November 23, 2016 - African Liberty

Near Africa’s horn on the easternmost part of the continent, a shiny new electric railway runs alongside an old abandoned track through both arid desert and green highlands.

Some 750 kilometres (466 miles) long, the $4 billion line opened in October and links landlocked Ethiopia to the coast in Djibouti.

It was partly funded and built by Chinese companies, just like the other planned lines it could soon link up with neighboring Sudan and Kenya — where the first part of a new $13 billion Kenyan railway linking Mombasa to Nairobi is taking shape.

The sprawling network is planned to continue into South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, as part of transnational efforts to connect countries within East Africa.

The new lines are part of the so-called LAPPSET rail project and the EAC Rail Sector Enhancement Project, also called the East African Railway Masterplan, and managed by the East Africa Community (EAC) — an intergovernmental organization run by Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda — together with consulting company CPCS.

But railways don’t come cheap, and African countries are borrowing heavily from China to scrape the funds together.

In the 10-year period between 2004 and 2014, African countries borrowed nearly $10 billion for railway projects from China , facilitated by the China Export Import Bank (Exim), according to researchers by SAIS China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-CARI). Read more here.