Seems like it's Sub-Saharan Month around here: first Sarah Lacy went to Nigeria, and now here I am in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital and Africa's fourth-largest city. It feels like a boomtown. There are cranes and construction sites everywhere, throwing up gleaming new glass-and-steel buildings full of shops selling computers and mobile phones. The major thoroughfares throng with people making, trading, repairing, unloading, selling, and generally hustling. Don't get me wrong: this is still a poor country. Electrical outages are regular occurrences, the taxis that patrol the city's broad avenues are rusting Ladas, and the side streets are harrowed dirt strewn with garbage, lined with tin shacks, and patrolled by beggars and feral dogs. But I've only seen occasional pockets of the poisonous stagnation I've found so often elsewhere south of the Sahara. This feels like a place where things happen. It's a city and culture that could be on the cusp of a genuine transformation, catalyzed by technology?were it not for a single, gigantic roadblock: its own government.
Lacey Chabert Amber Brkich Gretha Cavazzoni Marla Sokoloff Jennifer Love Hewitt
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