Focusing on the long 1990s, this talk analyzes the conditions of possibility that enabled Addis Ababa's sex economy to flourish. It maps the historical-structural and socioeconomic conditions that produced a booming sex economy in which "sex for budeena" (sex for livelihood) permeates multiple spheres of urban life beyond what is conventionally called commercial sex. I examine the expansion of this economy through its entanglement with national economic projects, expat economies, discourses of pleasure as a site of selective freedom and empowerment as well as the rendering of women as "living currencies." I argue that women's affective labor sustains fantasies of national economic transformation while subordinating them to neoliberal moral economies that tolerate, and even promote, commodification for profit.
