Lekempti-Gimbu Road, Ethiopia

The Imperial Coffee Road. This is how the route connecting Lekempti to Gimbu, in Ethiopia, can be described. This imperial road was created to improve and make travel between the Ethiopian region of Wollega and the capital Addis Ababa, and thus the Red Sea, possible and easy throughout the year.

Coffee road, as we mentioned. The region is one of the main coffee-producing areas, and the epicenter is located precisely in Gimbi, a place that, before the construction of this road, was reachable only by a truck track, passable only in the dry season.

The road extends for a total length of 110 km along a mountainous route, crossing a plateau characterized by numerous watercourses and very dense vegetation.

The construction of the road required efficient organization and careful planning, as well as the availability of equipment, to overcome serious difficulties, including environmental ones, along the entire route, heightened by the exceptional rainfall encountered, which forced work to be suspended every year for more than 6 months. To meet the project deadlines, it was necessary to set up an enormous system, which included a large array of machinery, plants, and equipment, with a total installed power of over 15,000 horsepower.

For the execution of the excavations and the 2 million m3 of embankments alone, about 60 large machines were used, divided into various operational groups, which allowed an average daily earth-moving production of around 8,000 m³.

During the construction, which took place between 1964 and 1968, about 1,200 workers and around sixty technicians and employees were employed.