Africa's first railway (Alexandria–Cairo)
Primer ferrocarril de África (Alejandría–El Cairo)
- Date
- 1854 · confidence high
- Place
- Alexandria, Egypt
- Credited to
- Abbas I, Robert Stephenson
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A standard-gauge line between Alexandria and Kafr el-Zayat inaugurated in 1854, which reached Cairo in 1856 and Suez in 1858. It is Africa's first railway and opened the overland route between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea before the Canal.
Robert Stephenson directed the design; Viceroy Abbas I approved the agreement in 1851 with Egyptian funds.
What it led to
- the overland route of British India through Egypt and the opening of the Suez Canal
- the Egyptian railway network, the oldest on the continent