Ethio-Djibouti Railway
The Ethio-Djibouti Railways is the successor of the Imperial Railway Company of Ethiopia and jointly owned by the governments of Ethiopia and Djibouti. The railway links Addis Abeba of landlocked Ethiopia to the Port of Djibouti, Djibouti.
The single 781 km railway has a 1,000 mm gauge, most of it on Ethopian territory and about 100 km in Djibouti.[1] The company is jointly owned by the governments of Ethiopia and Djibouti and headquartered in Addis Abeba; the ministers of the Djiboutian Ministry of Equipment and Transport and the Ethiopian Ministry of Transportation and Communications are the predident and vice -president of the company.
The railway is in need of rehabilitation. The European Commission prepared a grant of EUR 40 million in 2003 and raised it to 50 million in 2006. An agreement was signed with the Italian consortium Costra on 29 November 2006; work begun in 2007 on sections of the line that deteriorated following the Ogaden War.[2]
A management change is anticipated; this change is expected to raise the capacity of the railroad from its current average of 240,000 tons to 1.5 million tons.[3]. Initially in 2006 the South African firm Comazar was chosen to receive a 25-year concession, but this plan was not executed, and in early 2008 it was announced that the railway was in negotiations with the Kuwaiti company Fouad Alghanim and Sons Group.[4]