Transport and infrastructure in Ethiopia

Our listing of the primary kinds of transport compares the infrastructure of Ethiopia with the average of all countries in Africa. In many places, the traffic routes show considerable deficiencies and are often not in a particularly good condition.

In terms of the length of its rail network, Ethiopia ranks 133rd in the world with 0.01 meters per inhabitant. In total, the rail network is 659 kilometers long.

› Airports in Ethiopia

Back to overview: Ethiopia

Road traffic

The network of roads and highways has a total length of 120,171 km. For each of the country's 114.96 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 1.05 meters. This puts Ethiopia in 199th place in the global ranking. However, the country's size and population density of around 104 inhabitants per km² must also be taken into account. Countries with fewer inhabitants on the same or even larger area naturally achieve quite different values here and have to connect remote areas to the transport network despite a smaller population.

With an average of 27610 traffic fatalities per year (2012 - 2019), road traffic in Ethiopia is considered quite dangerous. This corresponds to around 4.3 accident fatalities per 26.6 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 5.9 in the European Union as a whole and 17.1 worldwide.

In Ethiopia, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, i.e. people drive in the right-hand lane and overtake on the left. Oncoming traffic comes toward you on the left side. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Ethiopia
Roadways	120,200 km	1,045.30 km	108.82 m
Railroads	700 km	5.73 km	0.60 m
Waterways	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Commercial harbors	11	0.10	0.000
Airports	57	0.50	0.052

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Africa
Roadways	3,002,100 km	2,239.70 km	99.00 m
Railroads	88,600 km	66.09 km	2.92 m
Waterways	50,100 km	37.35 km	1.65 m
Commercial harbors	7,829	5.84	0.000
Airports	3,159	2.36	0.000

Data sources used

• Global Health Observatory Data Repository (World Health Organization)
• UNCTAD
• Internation Union of Railways (UIC)
• CIA Factbook
• OECD Statistics
• Wikipedia (german)

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