What’s new: The Chinese contractor has handed over the China-funded 752-kilometer railway linking Ethiopia and Djibouti to local operators, marking the completion of six years of operation.
A ceremony was held on Friday in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, for the official transfer of the railway’s operations to the Ethio-Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway Share Company (EDR), a joint venture established by Ethiopian and Djiboutian authorities.
The Chinese operator, a consortium of China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. (CCECC) and China Railway Group Ltd., will continue to provide technical assistance under a two-year contract. The three countries also plan further cooperation and capacity expansion, according to Dai Hegen, chairman of CCECC.
Background: The Chinese-built Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway is the first electrified cross-border rail line in Africa, linking the landlocked Ethiopia with the Port of Doraleh in neighboring Djibouti and the Red Sea.
With total investment by China of nearly $4 billion, the railway now serves as the backbone of the new Ethiopian National Railway Network and is the first overseas railway project to fully adopt Chinese technologies, from design to construction.
The Addis–Djibouti Railway was started in 2012 by CCECC, a unit of state-owned China Railway Construction Co. Ltd., and China Railway No.2 Engineering Group Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of China Railway Group.
In 2015, the CCECC-China Railway consortium beat rivals from Turkey, France and Germany to win a six-year railway operation and management service contract with the EDR, with commitments to train local workers on how to operate and manage the railway by the end of 2023.
Caixin learned that since August 2023, the Chinese operator has passed on most management tasks to EDR, in preparation for the final handover. By the end of the year, the size of the Chinese operations team had been reduced from more than 700 people to just over 90.
Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
