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Ethiopian Airlines Group completed prequalification across the four packages in April, drawing construction firms and joint ventures from China, Europe, the Middle East, Türkiye, India and Russia, ch-aviation reported.

The packages cover the main terminal, support facilities, airfield and infrastructure works, and offsite transport links.

Chinese state firms hold 15 of the 33 places on the list the airline published, alone or as joint-venture partners, spanning 10 groups including China Communications Construction Company, China Road and Bridge Corporation, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and Beijing Urban Construction Group.

Capital Newspaper reported that Webuild, Vinci Construction Grands Projets and Samsung C&T are also among those shortlisted.

No independent American contractor made the list despite efforts from the U.S. government. The Lane Construction Corporation, a Connecticut firm owned by Italy’s Webuild, appears in three packages through a joint venture with Webuild and Turkey’s IC Ictas.

The Commerce Department “has closely engaged in pushing to secure strong U.S. participation,” Mark Mitchell, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of commerce for the Middle East and Africa, said at a State Department press briefing on July 29 held alongside a U.S. Africa Command logistics symposium in Addis Ababa.

The airport’s expansion would mean more Boeing jets powered by GE Aerospace engines, he said.

Ethiopian Airlines agreed in April to buy six more Boeing 787-9s on top of 20 already on order, The Reporter Ethiopia reported.

Contractor selection has moved from August 2026 to early January 2027 after bidders asked for more time to prepare proposals and arrange financing, group chief executive Mesfin Tasew told the airline’s annual performance briefing on July 30, according to The Reporter Ethiopia. He said the change would not affect the overall schedule.

The project needs more than $9 billion in external funding and no loan agreement has been signed, Mesfin said at the same briefing.

Lenders have signalled interest worth $8.5 billion, but each must complete its own evaluation, a process he expects to finish by March 2027.

The African Development Bank is acting as mandated lead arranger and has indicated it will provide $500 million subject to appraisal, Capital Newspaper reported from Addis Ababa. Further interest has come from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, the U.S. Export-Import Bank and JPMorgan Chase.

Mesfin said in November 2025 that an unnamed China-based institution had pledged $500 million.

A delegation from the airline and Ethiopia’s finance ministry met Bank of China on March 31, the foreign ministry said, days after a separate mission in Beijing engaged China Exim Bank, ICBC and China Development Bank.

Horn of Africa infrastructure has become a new front in U.S.-China competition, Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, professor of public policy at Addis Ababa University and a former UN policy adviser, told the South China Morning Post.

Western defense planners read major transport hubs through logistics capability and intelligence security, he said, while Beijing treats them as nodes in its supply chain network.

Price will decide the outcome, said W. Gyude Moore, a distinguished fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub and Liberia’s former public works minister.

Fierce domestic competition in China means export earnings keep many Chinese contractors afloat, he told the Postso they will bid at levels American firms will struggle to match.

David Shinn, a China-Africa specialist and former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, said American companies have been largely absent from large African infrastructure projects in recent years and that the Trump administration views Bishoftu as an opportunity to re-enter the market.

Costantinos predicted Ethiopia would split the megaproject into separate packages, awarding heavy civil engineering to Chinese firms while reserving avionics, security and digital infrastructure for Western or Gulf partners. Bringing in Gulf capital gives Addis Ababa the leverage to keep the airport from becoming a zero-sum contest between Washington and Beijing, he said.

Ethiopian Airlines broke ground on Jan. 10 at Bishoftu, around 45 km southeast of Addis Ababa, Reuters reported.

The four-runway airport is designed to handle 60 million passengers a year when its first phase opens in 2030, rising to 110 million passengers and 3.73 million metric tons of cargo at full build-out.

The carrier is funding 30% of the cost from its own balance sheet, with lenders covering the rest. Land grading and clearing that began in January is expected to be completed by January 2027, Capital Newspaper reported.

Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, which handles about 25 million passengers a year, is expected to reach capacity within two to three years.

At $12.5 billion, Bishoftu is the most expensive aviation project ever undertaken in Africa, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has called it the largest in the continent’s history.

Its planned capacity of 110 million passengers a year would exceed that of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest, which handled 106 million passengers in 2025, CNN reported.