Hi, I'm Anne Strain Champs, and this hour I want to take you to Africa.

Urban Africa to the youngest, fastest growing cities on the planet.

Places like Addis Ababa, Daras Salam, Legos, Akra, the biggest of these are growing by 50, 60, 70 people an hour. They will be among the

biggest cities on the planet. And they're challenging and upending all kinds of conventional

notions of how and why cities thrive. Stay with us and we'll find out more. Wisconsin Public Radio.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anstrain Champs.

And today we're going someplace special

with someone special, my husband.

That's me, Steve Paulson.

This is the sound of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia.

It's after midnight, and we're wide awake. It's our first night here and we're

standing on our hotel balcony. We can smell eucalyptus smoke in the air and something sweet and

kind of musty, which turns out to be frankincense.

And then we remembered it's January 6th in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

That's Christmas Eve.

Ethiopians practice one of the world's oldest forms of Christianity.

It goes all the way back to the 4th century.

So these songs and chants are ancient.

A couple days later, we're driving around downtown Addis.

There is major construction going on everywhere. We're driving around downtown Addis. There is major construction going on everywhere.

We're actually in the financial districts right now.

...