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This opens up a lot of investment/business opportunities.

Ethiopia is land-locked and given its not-so-great relationship with Eritrea, uses Djibouti as its primary port. The time-savings of the railway will bring down port-to-Addis shipment times to 12 hours which is awesome considering it can take 3 days now (although the customs process will need to be improved to really speed it up)

It will also reduce the costs necessary to repair the roadways that trucks take to get to Djibouti and back. The incoming lane on these roads is often rutted like crazy due to the weight of the goods and truck drivers are not always the most reliable people.

Ethiopia is also home to one of the fastest growing economies in the world and it is extremely import-dependent. The lower the costs for transit, the lower the costs for the consumer.

RE: wanting to be where the growth is, you really need to be here to see it (I spend most of my time in Ethiopia) You don't have to know the local language and you don't need millions of dollars but you need to have an appetite for risk and be an extremely patient person. Nothing generally works out the way you think it will here so be open to other outcomes and be resilient through it all.

PM if you have any questions.

> So I want to be where the growth is happening. How do I do that? Do I need millions of dollars before I can achieve anything? Should I learn Mandarin, Hindi, or Swahili? In the past, I would have had to visit some of these countries and talk to some local entrepreneurs. Now I can just do my own research, meet people online, and have Skype calls. There's really no need to travel in order to find opportunities.

I don't know anything about Africa or China, but I just spent 1 month backpacking through India doing exactly this: meeting local entrepreneurs (tech industry, non tech, small business, street vendors, etc) and meeting people and families from the north to the south. To really get an appreciation for a market, how the consumers in that market think, and the obvious problems and opportunities around you, you HAVE to go there and see it for yourself. I spent the previous 2-3 years keeping an eye on Indian development from the West, but the 4 weeks I was there eclipsed any prior learning I did. Go visit.

English is absolutely required, but you are already there.

Otherwise, Mandarin isn't that useful actually, as most Chinese you work with will speak better English than your Chinese could ever be, and anyways, finding a bilingual Chinese is not that hard. I'm not sure, from a business perspective, if learning it is productive; but it makes sense from an enrichment perspective.

Considering many Indians don't speak Hindi natively or at all, I would strongly recommend one of the other options. Most higher-level business in India is conducted (or can easily be conducted) in English, and many upper-class or entrepreneurial Indians are more comfortable with English than Hindi.