Ethiopia is negotiating with Brazil, Russia and India to finance and build rail links after agreeing terms last year with Chinese and Turkish companies for other routes, the head of the state rail company said.

Russia’s government may fund a 587-kilometer (365-mile) southern line that will eventually connect with a proposed port at Lamu on Kenya’s northeastern coast. Brazilian companies could build a 439-kilometer section of a route to oil-rich South Sudan and India is considering export financing for a line to a port in Djibouti, he said.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation, is building 4,744 kilometers of electrified railway lines at a cost of 110.8 billion birr ($5.9 billion) as it seeks to reduce road-transport costs constraining the continent’s fastest growing non-oil producing economy over the past decade. Growth may slow to 6.5 percent this year and next, compared with average growth of 8.7 percent over the past five years, according to International Monetary Fund data.

Ethiopian Railways plans to lay more than 2,000 kilometers of standard-gauge track during a five-year national growth plan that runs until mid-2015. China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. and China Railway Group Ltd. (390) are working on sections costing more than $1 billion each along Ethiopia’s main 656- kilometer trade route from Addis Ababa to Djibouti.

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