Addis Ababa: Home of Sub-Saharan Africa’s First Light-Rail System
Addis Ababa is booming these days. As the the capital of Ethiopia, which is Africa’s fastest growing non-oil-exporting economy, it enjoys an average economic growth of 10 percent per year. While Ethiopia’s economic growth is stunning, many worry that its style of state-driven capitalism is unsustainable. To this end, the government has embarked on a five-year growth and transformation plan intended to boost infrastructure and industrialization and to change Ethiopia’s global image from famine and corruption-ridden to a healthy nation attractive to foreign investment. This image recently got a boost in Addis Ababa, where the government recently opened to the public the first light-rail system in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its two lines run north-south and east-west, and they can carry 60,000 to 100,000 people per day from the suburbs to the city for work.
Ethiopia’s shift toward greater economic engagement with foreign countries is clear in the new light rail system: eighty-five percent of the funding came from loans from the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Ethiopian Railways Company heading the project hopes to use investment from the rest of the “BRICS” countries to build similar rail systems in Djibouti, Sudan, and Gabon. But the new light-rail system also serves the government’s development goals by increasing transportation accessibility. While there is already an established public transportation system in place, it is an informal one that consists mainly of minibus services or taxis, which move workers and travelers short distances at low prices. Instead of competing with these taxis, the light rail is intended to complement them by primarily serving workers taking longer trips, thus freeing up some space on the congested streets of the city. The cost for a rail ticket ranges from about thirty to fifty cents; they are heavily subsidized by the government so that lower-income workers are able to commute to the city.
There has been some local and supranational backlash, however. Many watchdog organizations have noted that the Ethiopian government is spending a substantial amount of money on its transportation system when millions of its citizens still live on under two dollars a day. Addis Ababa itself often experiences power shortages, something that will not be a problem for the Ethiopian Electric and Power Authority (EEPA), the power supplier for the new project. The light rail will run on hydroelectricity generated from dams located all over the country, and as it does not share power with the city of Addis Ababa, it will avoid its power interruptions and shortages.
Many citizens have also expressed outrage over the mass displacements of populations - Ethiopia has over four hundred thousand internally displaced persons - that the government has undertaken to make room for the light rail, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and other industrialization projects. After demolishing their homes, the government relocates these people to various locations around the city, often neighborhoods without access to schools and clinics. The government brutally suppresses protests against these measures: In 2014, at least nine students were killed and hundreds were injured in a peaceful protest against a “master plan” to expand Addis Ababa into the surrounding Oromia state, which protesters said would threaten the local farmers with mass displacements, when security forces used live ammunition to disperse the crowds. Possibly dozens more have been killed since November 2015, as the demonstrations against urban expansion continue.
There is good reason to hope that the light rail system will lead to even greater economic growth in Addis Ababa. When Cairo first opened the Metro in 1987, the capacity of the city’s public transport infrastructure increased from around twenty thousand passengers per hour to over sixty thousand. The Cairo Metro also created problems in the community during its development, causing power outages for several weeks. However, this was but a hiccough in the history of the Metro, and the lasting change was not deleterious, but an invaluable increase in the city’s transit capacity; perhaps one day the same may be said of Addis Ababa. And soon Ethiopia will be joined by Kenya and Nigeria, which are both in the process of developing their own metro systems. The new light rail is a great step for Ethiopian infrastructure and holds promise for the rest of the region, but the government needs to work harder on providing for its citizens with basic needs, and on equally supporting workers in non-major urban areas.
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