Djibouti City

The city is young. France obtained the coast in the 1880s and in 1888 founded a new port on the peninsula of Ras Djibouti, on a previously uninhabited stretch of coast; it became the capital in 1896 in place of Obock on the north shore, valued for its better harbour and its nearness to Harar. The settlement was laid out in two parts that still shape it: a grid of arcaded European streets on the point, and an African quarter behind it around the market.

What made the town was the railway. Construction of a metre-gauge line to the Ethiopian highlands began in 1897 and reached Addis Ababa in 1917, giving landlocked Ethiopia a sea outlet and Djibouti a reason to exist. The port grew on that traffic, and the town became the capital of French Somaliland and later of the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas. Independence came in 1977, and the new state kept the port at the centre of its economy.

Since then the city has grown far beyond the colonial grid, above all into Balbala in the south-west, and has absorbed people from the drought-hit interior and refugees from neighbouring countries. Container terminals, most recently at Doraleh, and free-trade zones were built west of the old harbour, and foreign military bases were established around the city. A new standard-gauge electric railway to Addis Ababa opened in 2018 on a new, straighter alignment, replacing the old line.

Djibouti City is where the country's two main communities, the Somali Issa and the Afar, live alongside each other, together with long-settled Yemeni Arab families, Ethiopians and a shifting foreign population of diplomats, aid workers, sailors and soldiers. Arabic and French are the official languages; Somali and Afar are what people speak in the street.

The rhythm of social life is set by heat and by khat, the mildly stimulant leaf brought in daily by road from Ethiopia. Its arrival and distribution in the early afternoon empties parts of the city for a few hours, as men gather in groups to chew and talk. Tea heavy with sugar and spice and cardamom-scented coffee are the drinks of welcome in any house or shop.

The city is Muslim and the pattern of the week and the year follows the mosque: Friday prayers, Ramadan nights when the streets stay busy until very late, and the two Eids as the great family festivals. Poetry and oral storytelling, central to both Somali and Afar tradition, remain a live art. The French and international presence gives the centre a cosmopolitan edge — signage in two scripts, cafés with pastries, restaurants from half a dozen countries — unusual in a city of this size.

Around three-quarters of Djibouti's population lives in the capital, about 780,000 people in 2024 estimates; it is by far the largest settlement in the country. Most live in the inland districts, particularly Balbala, rather than in the colonial centre.

The economy is almost entirely services tied to the port, the railway, the free-trade zones, transit trade with Ethiopia and rent from the foreign bases. There is very little manufacturing and almost no farming, and much of the food is imported. Formal jobs are scarce, unemployment is high, and a large informal economy of small trade, transport and street selling fills the gap.

The day is organised around the heat. Work, school and market trading start early and thin out by late morning; the middle of the day is spent indoors or in the shade; and the streets fill again in the late afternoon and evening, when families walk along the seafront and the cafés and grill stands open. Housing, water supply and the cost of living in the outer districts are the recurring issues of city life.

The capital eats Somali, Afar, Yemeni and French food, often on the same street. Skoudehkaris, a one-pot dish of rice cooked with spiced lamb or goat, is the national dish and the standard meal in small eating houses. Stews of goat, lamb or fish, spiced with cumin, cardamom and the xawaash mix, are eaten with rice or with lahoh, a spongy fermented pancake also known as canjeero.

Fish is the city's advantage. Red Sea species are landed daily and cooked whole in Yemeni style — split, rubbed with chilli and spices and baked against the wall of a clay oven — or simply grilled and served with lime and flatbread. Sambusa, fried pastry triangles of meat or lentils, and bajiye, spiced fritters, are the common snacks, and appear everywhere during Ramadan.

The French left good bread. Baguettes, croissants and pastries are sold from bakeries in the centre and eaten with coffee, alongside the local drinks: shaah, very sweet spiced tea, and cardamom coffee. Ethiopian influence shows in injera and in the coffee itself, and imported dates, mangoes and citrus fill the market stalls. Alcohol is served in hotels and some restaurants in the centre but has no part in ordinary life.