Tanzania’s biggest infrastructure project since independence, the USD14.2 billion Central Corridor rail project, will help make Dar es Salaam port the country’s biggest revenue-generator.

Harrison Mwakyembe, minister of East African development, made the claim last week at an economic conference in Dar. However, the port first needs to cut red tape, improve IT systems, speed up customs clearance, and tackle inefficiencies that lead to delays and theft, Mwakyembe said. Tanzania’s Daily News also reported that Prof Benno Ndullu, governor of the country’s Central Bank, predicted the port’s earnings will soon overtake those from tourism.

Dar es Salaam is served by the metre-gauge Central Railway, which runs to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika and Mwanza on Lake Victoria. It is in poor condition, unreliable and carries only a tiny percentage of freight destined for the port.

The new project, officially launched at the end of March, will see the link completely rebuilt over the next five years as a modern, high-capacity standard-gauge (SG) freight and passenger railway. Once the line is complete, it is expected to move more than 30 million tonnes of cargo a year, compared with barely 5 million tonnes today. Construction is scheduled to start in June.

Costing USD7.6 billion, the 2,561km SG main line will largely follow the existing metre-gauge route from Dar es Salaam. However, completely new lines will approach Bujumbura, capital of Burundi, and the Rwandan capital, Kigali, from the south and west. At Kigali, the Central Corridor railway will connect with the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) that is already being built from Mombasa, Kenya, to Nairobi and Kampala, Uganda.

An additional USD6.6 billion will be spent on two more lines linking Dar with coal, iron ore and soda ash deposits in Tanzania’s Njombe and Manyara regions. It is envisaged that trains will eventually be able to run through into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The investment will be financed through commercial loans.

The scheme has the enthusiastic backing of the East African Community, which sees the port-plus-railway package as the best way to unlock the potential of the mineral-rich landlocked countries. Recently discovered nickel deposits in Burundi are expected to generate important traffic for the line.

Construction of Kenya’s rival SGR, which enters Uganda and Rwanda from the east and north, has already started, and is expected to provide a massive boost to the port of Mombasa.

In the meantime, road transport from coast to hinterland is being speeded up by the removal of police and revenue checkpoints, multiple weighbridges and other non-tariff barriers. Tanzania’s President Kikwete told an EAC meeting last month: “I am told with the current improvements alone, for a container to move from the port of Dar es Salaam to Kigali takes three days from the previous eight days.”

Poor transport infrastructure, trade barriers and other inefficiencies mean that logistics costs account for 40% of consumer prices in east Africa, the World Bank estimates. Moving goods by rail is expected to be half the cost, quicker and more reliable than road transport.

Source: IHS Maritime 360

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