Deadly plane crash puts dent in Ethiopia’s grand designs

KAMPALA, Uganda — The crown jewel in Ethiopia’s transformation to continental power in recent years is Ethiopian Airlines, the state-owned company that calls itself “the new spirit of Africa.”

Sunday’s crash that killed 157 people also puts a dent in Ethiopia’s grand designs, spurred on by a dazzlingly reformist new leader. He vows to turn a state controlled-system into free and fair elections next year.

Even as the crash crater smoked, Africa mourned not only the dead but a symbol of the continent’s rise.

“This couldn’t have come at a worse time for Ethiopian Airlines,” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement, mindful that his own country, Africa’s largest economy, has no national carrier. “Like every other African leader, I am proud of the fact that Ethiopian Airlines represents one of Africa’s success stories.”

The airline, Africa’s only profitable carrier, is the high-flying symbol of a country shaking off its decades-old image of devastating poverty and famine.

Thanks in part to financing from China, Ethiopia has ambitious undertakings in infrastructure and industry that have facilitated some of Africa’s fastest rapid economic growth.

Bold projects include one of Africa’s few metro rail services, a massive hydropower dam on the Nile and numerous projects linking the landlocked nation with the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

“Many Ethiopians see yesterday. I see tomorrow,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Africa’s youngest head of government, told The Financial Times last month in his first major interview.

Abiy, who took power nearly a year ago, left the country of some 110 million people breathless with reforms. His government freed jailed opposition figures, welcomed home exiles and made peace with neighbouring Eritrea — startling changes that he hopes to continue in business, opening the airline and other state-owned sectors to the world.

As more countries and investors reach out to Africa, they increasingly land in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Sunday’s crash occurred shortly after takeoff there. The dead came from 35 countries.

“Ethiopian Airways is a key player in linking Africa to Gulf relations and a signature project of Ethiopia’s internal capacity,” said Angelo Izama, a regional analyst based in the United Arab Emirates. “So the wider community basically took the crash as a shock to Ethiopia and its status as a potential hegemon in the Horn (of Africa) and in East Africa.”

In January, Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport inaugurated a new passenger terminal equipped to handle 22 million visitors a year, tripling its capacity in a city that is a diplomatic hub with the headquarters of the African Union continental body.

The opening was a dramatic pushback against the long-held image of African air travel as chaotic and dangerous on a bustling continent of more than 1 billion people. Before Sunday, no major deadly air accident had occurred in more than two years.

Ethiopian Airlines appears determined to spread the success, reaching out to other African airlines for partnerships and investment. Many African carriers have collapsed in the last few decades, often because of mismanagement.

In its push for dominance, Ethiopian Airlines continues to open new international routes, flying to nearly 120 destinations. In January it opened a route to Moscow and announced plans to fly nonstop to Houston.

The company has been among the first buyers of commercial jets hitting the market. In 2012 it became the first in Africa, and one of the first around the globe, to take delivery of Boeing’s flagship Dreamliner jet.

The purchase was celebrated with fanfare at home as a source of immense pride.

Ethiopian Airlines’ latest headline purchase was the Boeing 737 Max 8, the newest version of the bestselling airliner in history.

Heady with optimism, the airline ordered 30 of them last year.

One of the planes was delivered in mid-November.

On Sunday, six minutes after takeoff, it crashed. No one yet knows why.

Ethiopian Airlines within hours tweeted a photo of its CEO standing in the wreckage, an image shared around the world.

The prime minister went to the site as well. But he mourned in private.

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Rodney Muhumuza, The Associated Press