Djibouti Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Djibouti

Djibouti is a small, resource-poor Horn of Africa nation of roughly 23,200 km² whose entire economy is organized around one asset: its position at the mouth of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, the chokepoint linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and onward to the Suez Canal. Nominal GDP was estimated at about $4.4 billion for 2025 (IMF), with a range across sources of roughly $4.0–4.7 billion depending on vintage. GDP per capita (current US$) was about $3,496 in 2024 (World Bank), or roughly $7,776–7,810 on a PPP basis. Growth has been unusually strong for a small economy: real GDP growth was estimated at about 6.5–6.8% in 2024 and 6.5–6.7% in 2025 (IMF 2025 Article IV Consultation; AfDB Djibouti Economic Outlook), driven by port and transshipment activity boosted by Red Sea shipping disruptions alongside construction, telecommunications, energy and trade. Inflation swung from 2.1% in 2024 to roughly -0.3% (deflation) in 2025 as global energy and food prices fell. The currency, the Djiboutian franc (DJF), has been pegged to the US dollar since 1949 — one of the world’s longest-running currency pegs, set at its current rate of 177.721 DJF = 1 USD since 1973 — a policy explicitly designed to anchor monetary confidence and underwrite Djibouti’s role as a dollarized logistics and services hub. The economy has essentially no significant domestic production; services make up roughly 75–82% of GDP.

Djibouti’s trade is overwhelmingly re-export and transshipment rather than domestic production: the port/logistics complex (Port of Djibouti, Doraleh Container Terminal, Doraleh Multipurpose Port) generates the majority of formal economic activity. Landlocked Ethiopia is overwhelmingly dependent on Djibouti as its maritime gateway — commonly cited at 85–95% of Ethiopian trade by volume — generating an estimated $1–2 billion a year in port tariffs and transit revenue for Djibouti. This dependency is a two-way vulnerability: Ethiopia has been diversifying toward Somaliland’s Berbera port and exploring Eritrean and Sudanese outlets. China has been the dominant infrastructure financier: China Merchants Port Holdings and the Dalian Port Authority are core partners in the Djibouti International Free Trade Zone (DIFTZ), and China Export-Import Bank financed the 2018 Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway, which by 2024 had carried a cumulative 9.5 million tonnes of freight and roughly 680,000 passengers, turning its first quarterly operating profit in Q4 2024. Djibouti simultaneously hosts foreign military bases from the US (Camp Lemonnier), France, China (its only permanent overseas base, opened 2017), Japan (opened 2011) and Italy; combined basing-lease revenue was cited at over $125 million/year and about 18% of government revenue as of 2020. The Doraleh Container Terminal, seized from DP World in February 2018, was the subject of years of international arbitration; a London tribunal awarded DP World roughly $474 million in January 2022, but in a major reversal, the London Court of International Arbitration ruled in Djibouti’s favor in September 2025, rejecting a further ~$1 billion DP World claim.

Djibouti’s population was estimated at roughly 1.07 million in 2024. Unemployment is exceptionally high and figures diverge sharply by methodology: the World Bank’s modeled estimate puts unemployment at about 25.9–26.0% for 2024/2025, while Djibouti’s own first-ever national labor force survey (INSTAD, Q1 2025) found unemployment at 36.4% — a genuine methodological conflict. The informal economy is estimated to account for around 60% of GDP and roughly 90% of employment. On debt, the September 2025 IMF-World Bank Joint Debt Sustainability Analysis assessed Djibouti’s overall and external public debt as “in distress” and unsustainable; roughly 57% of external sovereign debt is owed to China, with a debt-service moratorium with China Eximbank (effective through 2027) providing temporary fiscal space. On the political front, President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh — in power since 1999 — pushed through a constitutional amendment in October 2025 removing the presidential age limit, clearing the way for a sixth term, which he won in the April 2026 presidential election. Djibouti launched its first-ever General Business Census in November 2025 to build a baseline count of formal and informal enterprises; results were not yet published as of this research. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current exposure to Djibouti’s debt sustainability and Ethiopia-trade concentration directly.