AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Southern African Development Community (SADC) has given Tanzania USD6 million (over 13bn/-) for conducting feasibility studies and preparing a detailed design of a railway from Mtwara Region to Mbamba Bay in Ruvuma region.
Speaking during the opening of the SADC virtual meeting of the committee of ministers of finance and investment and peer review panel, held in Dar es Salaam yesterday, Minister of State in the Zanzibar President’s Office (Finance and Planning) Jamal Kassim Ali said the plan was part of a strategy meant to boost trade within the regional economic bloc.
Key issues to be discussed at the meeting include the establishment of the SADC member states’ development fund which will be spent on financing projects within the bloc and a debt service suspension programme on countries affected by Covid-19.
“We want to use one of our member states, South Africa, which is a member of the BRICS, to deliver our concern on the debt service programme – which is beset with some challenges,” he said.
BRICS is the acronym coined to associate five major emerging economies, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS members are known for their significant influence on regional affairs. Originally the first four were grouped as ‘BRIC’ (or ‘the BRICs’) before the induction of South Africa in 2010.
The Mtwara Development Corridor is a spatial development initiative (SDI) comprising southern Tanzania, northern Mozambique, northern and central Malawi, and eastern and northern Zambia.
The SDI’s aim is to develop a transportation corridor to provide these regions with easier access to Tanzania’s Mtwara port as well as other transit corridors within the project’s focus areas.
To address the transportation bottlenecks developing in the region, an upgrade of infrastructure was required with the future development and rehabilitation of roads and bridges, sea and lake ports, telecommunications, air transport facilities and ferry services being the objective of the project.
The railway envisaged is to span 1000 km from Mtwara port to Mbamba Bay on Lake Nyasa through Mchuchuma and Liganga areas.
Tanzania is currently expanding Tanga, Dar es Salaam and Mtwara ports in a deliberate effort to improve trade and clearance of goods.
The government decided to construct the 2,561-km SGR (standard gauge railway) network that links Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, Kigoma, Katavi and neighbouring land-locked countries including Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo chiefly to boost the economic growth and improve people’s social lives.
Tanzania’s SGR, the first of its kind in East and Central Africa to use electricity to power locomotives, will have capacity to accommodate passenger trains travelling at 160 km per hour.
The project has so far created employment opportunities to thousands of Tanzanians and improved the standard of living of many people.
