Browsing: Africa’s railways infrastructure

• The new East Africa electric railway line seeks to tap into the $3 trillion market opportunity under the Africa free trade agreement.
• Tanzania first signed a $2.2 billion deal with China in December last year to revive its railway network.
• In Kenya, the Mombasa to Malaba SGR cost a total of $4.85 billion funded by China Exim Bank loan.

Tanzania and Burundi have entered into an agreement to build a cross-border electric railway line that will connect the two countries passing through the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, a critical investment that is set to revamp business in East Africa and beyond.

Both countries have submitted a proposal for the design and construction of the 282-kilometres of electrified railway starting from Uvinza in Tanzania to Gitega in Burundi and connecting both countries through the DRC.

Once complete, the new transport corridor, which will be the continent’s second cross-border …

Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) will collaborate with Botswana Rail (BR) to fix parts of the 126 km rail line between Swartruggens, in South Africa’s North West province, and Mafikeng, on the border with Botswana, helping South Africa’s landlocked northern neighbor get its minerals, including thermal coal, to market.

According to an article by Reuters published on August 5, 2022, the rail revamp will enable heavy haul trains to travel from Botswana to South Africa’s ports of Richards Bay and Durban, TFR said. The project aims to be up and running in the next 24 months. However, financial terms were not disclosed.

TFR and BR will also build a rail line from Mamabula in Botswana to Lephalale in South Africa’s Limpopo province.

The two rail companies will work together to fight the “scourge of cable theft and infrastructure vandalism” that is impacting rail services, TFR said, adding this was a “rising …

Over the past decade Africa has been rife with infrastructure developments that hitherto continue to steadily transform the continent, spurring the much-needed economic development. This is well aligned to aspiration 2 of Africa’s Agenda 2063, which advocates for ‘an integrated continent politically united based on the ideas of Pan Africanism and the vision of African Renaissance’ with the key priority area of developing world class infrastructure that crisscrosses Africa.

Inadequate infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa has remained an existential hurdle to the continent’s achievement of robust economic growth. According to a report by Deloitte, this status quo has reduced national economic growth by two percentage points every year, and cut business productivity by as much as 40 per cent. In reiteration, another report by McKinsey and Company highlights that Africa faces an infrastructure paradox, in that there is need and availability of funding together with a large pipeline of potential projects …

The entire African railway network is estimated at about 75,000 km going by current AU data…