The morning smoke over Addis Ababa is not made of the cool breath of the Entoto hills. Rather it is mixed with the exhaust of a city in motion. A particular, frantic motion. From about 6:00 AM, the symphony begins not with birdsong, but with the hum and grumble of engines, as countless parents thread their cars through narrow lanes, with their precious cargo – schoolchildren – in the back, to then merge into the great river of traffic flowing towards offices. Fast forward to 5 PM, and the ritual reverses, a city-wide, twice-daily migration that is as much about love as it is about logistics. It is a scene every Addis resident knows in their bones, a draining dance that consumes time, patience, and as I have been thinking lately, an alarming amount of our nation’s hard-earned foreign currency, siphoned away liter by liter as imported fuel.
So, when I read about the government’s renewed focus on controlling emissions from vehicles, it struck a chord far deeper than just environmental concern. We often frame these conversations around carbon, which is vitally important, yes. But in the Ethiopian context, this is perhaps one of the most direct economic policies one could imagine. Think of it: every idling minute in that school-run traffic, every slow crawl from Ayat to Megenagna to Bole or from Megenagna to Sar bet, we are literally burning dollars. We are burning the currency we scramble to earn from coffee, from textiles, from tourism, and sending it up into the air as particulate matter. An emission control policy, therefore, is not just a green agenda; it is a fiscal safeguard. It is a strategy to make every drop of fuel we pay for with our national sweat work harder for us, to squeeze utility out of it rather than waste it in unavoidable congestion.
This is where the idea transcends from simply making our current cars run cleaner, which is a fantastic start, and pushes us towards a more fundamental rethink. The daily school run is the perfect case study. It represents a massive, dispersed, and incredibly inefficient use of resources. Thousands of private vehicles, each carrying one or two children, all converging on similar locations at the exact same time, driven by parents who then must rush to their workplaces, often already fatigued by the journey. The collective fuel burn is staggering. The toll on productivity, immeasurable. The stress, incalculable.
Now, imagine a different stream flowing through the city’s veins in those morning hours. A stream of quiet, electric school buses, painted in bright, cheerful colors. Imagine neighborhood pick-up points where children gather, a moment of community chatter before boarding. These buses, running on optimized routes, would take dozens of private cars off the road for each journey. The impact would be multiplicative: less congestion for those who still need to drive, meaning even their fuel consumption drops. A drastic cut in the morning and evening emission peaks. And parents gifted back a precious hour or more each day – time to perhaps start work earlier and more calmly, time to read, to prepare, to simply breathe. That repatriated time is an economic boost, a subtle but real enhancement of human capital. This is the trifecta: saving time for parents, saving fuel for the nation, and saving breath for our children’s lungs.
The beautiful synergy here is that an emission control policy for conventional vehicles naturally paves the way for this electric future. It signals a societal shift. It makes the hum of an electric motor not a strange sound, but the new normal. It builds the “charging ecosystem” we hear about – not just as fancy infrastructure, but as a necessary public utility, like water or electricity itself (which, with our great hydropower potential, is the final, glorious piece of this puzzle). Why burn imported fuel when we can roll on electrons generated from our own rivers and winds? It transforms our energy sovereignty from a grid concept to a transportation reality.
This vision gains monumental relevance with the recent news that Ethiopia will host the COP 32 global climate summit in Addis Ababa in 2027. Suddenly, the conversation shifts from local policy to global leadership. Implementing a mandate for organized, electric school transport ahead of the summit would transition our city from a talking venue into a living case study. We could offer the world tangible proof of how climate action can be woven into urban fabric to save money, time, and health – turning our diplomatic achievement into a demonstration of transformative, homegrown solutions.
Of course, the sceptics will rightly talk of costs. Electric buses are expensive upfront. The charging infrastructure needs investment. The logistics are complex. But we must measure this against the staggering, silent, ongoing cost of the status quo. We must calculate the billions spent on fuel imports for avoidable journeys, the health costs of respiratory illnesses from pollution, the economic cost of lost productive hours. We must think like the wise householder who invests in a water tank to harvest the rain, instead of paying for every jerrycan carried from a distant source. The initial outlay is high, but the freedom and long-term savings are transformative.
However, for this vision of saved time, fuel, and breath to move from a hopeful “what if” to the daily reality of Addis Ababa, a catalytic push is needed. The market alone, left to its own devices, will not orchestrate this transformation at the speed or scale we require. This is where policy must step in to create a new framework. My recommendation is that the City Administration, in collaboration with the Federal Transport Authorities, should introduce a mandatory, phased requirement for all major schools – both private and public – to provide or facilitate dedicated, organized school bus transportation for their students.
The mandate itself is crucial, as it creates a unified playing field and eliminates the first-mover disadvantage. No single school wants to unilaterally add cost or complexity if parents might choose a competitor without such a requirement. But if all schools of a certain size, say those with over 500 students, must comply, it becomes a city-wide standard that benefits everyone. The “how” can be beautifully flexible, leveraging our existing ecosystem. Schools with the means could invest in their own small fleets of electric minibuses. Others could contract private transport operators, sparking a new green business sector specializing in safe, electric student transit. And most powerfully, the government could task its own affiliates, like Anbessa City Bus Service, with establishing a dedicated “Anbessa School Transit” wing. Imagine the trust and scale that could bring – using Anbessa’s deep knowledge of city routes and existing depot infrastructure to deploy buses painted in safe, bright livery, operated by drivers specially trained in child safety and courtesy.
This mandate would not be a punitive measure, but a foundational investment in the city’s circulatory system. It could be rolled out over a three-year period, starting with schools in the most congested corridors. The government could sweeten the transition with incentives: tax breaks for the importation of electric buses, subsidized overnight charging rates at municipal depots, or a creative public-private partnership model. The key is to make the choice economically sensible one for schools and operators alike.
Introducing electric school buses across Addis, powered by such a smart mandate, would not be just a transport project. It would be a powerful, visible symbol of a smarter, more self-reliant economy. It would turn our children’s daily commute into a lesson in sustainability and shared community, showing them a city that values their future enough to innovate collectively. It would untangle, just a little, the chaotic knot of our rush hours, giving us back the gift of time and cleaner air. And crucially, it would align perfectly with the government’s emission vision, ensuring that the hard currency we earn stays here, building our roads, our schools, our industries, instead of evaporating into the thinning air of the morning rush. It is a vision where the path to a cooler planet also leads to a warmer, more present community, and a more resilient economy. The road ahead is long, but sometimes, the journey to a better future begins by rethinking the simplest of our daily trips – the one to school and back. And that journey, for the health of our children, our city, and our national purse, is one we must begin to take together, with the gentle but firm nudge of a policy that knows a better way is possible. The savings are there for the taking – not just in birr, but in hours and in every deep, clean breath we will all be able to take.
Befikadu Eba is Founder and Managing Director of Erudite Africa Investments, a former Banker with strong interests in Economics, Private Sector Development, Public Finance and Financial Inclusion. He is reachable at befikadu.eba@eruditeafrica.com.
