Cape to Cairo dream revives.

STEPHEN WILLIAMS reports on an exciting new railway project that will provide a continuous link from South Africa to East Africa.

The old dream of a Cape to Cairo railway has been revived in recent years. An agreement between the Southern Africa Railway Association (SARA: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia) and the East African Railways (EAR: Kenya Tanzania and Uganda) has facilitated the involvement of private investment to develop a continuous rail link between South Africa, via Johannesburg, and East Africa.

The most obvious problem associated with this project is the different rail gauges operated by SARA and EAR. Unusually for ex-British colonies in Africa, EAR operates on the metre gauge track. Most of Tanzania's lines (the notable exception being TAZARA) were initially engineered and built by the Germans. Kenya and Uganda Railways were also built to this gauge because cheap second-hand equipment of this standard, and ready labour, could be sourced from India. Earlier this year a US$3m gantry container handling facility was completed at Kidatu, about 250km south-west of Dar-es-Salaam, to transfer freight from the 1.067m SARA track gauge TAZARA line to the metre gauge track of the EAR system. In principle, this continuous rail route, including a trans-Lake Victoria crossing, will undercut the Johannesburg-Durban- Mombasa-Kampala rail and sea route transport costs by about 15%, but its main benefits will be in time savings. The rail route will take 2 weeks from Johannesburg to Kampala compared to the typical 6-week journey time for the rail and sea route.

Commercialisation

Zimbabwe's rail network, straddling central southern Africa, is vital to this trans-African rail route project, and NRZ is currently undergoing a rapid commercialisation programme. The parastatal's strategy has hinged on plans to split their operations into four autonomous entitles: a regulatory authority; an infrastructure company; an equipment company and an operations holding company which will actually run the freight and passenger trains. The overall aim is to reduce NRZ management infrastructure and clear the way for an 'open-rail' policy. The infrastructure company will charge access fees to all operators, including NRZ, stimulating competition, investment and joint ventures.

Already feasibility studies have looked at the development of dry port facilities in Bulawayo, Harare and Mutare and approved a joint venture to build a 317km line with a local company between the Beltbridge border with South Africa and West Nicholson. In addition, construction has started on the new US$30m Beltbridge to Bulawayo railway line. It is the largest single investment in Matebeleland (south-west Zimbabwe) involving private and public sectors, and follows a tri-partite agreement between the Zimbabwe government, NRZ and South Africa's Spoornet. A consortium of European, South African and Zimbabwe banks will hold 25% of the shareholding equity, the NRZ 15%, and the New Limpopo Bridge Investments (a consortium of investors and engineering companies) will hold the 60% majority shareholding. The project has been agreed on a build, operate and transfer basis, with assets reverting to the NRZ and Zimbabwe government in 30 years.

A brief history

Zimbabwe's first railway line to Bulawayo opened in 1897. Two years later, the Umtali to Harare sector opened and when the two lines were connected in 1902, over 3,500km of continuous rail track existed from Cape Town, via Botswana, and through Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) to the port of Beira on Mozambique's Indian Ocean seaboard. The line had been intended to run north from Gwelo, Zimbabwe to Lake Tanzania, but was diverted to exploit the Wankie coal fields, and so crossed into Zambia at Victoria Falls. The first railway line opened in Zambia in 1905 as part of the ambitious 'Cape to Cairo' route. Later in the century, it was used to transport Zambia's copperbelt production, via Zimbabwe and Botswana, to South African ports until Smith's UDI in 1965 closed that route, and war in Angola closed the only alternative railway, via Congo (Zaire) to the Atlantic seaboard at the port of Benguela.

Faced with these problems, Zambia and Tanzania entered an agreement with China to build the TAZARA railway. Completed in 1975, the 1860.kin line connects Zambia to Dar-es-Salaam through some of the most remote regions of Africa. China's generous financial and technical assistance, with soft loans totalling US$270m and providing one third of the work force (25,000 men), won China enormous prestige throughout the continent The first year of operations saw 1m tonnes of freight being moved.

Over the next decade the volume of Zambia's copper exports declined in line with world commodity prices, and by the early 1990s TAZARA importance was increasingly as a conduit for bulk food aid channelled through Dares-Salaam by the UN World Food Programme.