Ethiopia Courts BRICS for Rail Projects to Spur Economic Growth

Russia’s government may fund a 587-kilometer (365-mile) southern line that will eventually connect with a proposed port at Lamu on Kenya’s northeastern coast, Ethiopian Railways Corp. General Manager Getachew Betru said in an April 26 interview. Brazilian companies could build a 439-kilometer section of a route to oil-rich South Sudan and India is considering export financing for a line to a port in Djibouti, he said.

“They want to come and invest in Ethiopia and get their return,” Getachew said in the capital, Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation, is building 4,744 kilometers of electrified railway lines at a cost of 110.8 billion birr ($5.9 billion) as it seeks to reduce road-transport costs constraining the continent’s fastest growing non-oil producing economy over the past decade. Growth may slow to 6.5 percent this year and next, compared with average growth of 8.7 percent over the past five years, according to International Monetary Fund data.

Ethiopian Railways plans to lay more than 2,000 kilometers of standard-gauge track during a five-year national growth plan that runs until mid-2015. China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. and China Railway Group Ltd. (390) are working on sections costing more than $1 billion each along Ethiopia’s main 656- kilometer trade route from Addis Ababa to Djibouti.

Manufacturing Zone

Huajian Group, a Chinese shoemaker, said last year it plans to invest $2 billion over a decade building a new manufacturing zone on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. The China-Africa Development Fund has invested in Ethiopia Hansom International Glass factory and China-Africa Overseas Leather Products, a $27- million tannery, near the capital.

“Ethiopia is land-locked and Chinese factories near Addis say that transport from Djibouti is one of their biggest headaches,” said Deborah Brautigam, director of the international development program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Baltimore, Maryland.

Freight costs can be as much as three times cheaper by rail than road along the Djibouti route, Getachew said. The link may carry goods worth $1.3 billion a year and “break even” after 5 years of operation, he said.

China Communications Construction Co. (1800) and China Railway 18th Bureau Group International Co. are working on other connections in the northeast of the country that has deposits of the fertilizer potash, he said.

Middle Income

Ethiopia operates a state-led economy and is prioritizing investment in infrastructure as it seeks to transform one of the world’s least developed countries into a middle-income nation by 2025. The decision to use electric trains is because Ethiopia, which has the continent’s second-biggest hydropower potential, generates cheap electricity and spends all of its estimated $3 billion annual export earnings on importing fuel, Getachew said.

“If we are investing in renewable energy it’s possible to use this for other bottlenecks in development like the transport sector,” he said.

Brazil, China, Russia and India are part of the emerging BRICS group of nations, which have combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion. Ethiopia has been able to attract investment from those countries because of the “political will” of former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his successor, Hailemariam Desalegn, according to Getachew.

Meles’s Vision

“The BRICS see in Ethiopia a government that continues to move forward with a vision for its development, despite the death of Meles, widely regarded as the chief architect of this vision,” Brautigam said in an April 29 e-mailed response to questions. Meles died in August after 21 years in power.

Last year, Yapi Merkezi Insaat VE Sanayi AS, the Turkish construction company, signed a $1.7 billion deal to build a railway from the town of Awash, which is on the Djibouti route, to Hara Gebeya. A $600-million steel mill at Kombolcha town being built by Saudi billionaire Mohammed al-Amoudi’s company lies along the route.

Ethiopia will borrow from Turk Eximbank for the project that will take 42 months, said Yapi’s General Manager Murat Hasim Koksal. Under export-import bank terms, contractors have to come from the creditor nation and a large proportion of material has to be sourced there.

Foreign investors are granted contracts on condition that 60 percent of the funding is provided by their countries “policy banks” in foreign exchange, Getachew said. Under Chinese and Indian export-import bank terms, contractors have to come from the creditor nation and at least half of the project’s inputs should be sourced there, according to their websites.

Major obstacles have been obtaining land concessions for tracks, designing routes through mountainous terrain, and the lack of qualified local professionals, Getachew said.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at [email protected]