Addis Ababa University (AAU) and EiABC, in a colourful ceremony graduated a grand total of 365 students on July 8, 2017 at the Millennium Hall. Thereof were 162 Architecture students, 168 Construction Management Technology (Regular and Extension) students, 15 Urban Planning students plus another 20 from all departments post.

Guest of honour of the ceremony H.E. Kassa T/Berhan, Minister of Federal and Pastoralist Affairs and Board Chair of the AAU, handed out degrees and awards for valedictorians and PhD. graduates.

Professor Admasu Tsegaye, President of the Addis Ababa University warmly congratulated the graduates and families.He said that the Addis Ababa University being a prestigious higher education institution leads the production of skilled man power. "The university diligently works to drastically increase the number of graduate enrolment capacity and become a research and graduate studies hub," so the president.
The university is undertaking holistic changes, noted the president, in teaching-learning, quality education, university-industry linkage, administration, research, and community service to take a lion's share in accelerating the growth and transformation plan of the country.
He further stated that the number and quality of research outputs published on reputable journals by AAU researchers and postgraduate students, is continuously increasing making AAU one of the top prominent higher education institutions in Africa.

Extending his congratulation message to all graduates, H.E. Kassa T/Berhan, Minister of Federal and Pastoralist Affairs and Board Chair of the AAU, acknowledged AAU's unmatched contribution in producing skilled graduates for the country. To emancipate, said the minister, the country from poverty and illiteracy and transform it to holistic prosperity, the government has set strategies and policies that will pave ways for its achievement. "The overall economic revolution underway in the country can be realized through well educated and competent man power that can bring a breakthrough in transforming the existing agricultural economy into an industrial one," said the minister.

Present at the ceremony were various ministers, ambassadors and invited guests. The program was live televised on EBC.
The university cultural centre graced the event with iconic song "enkuan des alachu" which translates into congratulation!

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. 

EiABC is proud to announce that its MSc. Curriculum in Construction Management has been approved by the Addis Ababa University Senate on June 22 2017. The first batch of students are planned to commence their studies in September 2017. EiABC would like to take this opportunity to thank and congradulate all its staff and partners who directly and indirectly participated in this effort for the last five years.

From May 29th to June 7th, 2017, EiABC hosted the "The Photography Archival and Community Project" initiated by the Center for Photography in Ethiopia (CPE) in collaboration with Goethe-Institut. It aimed at linking a group of photographers to a group of different communities (in this case architecture students) in Addis Ababa through a workshop.

Photography plays a more and more a critical role in how we experience, engage and perceive our cities, especially with the advent of social media. Photographs of cities' pasts often interlink with how we want to see our cities of the future. In our photos we foreground those elements that we love and distance those elements that we do not like. How we picture our cities becomes the inspiration for our future cities. Photography has also played a critical role in the development of the social construction of our cities. As witness and author, it has shown us what our cities look like in the centres and peripheries of our development. At the same time architecture has become a site for photography, with billboards and other display mechanisms bringing photos to our horizons.

"The Photography Archival and Community Project" wants to inspire discussion and awareness of Addis' histories and future. By looking at architectural archive materials and photography archives, contemporary images of our cities can be understood in wider contexts. The project engaged architecture students and photographers around these ideas. Participants looked at personal archives and social media images as a starting point to understand how we make place and cities. Participants learned to contextualize images of space and place them within historical, social and political understandings. Further participants photographed and learned to copy archival materials with their mobile phones. Participants considered different public sites for the installation of their work in a way to transform architecture.

The workshop focused on integrating the concept of archiving, photography & architecture and was run by John Fleetwood, Director of a photography platform Photo: in Johannesburg, South Africa.