Society Addis Ababa’s Unseen Crisis: Beyond the Numbers
May 31, 2025
Mothers, children, and a city overwhelmed as a new face of hardship emerges
On an overcast afternoon in late May, with rain clouds gathering overhead, a woman in her 50s sat quietly on a curb near Women’s Square, a recently refurbished boulevard graced by a statue of a woman holding scales aloft, gazing into the distance. She was flanked by two of her children — a toddler asleep in her lap, swaddled in a thin cotton cloth, and a preteen absently shuffling pebbles at her feet.
The woman, a widow and mother of four, spoke softly as she asked passersby for spare change. “We are bothering you because we are in real trouble,” she told each person who paused, her voice barely above a whisper. Few stopped. Most hurried by without a glance.
She does not fit the image many might expect of someone in dire need. Her clothes are clean, her children appear healthy, and her family looks as though they could belong to any working-class household in the city.
“Their father was a truck driver, mostly on the road to Jigjiga. He died in an accident, and we have nothing left,” she explained, her eyes downcast. She hesitated when asked for a photograph. “I don’t want my babies on TikTok,” she said, warning that her older children would see it as an indignity. With reluctance, she allowed a quick picture to be taken, on the condition it not be shared for entertainment.
Her story is one of quiet desperation. After her husband’s death, she and her family were evicted when their landlord lost his home to the government’s City Corridor Development Project. Now, they rely on the goodwill of another family who has let them stay in a cramped, box-like room — a fragile arrangement that could unravel at any moment.
Across town, in Bole Medhanealem, a teenager — barely older than a child herself — stands by the roadside, an infant latched to her breast. She asks for money with a practiced, almost casual smile, her cheerful demeanor masking a grimmer reality. The baby, blissfully unaware, feeds in her arms.
At a nearby traffic light, a middle-aged man approaches drivers with a folder in hand, pressing a well-worn medical prescription against the window. He claims to need funds for expensive medication to treat a rare condition.
And near Shola Market, an eight-year-old girl in a crisp school uniform trails alongside her mother, quietly asking strangers for spare coins.
These snapshots capture a growing crisis in Addis Ababa: the visible rise of a new, precarious class of destitute people in Ethiopia’s capital. Once the domain of those facing generational poverty, the streets now hold families who never imagined they would be here — pushed out by rising costs, displacement, and economic uncertainty. Their faces — a reflection of a country in flux, where the line between stability and desperation grows thinner by the day.
Firehun Gebreyohannes, the Ethiopia Country Representative for Siddartha, a Belgian charity, says the growing presence of children on the streets is becoming the “new normal.”
“Just a few years ago, it was rare to see very young boys and girls begging alone on the streets,” he said. “Now, it’s common. There’s no way a seven- or eight-year-old child ends up on the street by choice. There are push factors, for sure.”
Among those factors, Firehun points to armed conflicts — from large-scale clashes to local skirmishes — that have triggered waves of displacement across the country. Poverty and family breakdowns compound the crisis.
“Addis Ababa has become a magnet for people fleeing violence and hardship,” he says. “From all corners of Ethiopia, families arrive here hoping for a better life. It might be wise for the city to establish safe shelters at key entry points, where new arrivals could receive care, and basic assistance.”
Though comprehensive data is scarce, Firehun says small-scale surveys and observations show a clear trend: homelessness is rising at a troubling pace.
“The most widely cited studies are outdated — three or four years old,” he says. “UN agencies and civil society groups estimated the homeless population at around 600,000 back then, while the government’s figures were far lower, around 150,000. But neither of those numbers reflects the current reality. We need accurate, up-to-date data. You can’t hide a problem this visible, and without a shared understanding of the scale, it’s impossible to design effective interventions.”
Firehun also challenges the assumption that only the visibly destitute engage in street begging. “Virtually everyone who is homeless in Addis Ababa,” he said.
Indeed, recent studies confirm that begging has become a prominent feature of Addis Ababa’s urban landscape. A growing number of individuals — including physically healthy adults — can be seen soliciting help on the city’s streets, reflecting the deepening crises of poverty, unemployment, and inadequate social services.
Experts in public policy and urban development agree that long-term solutions require addressing the root causes of poverty: boosting economic growth, expanding job opportunities, and improving access to social services — all areas where Addis Ababa continues to fall short.
Economists point to international financial pressures, particularly IMF-driven austerity measures, as a key driver of the crisis. Reforms requiring Ethiopia to sharply devalue its currency have pushed up the cost of living, eroding real incomes and deepening hardship for ordinary citizens.
Firehun argues that tackling homelessness will also require a shift in how communities and the government mobilize resources. He believes that people should stop throwing a few birr here and there out of pity. “We need to create structured fundraising systems — through community associations like Edirs, for instance — to raise funds and direct them towards concrete projects that address homelessness. There’s enormous potential for domestic resource mobilization, but it remains untapped. We can’t keep relying on foreign aid or single-source funding. That’s a dangerous dependency. We’ve already seen the consequences when, for example, USAID cuts its support — not just for individual organizations, but for the government itself.”
Biniam Belete, founder of Mekedonia Homes — the largest charitable organization in Ethiopia caring for the elderly and people with mental disabilities — shares a similar perspective.
“Ethiopians are charitable by nature,” Biniam told The Reporter in a recent interview. “The challenge is not a lack of generosity, but organizing those funds and ensuring they are used for their intended purpose.”
Mekedonia, with its vast network of homes across the country, stands as a testament to what coordinated community action can achieve. Yet, Biniam’s optimism is tempered by the scale of the challenge.
A 2018 government-commissioned study, which underpins the Urban Safety Net Program (USNP), aimed to support more than 4.7 million urban poor across 972 cities and towns. The program — partly funded by the World Bank — set an initial target of reaching 604,000 beneficiaries, including 22,000 “urban destitute” who had previously fallen outside population statistics in 11 major cities.
But the situation on the ground has shifted dramatically since then.
“Homelessness is rising fast,” Firehun said. The data is years old, and it does not capture the current scale of the problem.
Indeed, the last official estimate, from 2018, put the homeless population in Addis Ababa at around 24,000. Even then, the figure was controversial, with experts arguing it significantly underestimated the true extent of destitution.
Today, in the absence of updated studies, Firehun believes the real numbers have “risen meteorically.”
Yet without fresh data, it’s impossible to say how many people are now living on the streets — or how many have been pushed into a cycle of homelessness by factors beyond their control: conflict, economic collapse, and the rising cost of living.