Ethiopia is forecast to be the fastest growing economy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Partly due to this economic growth, the urban population is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. In the group of urban migrants, more than half comes from rural areas, indicating a large sum of poorly educated, low skilled workers as major part of the migrant group. The main reasons to migrate to urban areas is the increased job opportunities and education. These influxes of low skilled workers to the urban areas intensify the informal sector in cities like the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. This informal sector comprises those working in informal business, as well as a huge group of domestic workers, apprentices and unpaid family workers. Being able to participate in productive commercial activity is the first step to alleviate oneself from poverty. The problem is that the formal, governmental institutions reject the idea of informality in areas where government is in managerial position. Informal economies are banished from government-controlled housing areas. This is out of fear for the unbound nature of informality, while the formal intuitions main drive is to control everything. The lack of informality, be it informal housing or informal economy, creates order, stability and the ease for the government to exert oversight. However, this lack of informality would also create a vacuum of opportunities to make a living for people, as the informal ways of generating income would also be the only way of generating income for people lacking education and skills. The goal should therefore be to incorporate the informal lifestyle and usage of the low-income households into the formal planning so the informal is not only seen as a problem anymore but as a part of the solution. Through this project I hope to show the possibility that formal and informal is not just two ways of life that stand in contrast with each other, but that it can coexist and, in which low income people can make a better living for themselves.

This graphic novel is the result of a micro-ethnographic research to Kolfe, a neighbourhood in Addis Ababa. Using graphic techniques borrowed from the architecture discipline, this graphic novel aims at bringing together representations of everyday life in Kolfe, that show how human life shapes its environment and vice versa. This graphic novel not only represents the architectural qualities and spatial relationships, but also reveals the hidden narratives of ordinary stories.

This research booklet brings together a selection of quantitative data (e.g. Demography, Economy, Climate) related with Ethiopia, in general, and Addis Ababa in particular. This booklet compiles data from different sources (e.g. bibliography, online databases, and statistical data). The data is processed using new visual outputs that allow a comparative analysis of the case study (Addis Ababa) with other geographical contexts.