Since the 2000s, the tourism industry has created employment opportunities and promoted economic growth, supporting development. Museums, positioned as one of the main pillars of tourism, have contributed to economic development by becoming a tourist attraction. In Ethiopia, an ethnic federation since 1991, a project to open the National Coffee Museum in Bonga, Kafa Zone, was initiated as a part of the Millennium Project to celebrate the 2000th year of the Ethiopian calendar. Coffee, with its global popularity, has cultural, social and economic significance in Ethiopia. The National Coffee Museum is expected to attract tourists, improve the tourism sector and generate economic benefits for the region and Ethiopia’s development. However, the project faced significant delays and governance challenges, revealing the structural issues in Ethiopia’s ethnic federal system. Drawing on fieldwork and government documents, this article analyses how the project became entangled in political tensions, financial mismanagement and conflicting visions of federal and local actors. It argues that the museum became a symbolic structure disconnected from its intended development goals, highlighting the gap between global development models and local realities. This case contributes to broader debates on the politics of development and the limits of cultural institutions as economic transformation tools.