By CGTN Africa

Addis Ababa has introduced Africa's first smart parking system to solve the lack of parking spaces for hundreds of thousands of cars in the city.

The system uses modern Chinese technology to park vehicles inside a steel-structured building using an automated lift.

Many people are already excited to see a tangible solution for the growing parking space problem in the Ethiopian capital.

The project has cost the state about 52 million birr (about 2.2 million US dollars), and plans to build more smart parking facilities across the city are already envisaged. 

“The number of vehicles is increasing and so is demand for parking. For our master plan, we selected 60 places to construct smart and concrete parking systems. There are several smart parking systems being built in Addis Ababa at the moment. Some even have a capacity of parking about 1,500 cars at once,” said Solomon Kidane, head of the city's Transport Programs Management Bureau.