Today's Article

Kidus Asfaw, Chief Executive Officer Kubik: My personal journey at Kubik meant a lot because I'm a father of three, three very beautiful, wonderful, smart Ethiopian kids who've lived abroad for a very long time. And I wanted to make sure that I can 6participate in creating a city and a country that they can be proud to come back to and work and live the same way that I have. And it's never an easy topic to hear on the news about the 7perception of countries like mine 8when it comes to 9poverty, when it comes to difficulties of life. And instead of sitting back and watching, I felt that I had a 10conviction, like many others, to participate in changing that 11narrative by working here and really changing what a city like Addis Ababa could look like in the next 20 to 50 years. 

CNN Correspondent: To help make his vision of creating a new look city, Kubik has invested in a 12state-of-the-art factory. 

Kidus Asfaw: So today we are at the Adama Industrial Park, we are at Kubik's factory facility where we're going to be 13converting over 45,000 kilos of plastic waste every single day into our building materials. Today is a very exciting and a very emotional day. It's been two years in the making with a lot of 14ups and downs and making it work. So just even seeing a container open and seeing the stuff that we've been talking about for over a year has just put a lot of tears into our eyes. The team is really excited. We're very 15uplifted and we really want to see now this working not only in the factory but all over the country. 

Success for me is a happy customer. In our case, a happy customer is that person that never had the opportunity and choice to live in a clean, beautiful house.