The collaborative research body of EiABC Addis Ababa and Bauhaus University Weimar, known as Emerging City Lab, Addis Ababa (ECL-AA) has been recognized as a center with academic status who will have staff who can teach and undertake research under the organogram of EiABC since February 2017.

Following this development ECL-AA has made an extensive renovation work on one of the unique Swedish villas it has received from the institute in the compound of EiABC, near the entrance at the Coca Cola company side. This building block, which was formerly used as a research center by The Mental Health Institute, is to serve as an office and research space for the different thematic research projects, industry consultancy and PhD studies that are running under ECL-AA. The official opening of ECL-AA office space was on 26 April 2017. For more information, you are welcome to visit us at our office. 

Currently the center (ECL-AA) is conducting two research projects; Integrated Infrastructures (IN3) and Terms of Towns (TOT). Although there are some procedural and focus differences both researches are concentrating on the concept of Rural-Urban transformation for emerging new towns in Ethiopia. The details of the researches can be found under the topic of research on the EiABC website. In addition, the researchers of the center are advising BSc. And MSc. thesis topics that are in line with the research ideas. There are also course based teachings for both undergraduate and postgraduate classes concentrating on different thematic areas under the framework of rural-urban transformation.