; Amharic: የኢትዮ-ጅቡቲ ባቡር መስመር) is a metre gauge railway in the Horn of Africa that once connected Addis Ababa to the port city of Djibouti.

After World War II, the railway progressively fell into a state of disrepair due to competition from road transport.

The line connected the new Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa (1886) to the Port of Djibouti in French Somaliland, providing landlocked Ethiopia with railway access to the sea.

[4] Railway construction started in 1897, one year after Ethiopia preserved its independence against Italian imperialism at the Battle of Adwa.

Prior to the construction of the railway, it took six weeks to travel from the coast to Addis Ababa by camel and mule caravan.

The Ethio-Djibouti Railway made the Ethiopian Empire more accessible to the outside world, improving its economic and military competitiveness.

The 2007–2012 rehabilitation program funded by the European Union set up two factories in Ethiopia, one in Dukem for steel products and one in Dire Dawa for concrete sleepers.

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.

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.

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.

Robert Le Roux campaigned for the line at municipal chambers of commerce around France,[11] but investor interest was restrained.

Despite the shortfall, construction began in October 1897 from Djibouti, a hitherto minor port city that eventually expanded thanks to the railway.

[citation needed] A crew of Arab and Somali workers,[12] overseen by Europeans, began to press inland with the railway and its associated telegraph.

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.

This meant that the railway company had to build aqueducts to supply its steam locomotives, an additional unplanned expense.

The demands and threats of the two governments led Emperor Menelek in 1902 to forbid the extension of the railway line to Harar.

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.

[citation needed] The portion completed ran from Djibouti to just short of Harar,[13] the principal entrepôt for commerce in southern Ethiopia.

[14] The assets of the former company were then transferred to a new firm, the Franco-Ethiopian Railway (Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Franco-Éthiopien[9]), which received a new concession to finish the line to Addis Ababa.

Increased speeds were achieved by importing trains made by the Italian manufacturers Ansaldo and Breda, along with self-propelled cars from Fiat.

After British troops expelled the Italians in 1941 and restored Haile Selassie to the throne, the railway line was temporarily closed until 1944.

[23] After the war ended, the railway continued to decline from a lack of maintenance and attacks from rebels such as the Ogaden Liberation Front.

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.

[29] 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.

[31] The Addis Ababa railway terminal, La Gare, was threatened with demolition in 2008 by a street project, but the building survived.

[32] The tracks between Dire Dawa and Addis Ababa fell into total disrepair, and many of the rails were stolen and sold for scrap.

The Ethio-Djibouti Railways Enterprise formally ceased to exist at the end of the year 2016, as the concession originally issued in 1894 by Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia wasn't renewed.