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As Africa rapidly urbanizes, transportation solutions must keep up with the demand. China’s emergence as an infrastructure powerhouse, interest in Africa and desire to prove itself on the world stage made it a natural partner for the continent. However, despite great enthusiasm, one of China’s first projects on the continent, the Addis Ababa Light Rail, fell short of expectations. This brings up the question: Why has the Chinese ambition to export urban rail to Ethiopia missed its intended target? Through employing qualitative research with a wide range of sources, such as academic literature, media reports and government communications about the Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit System (AALART), this thesis aims to observe how both Ethiopian and Chinese stakeholders missed the mark. This analysis uses the “Cascade of Failures” framework to perform this analysis and explain why smaller decisions led to the growing and creation of new failures down the line. Additionally, this analysis introduces the comparative cases of the Abuja Light Rail and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway to strengthen the observed findings. Grounded in the framework from Paul Light’s Cascade of Failures: Why Governments Fail and How to Stop It, the focus will be given to how actions of various proportions pushed the light rail system towards a path of underperformance.