Ten years ago, when the late leader of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, planned to build a 5,000-km standard gauge railway, the Export-Import Bank of China provided the landlocked country with a loan of US$2.5 billion.That loan and the construction of a building 800 kilometers of railway The east-west direction lies between the capital Addis Ababa and the port city of neighboring Djibouti. It will be built by Chinese engineers and use Chinese locomotives.

Then, in 2013, the Ethiopian government signed an engineering and procurement contract for Another line.The purpose of this route is to run approximately the same distance from south to north, between the central town of Awash and the now war-torn capital Merkel Tigray area. The contractor is the Turkish construction group Yapi Merkezi, which helped the Turkish Export-Import Bank, Credit Suisse and the European Export Credit Agency provide 1.1 billion US dollars in funding.

The two routes now provide an opportunity to compare the main infrastructure of Chinese and non-Chinese companies in the same African country.

“The roads for these two projects are a bit bumpy,” said Chen Yunan, an expert on Chinese investment in Africa and the author of what she called a “policy brief.”Railway politics“For the Johns Hopkins University China-Africa Research Program. “There will always be teething problems. “Especially for China Railway, she added: “This is a completely imported technology, which is very mature in China, but Ethiopia has never built such a standard gauge railway. ”

Financing proved to be a big difference. Chen said that when Ethiopia was unable to repay its debts due to a chronic shortage of foreign currency, the Chinese proved their flexibility. In contrast, European loans have built-in penalties for late repayment. In 2018, China granted Ethiopia a one-year debt extension period. Prime Minister Abi Ahmed subsequently negotiated to extend the repayment period from 10 years to 30 years.

But this flexibility comes at a price. Chen said that although the Turkish project allowed Ethiopia to choose its own project manager and give it greater influence in technology transfer negotiations, under the Chinese project, it had to hire a China International Engineering Consulting Company and the training was “not as good as expected.”

Local officials said that China offered to teach engineering students in Tianjin and Chengdu, but sacrificed on-the-job training in Ethiopia to complete the construction on time. Chen said that post-construction training is better-including guidance on locomotives, driving, signals and electrical engineering. But this is hindered by language problems, because few Chinese teachers can speak English.

In contrast, the Turkish group Yapi Merkezi uses English as its working language and has trained 40 Ethiopian Railways employees on site, hiring many employees for the second phase.

However, neither of the two railways went according to plan. Yapi Merkezi completed part of the route in 2019, but the second part from Wediya to Mekelle stalled due to lack of funds.

The Addis-Djibouti line completed in 2018 has been plagued by power problems, partly because of Ethiopia’s insistence on electrification. As a result, Ethiopia’s industrial zone exporters were delayed by sporadic services and the high cost of transporting goods to the last mile of the railroad, and did not use it as expected.

Aboubaker Omar Hadi, chairman of the Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority, said that the lack of rolling stock also hindered the success of the railway: “The goods are there, the business is there. [but] Roads take up a larger share, with 2,000 trucks coming in and out every day. “

Chen said that some of them may be inevitable. Nevertheless, she concluded that the government needs to do better in integrating construction projects into the local economy. They also need to build their own technical capabilities and be smarter to ensure that when the contractor packs and leaves, countries get exactly what they expect.

Additional report by Andres Schipani in Djibouti