Menen Urban Upgrading

The Menen sefer, situated in the northern part of Addis Ababa, is part of the sefer commonly known as Sidist Kilo. It is within the larger administrative region of the Gulele Sub-city. The name “Menen” is derived from Etege Menen School, which was founded in 1932 as an all-girls school and was among the first few schools established in Addis Ababa. [1]Menen and Sidist kilo held significant importance due to their elevated location and strategic positioning, serving as a connecting link between the Gibi palace and the Entoto mountain range.

Emperor Menelik initially granted this area to Ras Mekonnen, Emperor Haileselassie's father, as a private holding during the early days of the city’s development. This historical background played a major role in Emperor Haileselassie's decision to construct the new Gibi Palace (Guenete Leul), which functioned as the emperor's residence until the coup attempt in 1950 and was later donated to become the main campus of Addis Ababa University. The construction of the Imperial Palace elevated the status of the Sefer, attracting feudal landlords, judges and nobility who built their homes alongside their retinue. One can describe Menen’s western boundary as marked by the Bantiketu River, and as one heads north, it gradually blends into the Shiro Meda sefer.

Menen is located inner-city area of Addis Ababa, characterized by unplanned, high-density settlements with a predominantly low-income population. This characteristic led to the selection of the area of an urban upgrading initiative in the 1980s by Red Barna-Ethiopia NGO in collaboration with the city administration. The Menen Urban upgrading project successfully constructed 198 housing units across 23 blocks, including a shared kitchen and toilet facilities.[2]

[1] Addis Ababa Municipality, “Mirror of Addis Ababa” (Berhanena Selam Printing Press, 1950).

[2] Elias Yitbarek Alemayehu, “Between Renting and Owning: Saving and Credit Cooperative Based Tenure Transformation in the Inner-City ‘Slums’ of Addis Ababa,” in Proceedings of the 16th Interntional Conference of Ethiopian Studies, ed. Svein Ege et al. (International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Trondheim: NTNU-trykk, 2009), 943–56.