NEW URBAN RAIL NETWORK LAUNCHED IN ADDIS ABABA
(Posted 22nd September 2015)
Ethiopia, which almost by stealth climbed to the top of the economic growth list in Africa, has yesterday added a new feather to their national hat when a brand new commuter rail network was launched in the capital Addis Ababa.
The cost of the new metropolitan rail network was given as US Dollars 740 million and to a significant extend funded and built by Chinese contractors over the past few years. According to information received from Addis will the trains run for 16 hours every day, providing tens of thousands of Ethiopians with affordable and safe means of commuting from their places of residence into the centre and the industrial areas of Addis Ababa.
In fact, rail transport has been pushed by the government in Ethiopia to the top of the transport agenda and while highways are also being constructed – a major new axis from Addis to Nairobi is now ready apart from a relatively small section in the Marsabit area of Kenya – are railtracks being laid across the entire country to link the rural areas of Ethiopia with the capital Addis Ababa. As previously reported here will nearly 50 towns in Ethiopia be linked by rail, aimed to spur additional economic growth by supporting agriculture and mining, but also tourism with safe transportation of goods and people.
(Ethiopia’s rail network map)
In part will such plans also extend to Kenya where the LAPSSET project intends to link Addis Ababa with the new port of Lamu by standard gauge railway and a highway link from Isiolo to the coast.
There are lessons to be drawn from this development in Ethiopia for much of the rest of Africa that action, not cheap talk and empty rhetoric, is the key to development. Ethiopia clearly has shown the way how it can and should be done, to the extent that even rail-wagons are being assembled in Addis Ababa and not imported as seen in many other parts of Africa.
Kudos for Ethiopia!
