A direct flight between America’s mile-high city and Africa’s mile-and-a-half-high city seemed like a good idea when former Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver International Airport CEO Phil Washington told me about it, but it never came to fruition. A few weeks ago, I saw for myself the strategic importance of connecting Denver to Addis Ababa and with it, the entire continent of Africa.
Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is the hub of Ethiopian Airlines, the largest airline in Africa. Its planes fly to 62 cities in 38 African countries. Currently, there are no direct flights
between Denver and Addis or any African city. Denver International Airport is our nation’s midcontinent hub for international flights so that needs to change.
A direct connection to Ethiopia is valuable in other ways. When the Atlanta Airport, the busiest in the world, added a direct flight to Addis Ababa earlier this year, the city’s mayor heralded the business opportunities that would benefit both communities. Likewise, a direct flight between Addis and Denver would promote trade, cultural exchange and tourism.
Ethiopia’s economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. Although growth in gross domestic product has slowed to a rate of 6.3%, it has averaged 9.5% per year for the past 15
years. Ethiopia’s top export is coffee, followed by gold and other agricultural products, which the country sells to the United States, Europe, Somalia, and the Middle East.
Ethiopia’s robust economy is apparent to any bleary-eyed traveler stepping off a plane and entering the state-of-the-art Bole International Airport. Like other bustling cities of the global
south, Addis’s skyline boasts skyscraper after skyscraper, some half-finished and covered in wooden scaffolding. The streets are lined with new hotels, swank coffee shops, restaurants, apartments, and parks of flowering trees and bougainvillea, as well as shanty neighborhoods with dirt streets, people begging for money, donkey carts, and sleeping goats. Inside or out, the air is redolent of cooking spices, burning incense, and roasting coffee.
The smell of car exhaust recedes as one drives away from the city. In the countryside outside of Hawassa, a city on the shore of Lake Awassa south of Addis, there are fields of vegetables and grains. Boys goad along zebu cattle and goats. Simple houses made of sticks and mud are fenced by living walls of emerald-green cactus trees. Marabou storks glide the skies on enormous wings and jackals lope across the road at sunset.
Some farmers grow enset, a relative of bananas that doesn’t produce edible fruit. Since the plant’s leaves, stems, and roots provide easy to grow, year round sustenance, the plant has
recently gained the attention of agricultural scientists. Kocho, made from fermented grated enset pulp, makes a delicious, slightly tangy flatbread. Kocho and injera made from Ethiopia’s unique grain teff are two mainstays of the country’s unique cuisine. You scoop each bite of spicy, saucy meat and vegetables with the dipping bread. The other mainstay is the dark, aromatic coffee brewed in a black fire-seasoned pot.
In addition to farms and cities, Ethiopia has wilderness areas with the same iconic African wildlife as neighboring Kenya. I was delighted to see a hippo, monkeys, hornbills, sacred ibis,
fish eagles, and hooded vultures during my brief stay. The focus of my trip, however, was to visit sustainable community development sites in Addis and Hawassa launched by Colorado-based Children’s HopeChest. Next trip I will venture out to see Ethiopian wolves and gelada baboons and then head north to see the ancient churches of Lalibela. A direct flight would make these treasures more accessible to Coloradans while giving the growing middle class of Ethiopians the opportunity to visit us.
Honestly the best thing about Ethiopia is its people and their warm, hospitable culture. We know this since Colorado is home to thousands of Ethiopians, many of whom have businesses in Aurora and Denver. A direct flight will facilitate more commercial and cultural partnerships.
Since Hancock and Washington initiated plans for a direct flight, Colorado’s renowned Children’s Hospital and our exceptional Denver Museum of Nature and Science have been
building relationships with peer institutions in Addis. Cultural exchange is mutually enriching; to use a term I learned from HopeChest, it is “two-way transformational.”
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer
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