Ethio-Djibouti Railways

Alfred Ilg and his family at the train station in Dire Dawa

The ) was founded in 1894 to build and operate a railway from the port of Djibouti to the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa. The company was founded by Alfred Ilg and headquartered in Paris, France.[7]

Discussion of an Ethiopian railway was initiated by the Swiss engineer Alfred Ilg. He attempted, without success, to interest Emperor Yohannes IV in the construction of a railway to replace the six-week mule trek from central Ethiopia to the French colonial port city. Negotiations began anew when Menelik II acceded to the Ethiopian throne in 1889. On February 11, 1893, Menelik II issued a decree to study the construction of a rail line from the new capital city of Addis Ababa.

In 1894, Ilg and his French associate Léon Chefneux founded the Imperial Railway Company of Ethiopia (French: Compagnie Impériale des Chemins de fer d'Éthiopie[7] or Compagnie Impériale Éthiopienne,[8] with its headquarters in Paris. The company received a royal charter on March 9, 1894, but Menelek resisted putting any of his personal funds into the venture. Instead, the company received a 99-year concession to operate the railway, in return for giving Menelek shares in the company and half of all profits in excess of 3,000,000 francs. Furthermore, the firm was obliged to construct a telegraph line along the route.

It took until 1897 before the necessary permission from French authorities was received, by which time significant opposition in Ethiopia had materialized. The emperor himself was irate at the involvement of the French government, which had offered to fund the line,[7] and there were popular demonstrations against it. There was also opposition from the British legation in Addis Ababa, which feared a reduction in traffic to the port of Zeila in British Somaliland. These fears proved well-founded: even half-finished, without links to either Harar or Addis Ababa, the railroad quickly eclipsed the port's former caravan-based trade.[9]

The firm also had difficulty selling its shares in Europe. Robert Le Roux campaigned for the line at municipal chambers of commerce around France,[10] but investor interest was restrained.[7] All in all, the initial stock offering only raised 8,738,000 francs of the 14 million projected, and an additional offering of 25.5 million francs in bonds yielded only 11,665,000 francs. This was far too little to complete the line. Despite the shortfall, construction began in October 1897 from Djibouti, a hitherto minor port city that eventually expanded thanks to the railway.

A crew of Arab and Somali workers,[11] overseen by Europeans, began to press inland with the railway and its associated telegraph. Ethiopians were hired largely as security forces, to prevent the theft of materials on the line. This was also an important source of corruption for the primarily French administration, which fabricated incidents of sabotage and requested funds to buy off local chiefs that it claimed were responsible for it. Furthermore, the line was forced to avoid interfering with local communities and water sources, pushing it out into the desert. This meant that the railway company had to build aqueducts to supply its steam locomotives, an additional unplanned expense.

Even before reaching the Ethiopian border, it was clear the firm had serious financial problems. A group of British investors calling themselves the New Africa Company effectively took control of the firm over several years. They provided a new source of capital, and by 1901 had joined with the French investors to form the International Ethiopian Railway Trust and Construction Company, a holding company which controlled the railway and supplied it with further capital. The mixture of French and British interests proved volatile, as each group of investors stood for both national and commercial interests. Both governments grew interested in monopolizing Ethiopian trade and conspired to force the other into a minority position. The demands and threats of the two governments led Emperor Menelek in 1902 to forbid the extension of the railway line to Harar. French negotiations to resume work were blocked by Menelek's growing suspicion of French motives, and the line could not earn enough to pay back the company's debts with such a limited service. The signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904 reopened the possibility of continued joint Anglo-French investment and development, but there was enough resistance to such proposals on both sides that no progress was made. The firm went formally bankrupt in 1906.

The portion completed ran from Djibouti to just short of Harar,[12] the principal entrepôt for commerce in southern Ethiopia.[9] The terminus evolved into the city of Dire Dawa, which grew to become larger than Harar itself. The first commercial service began in July 1901 from Djibouti to Dire Dawa.

Following the 1906 Tripartite Treaty between Italy, France, and Britain and the 1908 Klobukowski Treaty between France and Ethiopia, Menelek consented to further expansion of the railway. The new concession was granted to Menelek's personal physician, a black Guadeloupean named Dr. Vitalien, on 30 January 1908.[13] The assets of the former company were then transferred to a new firm, the Franco-Ethiopian Railway (Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Franco-Éthiopien[8]), which received a new concession to finish the line to Addis Ababa. After a year of wrangling with the previous financiers and their governments, construction began anew. By 1915 the line reached Akaki, only 23 kilometers from the capital, and two years later came all the way to Addis Ababa itself.

