Ethiopia and Nigeria have announced a new Gas-by-Rail Economic Corridor partnership designed to establish one of Africa’s most extensive freight systems, positioning Ethiopia as the host nation for a proposed 73,500-kilometre railway linking 40 Sub-Saharan African countries.
The initiative, led by Nigeria’s Insight Dynamic Resources in cooperation with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Transport and Logistics, is structured as a private-sector programme supported by global technology and industrial partners. According to project documents, the corridor would operate alongside a continental power system built on as many as 470 high-efficiency gas turbines, generating an estimated 270 gigawatts of baseload energy. A virtual hydrogen-fuel pipeline capable of transporting 100 million tonnes annually is planned to supply the turbines.
Developers estimate the scale of the operation will require a logistics fleet of more than 5,100 heavy-haul locomotives, nearly 80,000 specialised tank units and about 100,000 freight wagons and coaches. Musa Ibrahim, founder of the Gas-by-Rail initiative, described the fleet as needing an integrated “nervous system” to coordinate operations.
Siemens Mobility has been selected to provide that digital backbone through its Xcelerator platform. The system uses artificial intelligence and digital-twin modelling to monitor infrastructure, analyse network conditions and optimise capacity in real time. It is designed to support more than two billion users under a unified smart-rail framework.
Musa told Birrmetrics that the programme’s cost is expected to range between five hundred million and one trillion US dollars, depending on implementation phases.
According to Bareo Hassen, Ethiopia’s state minister for transport and logistics, the country has more than 5,000 kilometres of designed railway routes with potential connectivity to regional ports, although only 902 kilometres currently operate. He said private-sector investment will be essential to expand the network and align it with the African Continental Free Trade Area’s connectivity goals. Bareo added that the project could open access to more than 1,000 kilometres of new rail infrastructure across 40 states while reducing pressure on forests by limiting woodfuel dependence.
The initiative is built around three key components. The first is an industrial programme featuring a green-steel complex developed with SMS Group to enable domestic production of rail tracks. The second is a digital architecture in partnership with Siemens Mobility to establish the One Africa Network through blockchain-based freight systems. The third is a decarbonisation plan with Wabtec Corporation, which includes deployment of FLXdrive battery-electric locomotives intended to strengthen clean-energy logistics.
If advanced to full scale, the Gas-by-Rail Corridor would represent one of the continent’s largest attempts at coordinated infrastructure development and long-distance freight integration, linking East, West and Central Africa through a shared network with Ethiopia at its centre.