Jamalu Jenber Takes Over the Addis Ababa Prosperity Party Branch With Deputy Mayor Rank

Jamalu Jenber (PhD) has been appointed head of the Addis Ababa Prosperity Party branch office, with the rank of deputy mayor, the state broadcaster reported.

He has served in the city administration since 2016 on the Ethiopian calendar, most recently as deputy mayor in charge of the Public Service and Human Resource Development Office. Before that he held a post at the city's transport bureau.

The party office is a governing office

In a city administration run by a single dominant party, the head of that party's branch is not a background figure. The branch office is where candidate selection, cadre appointments and the political line on contested city decisions are settled, and attaching deputy mayor rank to it makes explicit what is otherwise implicit — that the post sits inside the executive rather than alongside it.

For anyone whose business depends on decisions the city takes, that is a name worth knowing. Addis Abeba's administration has been the most consequential single actor in Ethiopian commercial life over the past several years: the corridor development programme, large-scale demolition and relocation, land allocation and lease auctions, the vacant land audit now producing complaints from property owners, and the licensing regime that determines where a business can operate.

Jamalu comes to the role from the public service and human resources portfolio, which is the machinery side of the administration rather than the projects side. Whether that shapes how the branch office operates is not yet visible.

Part of a wider reshuffle

The appointment lands in the same week Chaltu Sani moved from nearly five years as minister of urban and infrastructure development to run the Federal Housing Corporation, and days after the Oromia Regional Council restructured 21 zones into six. Personnel and administrative architecture are both being rearranged at once.

Open

The broadcaster did not say who previously held the Addis Ababa branch post or where that person has gone, whether Jamalu retains his public service and human resources portfolio, or whether further appointments in the city administration are expected.

Sources: Fana Television, 29 September 2026, Birr Metrics, 28 September 2026, Birr Metrics, 28 September 2026