is a sad state of affairs, all around.

  31. this is true of bisare, but none of this people are there anymore. why blame them for doing what they thought best in their time. and you what are you doing? eninja
    ምኒሊክ ቆርቁረው
    ኃይሌ የቆፈረው
    ደርጉ የተኮሰው
    ወያኔ የገደለው
    ኣዲስ እና ሕዝቧን መሆኑን እወቀው

  32. Listen guys.

    Let us not blindly blame woyane for every thing. Was Addis clean enough before woyane?
    We have to differentiate what to blame and what not to.

Leave a Reply