the west coast. In the west, the centres served by these ports are close by, sometimes right outside the port gate. In east Africa, by contrast, they are between 500km and 1,000km away, and most of the infrastructure needed to reach them has not yet been built. In the case of the Doraleh container terminal at Djibouti, the goal is the Ethiopian highlands and the valley of the White Nile at Khartoum, a cluster roughly equivalent to the population of Japan. In East Africa, a similar-sized population is grouped in the Great Lakes states, South Sudan and the DRC. All of these centres, with the marginal exception of the DRC, are landlocked.

Their ability to attract investment and benefit from globalisation depends, among other things, on having efficient rail,is an efficient team comprising China, Ethiopia and Djibouti, which opened a $4bn, 750km electrified railway from the port at Djibouti to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa at the end of 2016.

Projected to finish second is Kenya, with its much longer planned railway stretching from the ancient port of Mombasa through its capital, Nairobi, and northeast to Uganda. This link is well under way within Kenya, and Uganda is pressing on with its portion.

In third place is Tanzania with its planned 2,190-km railway from the port city of Dar es Salaam inland to Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC. This railway has had trouble getting started, with signs of behind-the-scenes wrangling between Chinese lenders and Tanzania’s new cost-cutting president, John Magufuli. He is pressing on, however.

So Djibouti, Mombasa and Dar