At dawn, Dire Dawa—Ethiopia’s second-largest city—awakens to the sound of freight trains and morning prayers. Mist rises from the valley, revealing the outline of cranes at the dry port and the soft bustle of the Qafira bazaar. On one side is the memory of movement—the old French railway station that once tied Addis Ababa to the sea. On the other, the hum of modern logistics and automated factories. Between them runs the story of Africa’s urban future.
Dire Dawa sits on the Addis–Djibouti trade and transport spine, the 700-kilometer route that carries most of Ethiopia’s external commerce. It’s home to about 1.3 million people and growing quickly. A century ago, it was a railway town. Today, it’s a logistics and manufacturing hub with a free-trade zone, a dry port, and a large industrial park. Few places better illustrate how regional economic networks shape both transport flows and entire job ecosystems.
From Routes to Economies
The urban economics of a node city are simple and powerful. When connectivity improves, the cost of distance falls. Inputs arrive faster, goods reach markets sooner, and firms can plan with confidence. That reliability attracts investment. Wholesalers expand storage. Retailers diversify stock. Transport operators add routes. The city becomes a time-saver, and time saved creates value.
Yet connectivity doesn’t guarantee inclusion. The real challenge for Dire Dawa—and for hundreds of medium-sized cities across Africa—is turning throughput into livelihoods. A regional route can move containers efficiently, but can it move people into better jobs?
In the Qafira bazaar, trade is dense and sensory. The air carries the sharp scent of berbere—the deep red pepper that colors Ethiopia’s firfir—mixed with roasted coffee and a hint of diesel. Merchants stack pyramids of spices, negotiate prices, and exchange small loans over mobile phones. It’s commerce powered by proximity and trust. Thousands of families depend on it.
A few kilometers away, another economy hums inside the Dire Dawa Industrial Park—a vast yarn factory. The floor gleams. Machines spin almost silently. Sensors blink. The process is nearly fully automated. A handful of technicians—young, trained, focused—monitor dashboards tracking output and quality. It’s a feat of efficiency, and a quiet warning. The plant makes world-class textiles with a fraction of the workers that similar output once required.
The question lingers: Where will the jobs of the future come from in cities where automation is standard?
Factories as Platforms, Not Just Employers
We were taught to see factories as job engines. That model is shifting. The opportunity now lies not only inside the factory gate, but around it. A modern plant creates demand for supplier firms, repair services, logistics providers, packaging, certification, and design. The employment multiplier moves outward—from the production line to the ecosystem that supports it.
For cities like Dire Dawa, that means thinking of factories as platforms for local enterprise, not just employers. When industrial parks source locally, train locally, and service locally, they multiply jobs far beyond their boundaries. This is how secondary cities along major trade routes move from being transit points to value-creation systems.
To make that shift, three investments matter:
- Skills that match new technology. The city needs thousands of technicians who can maintain machines, manage quality, and run logistics—applied skills delivered through practical, industry-linked training.
- Local supplier networks. SMEs producing packaging, spare parts, uniforms, cleaning services, and testing can become the backbone of urban job creation—if they have access to credit, serviced land, and reliable power.
- Efficient urban logistics. Freight routing, last-mile connectivity, and safe, regulated urban transport let goods and workers move cheaply and predictably, which is what productivity feeds on.
The City as a System of Time
Cities create jobs by building infrastructure and reducing uncertainty. When buses arrive on time, when power is stable, when permits take weeks instead of months, economic planning becomes possible. That predictability is what lets firms hire and households invest.
In this sense, a well-run city is a system for converting uncertainty into reliable time. Dire Dawa’s future depends on how well it can make time predictable—for exporters, workers, and traders alike. That means transit linking neighborhoods to jobs, serviced land for SMEs within 30 minutes of the park, worker housing that doesn’t devour wages, safe streets for night shifts, and sensible freight management in residential areas.
Secondary Cities, Primary Stakes
Africa’s employment challenge will be met or missed in cities like Dire Dawa, not only in capitals. By 2050, nearly half of the continent’s urban growth will occur in medium-sized cities, many positioned along strategic trade and transport routes. These places stitch together infrastructure investments, logistics, and local enterprise. Policy choices here will decide whether urbanization becomes a ladder or a trap.
The World Bank’s work in Ethiopia and across Eastern and Southern Africa increasingly focuses on cities as job creators—through integrated programs that link infrastructure, land use, skills, and municipal finance. Investments in industrial parks, vocational education, urban mobility, and local business ecosystems are all part of the same equation: enabling node cities to function as engines of opportunity.
As the sun sets, the bazaar quiets. The air still smells of red peppers and coffee. A freight train rolls east toward Djibouti, containers catching the orange light. It’s tempting to see two worlds—the automated and the human—but they’re one economy. The train, the port, the market, the factory, the household: each depends on the others.
Cities like Dire Dawa remind us that urbanization is about where people live and how they earn. The future of work will be shaped by the thousands of linkages that tie regional trade routes to neighborhood livelihoods. If managed well, these secondary cities can become what every nation needs most—a platform for productivity, inclusion, and dignity. And perhaps, somewhere in Qafira, as the aroma of firfir fills the evening air, you can already smell that future taking shape.
This feature was written by Abhas K. Jha, Manager, Urban Development and Disaster Risk Management, Eastern and Southern Africa, World Bank
