THE PROJECT DIRECTORS EXPANDING AFRICA’S RAPIDLY GROWING RAIL NETWORKS

Across Africa, a new generation of rail builders is transforming decades of underinvestment into one of the world’s most ambitious infrastructure drives. More than 20,000 kilometres of new or rehabilitated rail lines are under construction or in advanced planning financed by Chinese, European, Turkish, Gulf, and increasingly African capital. These are not just tracks being laid; they are lifelines for minerals, agricultural goods, commuters, and cross-border trade. Designed to cut transport costs by up to 50 percent and unlock the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area, the projects are driven by determined project directors whose engineering expertise and diplomatic skill are stitching the continent together.

In Ethiopia, engineer Dereje Asfaw has become the public face of the country’s rapid railway expansion. As Chief Project Coordinator of the Ethiopian Railways Corporation, he delivered the 756 km Addis Ababa–Djibouti standard-gauge line in 2018 Ethiopia’s first electrified freight link to the sea. Today, Asfaw is coordinating more than 1,500 km of new lines branching from the capital, including the Awash–Woldiya–Mekelle corridor and a planned cross-border connection to Sudan. His work requires round-the-clock negotiations with Chinese EPC contractors, delicate compensation talks with local communities, and constant coordination with regional administrations eager for the economic boost railways promise. Despite mountainous terrain and periodic funding bottlenecks, Asfaw has kept construction moving.

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Further south, Michelle Phillips is steering South Africa’s rail revival from inside Transnet Freight Rail once a symbol of decline, now slowly regaining momentum. As CEO, Phillips has launched a R120 billion recovery programme that includes reopening key sections of the historic Cape Town–Cairo route through Zimbabwe and Zambia, modernising the coal export corridor to Richards Bay, and allowing private operators into freight corridors once dominated by the state. A civil engineer by training, she is known for her hands-on style: walking construction sites, demanding weekly progress reviews, and directly confronting contractors when slippages occur. Her leadership is reshaping the continent’s most industrialised rail network.

In West Africa, Senegalese engineer Fatou Niang Ndiaye is quietly rewriting the rules of project delivery. As Managing Director of the Dakar–Bamako Railway rehabilitation, she is overseeing the full renewal of the 1,286 km metre-gauge line linking Senegal’s coast to Mali’s interior, with a long-term plan to convert it to standard gauge. Working with French, Indian, and local firms, Ndiaye has secured €2.3 billion in blended finance and introduced performance-based contracts that impose daily penalties for delays. When floods washed away track segments in 2024, she deployed emergency teams within two days maintaining the project’s 2027 completion timeline and earning respect across the region.

Kenya’s Silas Kinoti has emerged as East Africa’s leading “rail diplomat.” As Director of Northern Corridor projects at Kenya Railways Corporation, he delivered the 472 km Mombasa–Nairobi SGR in 2017 and is now pushing Phase 2C from Naivasha to Kisumu and Malaba on the Ugandan border. Kinoti frequently travels between Nairobi, Kampala, and Kigali to harmonise timetables, tariffs, axle-load standards, and customs processes ensuring the railway functions as a regional network rather than a national asset. His mantra, “the train must not stop at the border,” has become shorthand for East African integration.

Across the Congo Basin, Cameroonian engineer Marie-Thérèse Maba is confronting one of the continent’s toughest assignments: building the 540 km railway linking the deep-water port of Kribi to the Mbalam-Nabeba iron ore mines on the Cameroon–Congo frontier. As Project Director for Sundance Resources and its local partners, Maba has navigated dense rainforest, sensitive wildlife habitats, and the complexities of tripartite agreements between two governments and Chinese investors.

In North Africa, Egyptian Major-General Essam Waly is leading the country’s high-speed rail transformation. As Chairman of the National Authority for Tunnels, he oversees the Cairo–Aswan 1,200 km electric line, introducing 300 km/h trains that will cut the journey from 12 hours to under five. A military engineer with a PhD in transportation planning, Waly runs the project with tight discipline: contractors face fines for daily delays, and localisation requirements have generated around 40,000 Egyptian jobs across signalling, rolling stock, and station construction.

By 2030, their combined efforts will add more new rail track in a decade than Africa built in the entire century after independence. When the last spikes are laid on the Lobito–Dar es Salaam corridor, the Lagos–Algiers route, and the long-dreamed Cape-to-Cairo connection, the continent will no longer be defined by its missing links. Instead, it will be bound together by the vision and tenacity of the engineers who refused to let geography or history set the limits.