Botswana to get link to great lakes region Via Mpulungu Port

HUMPHREY NKONDE
Correspondent | Monday November 21, 2011 00:00

The proposed railway line will be diverted from the 1,860 km TAZARA in Kasama, the headquarters of Zambia's Northern province and nearer the Tanzania border. 

Once the railway line connects Mpulungu, Zambia's only port at the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika, goods can be transported from Botswana and South Africa entirely by rail to Lake Tanganyika en route to the Great Lakes Region (GLR) countries of Burundi, and Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

On the other hand, tea and coffee from the Great Lakes region can be transported to Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe entirely by rail.

Meanwhile, the Zambian government has set aside funds in the 2012 national budget to tar the Kasempa-Kaoma Road, which will soon connect the road link to neighbouring Namibia.

The more than 800m bridge across the Zambezi River by Zambia and Namibia in 2004 is likely to be connected by the proposed road link into Namibia. Once the road has been tarred, some of the copper being produced from the fast-growing North Western Province would be easily transported to Namibia's port of Walvis Bay for export to markets in Europe, United States of America (US) and West Africa on the Atlantic Coast line.

Zambia will soon reach 1, 000, 000 tonnes of copper production per annum after the First Quantum Minerals and the Chinese invest over US $ 6 billion in mining activities, especially in the fast-growing North Western Province.

Copper peaked at 750, 000 tonnes in 1973, but dropped to 257,000 tonnes in 2000 before the mines were privatised. Productionreached more 800,000 tonnes in 2010, almost a decade after the mines were privatised.

Creation of a road link into Namibia will lessen the pressure on roads on the Durban Corridor stretching from the Democratic Republic of Congo, through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana to South Africa.It has been estimated that the Zambian  government is spending about K1 billion to rehabilitate a kilometre of road compared to about  a quarter that amount for railway for the same distance.

The capacity of a single train is equivalent to 150 trucks each scaled on 30-tonnes while fuel consumption of a single locomotive engine is equivalent to that of five truck engines. Although initial fixed costs for the railway construction are high, subsequent maintenance costs are lower and rehabilitation works are not as regular as for roads.(Sila Press Agency)