Addis Ababa — Habiba Awol, 24, is excited ahead of her first train ride.
Standing behind me in the ticket queue at the Menelik II Square station in the heart of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, she turns to her friend and says with a giggle: "Kedir told me that I will reach Kaliti in 10 minutes."
"Well, we shall see that," the friend, a young man in his mid-20s replies, trying to mask his own enthusiasm about a journey that normally takes about half an hour by minibus taxi.
After buying a one-way ticket for six birr (about $0.25) and undergoing a body and bag search by police, we make our way down a tunnel into the subway.
ELATED CITIZENS
An escalator to the side is not yet functional but no one seems to mind the descent; Ethiopians have been waiting forever for a commuter train.
"Wow! It is beautiful inside," Habiba exclaims when we get to the platform below. "Betam yamiral," her friend says in Amharic, in agreement. About three minutes later more than 100 of us board a green and white train with two Chinese operators on-board, dressed in blue.
The doors close and the train slowly inches forward, its electric motors purring louder as it picks up speed.
For about a minute we travel in the dark tunnel underground. "The underground is scary," Habiba says, clearly the more talkative of the two, but soon sunlight pours into the train as we emerge out of the tunnel and start whizzing past familiar neighbourhoods.
FULFILLING A VOW
The Addis Ababa city light electric train opened to the public only last week after a delay of several months.
It is part of a planned 4,744-kilometre long nationwide railway network that the government unveiled in 2010 and promised to complete within five years.
That deadline will not be met but across the country the sights and sounds of an ambitious infrastructure projects are clearly visible.
A new standard-gauge network is under construction to link landlocked Ethiopia to the sea and to its neighbours.
AMBITIOUS PROJECTS
A Chinese-built line from Addis to the seaport in Djibouti is almost complete while a Turkish firm is building a 400-km line from Awash, in the centre of Ethiopia, to Hara Gebeya in the north.
So far only half of the Addis commuter train line has been completed, running from Menelik II to Kaliti.
When complete, it will run across 34 kilometres and carry 60,000 passengers per hour with a top speed of 80kph.
Expected to cost $475 million and funded 85 per cent by the China Export-Import Bank, the Addis Ababa commuter train is one of a long list of ambitious infrastructure projects the Ethiopian government is undertaking as it seeks to break out as an African economic giant.
CHEAP ELECTRICITY
Ethiopia's economy grew by 10.3 per cent between 2013 and 2014 and its population of 80 million has made it attractive to particularly Chinese manufacturers seeking to move their facilities to low-wage markets with growing demand.
A complex of new hydropower dams on the River Nile are expected to produce a surplus of cheap electricity with cheap labour and easy transport links move Ethiopia into manufacturing.
While concerns remain about democracy and respect for human rights, Ethiopia's strong government and state-owned land have allowed the state to avoid the lengthy court battles that beset other countries in the region as they undertake major infrastructure projects.
TRAIN FOR THE PEOPLE
Meanwhile, as the train approaches the central station near Addis Ababa Stadium, I ask the passengers around me what they think of the ride.
"I used to pay 10 to 13 birrand now I pay six birr so it is good for me," says one who has been riding the train daily since it was commissioned.
"The problem is there is no limit to the number of passengers in one train," says another. "I fear that it will soon turn into a hub for pickpockets like we see on Ambessa buses," says another, referring to government-owned city commuter buses that, hitherto, were the main form of transport for low-income earners in the city.