After having reached Addis Ababa, construction of railways stopped in Ethiopia. The original plans included an extension of the railway from Addis Ababa to the Didessa River near Jimma, which would allow the railway to access traffic from the main coffee-producing areas of Ethiopia. However, that plan was scrapped and the railway was considered to be complete after reaching Addis Ababa. In 1929, the main train station in Addis Ababa, the Legehar train station ('La Gare'), was completed and put into operation.[14] In the 1930s, the railway carried 70% of all Ethiopian trade.[15]^:95

Ethiopia's share in the railway was seized by the Italian government in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War (1936), but the Anglo-French company continued to operate during the Italian occupation. Steam trains of the Krupp type took approximately 36 hours to travel the full length of the line. Increased speeds were achieved by importing trains made by the Italian manufacturers Ansaldo and Breda, along with self-propelled cars from Fiat. Travel time decrease to 30 hours.[16]

The Italian "Addis Ababa Regulatory Plan of 1938" advocated the creation of three railway stations in the city of Addis Ababa to replace the Legehar train station, which would be demolished. The Italian occupiers also planned to build several new railways to link Ethiopia with their other East African colonies. The Addis Ababa–Dessie–Massaua Railway and the Gondar–Dessie–Assab Railway would reach Italian Eritrea, and the Addis Ababa–Dollo–Mogadishu Railway would reach Italian Somaliland. However, Italian setbacks in World War II forced the abandonment of these expansion projects. After British troops expelled the Italians in 1941 and restored Haile Selassie to the throne, the railway line was temporarily closed until 1944.

In 1947, the Railroad Workers Syndicate was founded as one of the first labor unions in Ethiopia.[17] Although the Syndicate was mostly a mutual aid organisation, the government viewed strikes as insurrection. A strike in 1949 was brutally suppressed.[18]

In 1960–1963, the Franco-Ethiopian Railways conducted surveys to extend the line 310 kilometers from Adama to Dilla. Although the French government offered a loan in 1965, the project was never realised.[19]

Following the independence of Djibouti in 1977, the French share in the railway was transferred to the new nation. Around 1982, the railway was subsequently reorganized as the Ethio-Djibouti Railways (Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Djibouto-Éthiopien[8]).

After World War II, the railway began a long period of decline. Traffic on the railway dropped in half from 1953 to 1957, as road transport began to compete for cargo.[20] The Ogaden War of 1977–1978 dealt a further blow to the railway, as Somali troops invaded Ethiopia and captured the railway as far as Dire Dawa.[21] Portions of the railway were blown up in the war, and railway operations were again cut in half.[22] After the war ended, the railway continued to decline from a lack of maintenance and attacks from rebels such as the Ogaden Liberation Front.[23]

Both the lack of maintenance and an ambitious road construction program made rail transport increasingly non-competitive. In January 1985, the Awash rail disaster killed 429 passengers when their train derailed on the Awash River Bridge and fell into the gorge below. Railway service ended in 2008 between Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa,[24] but trains continued to run between Dire Dawa and Djibouti.

Sign for Djibouti-Ethiopia Railway Line Rehabilitation Project (Dire Dawa station)

The governments of Ethiopia and Djibouti pursued foreign aid to rehabilitate the railway. The European Commission prepared a grant of EUR 40 million in 2003 and raised it to EUR 50 million in 2006. An agreement was signed with the Italian consortium Consta on November 29, 2006, and work began in 2007 on sections of the line that deteriorated following the Ogaden War. The rehabilitation planned to reduce the cost of rail transport between Addis Ababa and Djibouti from $55 per tonne to $20 per tonne, compared to $30 per tonne for road transport.[25] Lightweight rails of 20–25 kg/m would be replaced with heavier 40 kg/m rails, effectively doubling the allowed axle load of the trains on the railway line to 17 tons per axle.[27] Almost half of the rails would be replaced, and along with 49 damaged steel bridges.[25]

Abandoned track near Adama on the section Addis Ababa-Dire Dawa in 2014

In 2006, the South African firm Comazar was chosen to receive a 25-year concession.[28] However, 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.[29] The EU-funded rehabilitation project stagnated, and only 5 km of tracks had been rehabilitated by 2009.[30] The Addis Ababa railway terminal, La Gare, was threatened with demolition in 2008 by a street project, but the building survived.[31] The tracks between Dire Dawa and Addis Ababa fell into total disrepair, and many of the rails were stolen and sold for scrap.[32]

Rail service between Dire Dawa and Djibouti City ended in August 2010.[33][32][34] However, the rehabilitation project resumed, and the tracks from Dire Dawa to the Djibouti border were returned to service in 2013.[33]

As of 2018, trains run on 213 km of rehabilitated line between Dire Dawa and Guelile. However, very few passengers use the train.[2] There are plans to restore 150 km of tracks from Dire Dawa to Mieso.[3]

• Brisse, André (1901). "Djibouti et le chemin de fer du Harar". Annales de géographie (in French). 10 – via Persee.fr.
• Fontaine, Hugues (2012). Un Train en Afrique. African Train (in English and French). traduction by Yves-Marie Stranger; postface by Jean-Christophe Belliard; photographers Matthieu Germain Lambert and Pierre Javelot (bilingue français / anglais ed.). Addis Abeba: Centre Français des Études Éthiopiennes / Shama Books. ISBN 978-99944-867-1-7.
• Killion, Tom C. (1992). "Railroad Workers and the Ethiopian Imperial State: The Politics of Workers' Organization on the Franco-Ethiopian Railroad, 1919–1959". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 25 (3): 583–605. doi:10.2307/219026. JSTOR 219026.
• Robinson, Neil (2009). World Rail Atlas and Historical Summary. Volume 7: North, East and Central Africa. Barnsley, UK: World Rail Atlas Ltd. ISBN 978-954-92184-3-5.