Already the second most populous country in Africa, Ethiopia’s population of 112 million continues to grow rapidly (2.6% per year). The country has recently undergone profound economic and political reforms—including to the logistics sector, which is recognized as inefficient and costly. Designed in 2019, Ethiopia’s ambitious Home Grown Economic Reform Agenda attempts to leverage infrastructure development achievements from the last decade by providing more opportunities for the private sector to participate in the economy and fuel expected growth. To facilitate this, the Reform Agenda seeks to remove structural bottlenecks that hinder investment and focus on emerging growth sectors (such as agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, mining, and information and communications technology). Getting products from the sectors to market relies on a timely and efficient logistics sector.
A landlocked country, Ethiopia relies on a single transport corridor (the Djibouti corridor) for 98% of its import/export traffic. Diversification of access to the sea has become a priority, due to high costs along this corridor, a growing volume of goods creating congestion and delays at the Djibouti port, and the need to prevent access disruptions. Ethiopia’s government has focused on alternative international transport corridors (via Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, and Somaliland) to increase competitiveness in trade and promote growth through regional integration.
The specific objectives of the Technical Assistance to Ethiopia's Transport and Logistics Sectors project were:
The project provided a diagnostic of the logistics sector and identified the following key problems to resolve:
The project goals were to:
