From an academic and researcher to a development practitioner, Addis Ababa’s Chief Resilience Officer has been learning by doing, deploying resilience to create real results in one of the continent’s fastest growing urban centers.
After an accomplished career in academia and research, Moges Tadesse embraced a new challenge in 2019, stepping into the role of Addis Ababa’s Chief Resilience Officer. Rising to the task, he drew on his academic background to turn resilience from an abstract concept into actionable practice in one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities.
“This is not really an easy job actually,” laughs Tadesse, as he reflects on the experience in the role so far. “You must know your city properly, what your city demands, what communities need. You have to be well-equipped with all the instruments that can help their communities transform into a thriving city, into a safe city, into a livable city, and into a smarter city.”
After Addis Ababa was selected in 2016 to become a member of the Resilient Cities Network, (then the 100 Resilient Cities programme), in 2018 it began putting together its Resilience Strategy: “a tactical roadmap to transform Addis Ababa into a sustainable, smart, and growing city.” Moges came on board in 2019 when the report was in an extensive data collection phase, closely consulting with government, institutions, civic societies, NGOs, donors, universities and communities.
Having such a direct connection to the fabric of the city was a departure for Moges, who had been working as an academic and researcher for higher institutions and served as a manager, coordinator, planner, integrator and resource mobiliser in NGOs.
“It’s different because…it requires so much practice, like really getting your hands dirty, as I would say in my language.”
Rolling up his sleeves, Tadesse was instrumental in finalizing the strategy, immediately seeing the importance of making it inclusive, relevant to the city and its most vulnerable groups. “The strategy was participatory, whereby every stakeholder and the partners are actively involved in order to generate ideas, in order to identify critical issues, and also to design strategies to resolve those challenges.”
Just as he started though, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, which was obviously a challenge – but one that Moges is keen to point out did not come without the opportunity to make the strategy especially relevant.
“I think our resilience strategy was at a draft level. So it has given us an opportunity to include strategies that would help our city and our community to recover from the adverse impact of Covid-19. That helped my city and my community to be able to withstand the struggles that we faced during that period.”
During the crisis, Addis put the resilience strategy through a stress test. One example is how they applied the resilience framework to convene local SMEs, government and communities through the Safe Hands Project, enabling rapid production and distribution of over 12 million soaps and face masks to high-risk neighborhoods.
More broadly, Addis Ababa’s Resilience Strategy translates long-term vision into action through 48 targeted initiatives — strengthening energy governance and reliability, integrating urban planning with service delivery, improving food security, and building institutional capacity across the city. Crucially, it has also shifted how resilience is understood within government.
“In the earlier time,” Moges reflects, “even understanding the term resilience itself was a little bit difficult.”
Today, the strategy has been mainstreamed into Addis Ababa’s 10-Year Perspective Plan, with 18 sector offices now responsible for implementation.
“But now, they can easily understand our role, our contributions, and the impact that we can produce in the future. They have given us due attention. They have allocated budget for our staff members to execute the programmes, the projects, and also activities that we have planned on an annual basis and also to implement our strategy.”
Each month, Moges and his team meet with stakeholders to assess their resilience initiatives, offering feedback and tracking progress. They then formalise their evaluations with written reports, providing recommendations for improvements. “We are working in a very collaborative and integrated manner”, he says.
It wasn’t just the city that was getting to know resilience, though. Moges himself has been learning on the job and expanding his knowledge, not only of his own city but cities across the network, through meetings with peer CROs and regular training programmes.
“It’s not a static position, but it is a dynamic position, which requires commitment, dedication, and also high-level knowledge. This is an institution where you can learn a lot, and you can also share your practices, knowledge, and experiences to different sister cities as well, who are the members of the Resilient Cities Network.”
As he continues to learn and grow into the position, he reflects on the type of person you need to be a Chief Resilience Officer. Acknowledging your own personal growth alongside that of the city, finding gaps in your knowledge, and putting your elbows into the work, is what it’s all about.
“You have to contribute to your city. But the big thing is you have to question yourself about your capabilities, in a sense, innovative, creative capabilities, smartness, commitment, and dedication – and also passion. That matters most.”