The electric line to the sea: freight tariffs on the Addis–Djibouti railway
Rail wins on the long haul and loses on the first mile; the tariff has to cover both.
The electrified line between Addis Ababa and the coast was built to take freight off the road, and it does — when the tariff, the timetable and the terminal handling at both ends line up.
Rail competes with a trucking sector that is fragmented, flexible and priced daily. Shippers weigh a lower per-tonne rate against the cost of moving containers to and from the railhead, and small differences in that first and last mile decide the mode.
Power supply sits underneath the economics. An electrified corridor converts generation capacity into transport capacity, which ties the freight tariff to the same grid questions that shape everything else on this line.
The number to watch is the share of containerised traffic that moves by rail over a full year, rather than in the months when the road is worst.