TRANSPORT-EAST AFRICA: Floods Destroy Vital Rail and Road Links

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Paul Chintowa

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 9 1998 (IPS) - Landlocked Uganda and Rwanda are seeking alternative means of transport to move over 150,000 tonnes of cargo held up at Tanzanian ports following heavy rains.

The rains and subsequent floods, attributed to the El Nino phenomenon, have cut off key railway and road networks linking the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam with Uganda and Rwanda.

The Tanzania Railway Corporation’s (TRC) boss, Linford Mboma, was quoted by a newspaper in January as saying that the firm was losing about 100 million Tanzanian Shillings (160,000 U.S. dollars) a day in revenue as a result of the floods.

Before the floods, Uganda transported its cargo by rail from Dar es Salaam to the Tanzanian port of Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria, before shipping it home.

Similarly, goods destined for Rwanda used to travel by rail from Dar es Salaam to the Tanzanian port of Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, before continuing by ship to the tiny central African nation.

It is now virtually impossible to freight goods, because portions of the railway line and parts of the roads linking Dar es Salaam with Mwanza and Kigoma have been washed away by the floods.

The deluge also has affected cargo destined for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, which has over 50,000 tonnes of goods marooned in Tanzania.

“We are considering air freighting the cargo in order to ensure goods reach Rwanda soon,” said Jean Rutayisire, a businessman from Rwanda.

Rutayisire has been negotiating with a number of foreign cargo airlines in Dar es Salaam over the past two weeks. “Although it is expensive, we have no choice but to airfreight the goods to Rwanda,” he told IPS at the weekend.

He said the adjacent Kenyan port of Mombasa could have offered an alternative, but key bridges along the Mombasa/Nairobi road have been destroyed by similar heavy rains.

The bulk of Uganda’s cargo and a substantial portion from Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern part of the DRC, as well as cargo from parts of southern Sudan, pass through the Kenyan port.

But due to strained relations between Nairobi and Kampala, Uganda has shifted the bulk of its imports and exports — amounting to 400,000 tonnes per year — to pass through Dar es Salaam.

Rwanda, a key ally of Uganda, is also inching towards Dar es Salaam, prompting the port authorities in Tanzania to take note and improve the service.

“The port is currently undergoing massive improvement in cargo handling facilities, reducing bureaucracy and speeding up goods delivery systems,” according to the state-run Tanzania Harbours Authority (THA).

With a current handling capacity of 2.5 million tonnes of goods per year, the THA said that the port’s capacity will be doubled when the 40 million U.S. dollars harbour improvement programme is completed by the year 2000.

The THA director general, Samson Luhigo, said the intent is to make Dar es Salaam a pivotal port in eastern Africa with modern facilities and an improved cargo delivery system.

“We want to make the port the most reliable harbour in the region,” Luhigo told IPS.

The state-run Uganda Railway Corporation (URC) has already sent 200 wagons to Tanzania to haul some 70,000 tonnes of goods stranded in Tanzania’s administrative capital, Dodoma.

URC and the TRC have been discussing the best ways of moving the freight. The goods are being transported by road from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma, some 400 kilometres west of here. From there, the goods will be loaded onto train, travelling only at daytime to avoid damaging the ‘temporary’ repair work on the rails, to Mwanza before they are shipped to Uganda’s industrial town of Jinja.

TRC marketing manager, Rukia Shamte, said some 1,000 wagons have been held up across Tanzania as a result of the heavy rains. This is why the TRC had to look for wagons from Uganda, she said.

The TRC said it will need at least 1,400 wagons and engines to move the stranded goods to Uganda and Rwanda.

According to the TRC, it will take six months to repair the damage portion of the railroad, built by the Germans and the British in the early 19th century, to provide important links between Dar es Salaam and neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC.

The 1,600-km railroad from Dar es Salaam to Mwanza and the 1,700-km stretch from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, western Tanzania, will need at least 30 million U.S. dollars to restore the smooth haulage of cargo and passengers, according to the TRC.

Also, the government of Tanzania, which is selling off all profit-losing state corporations, has listed the TRC for privatisation next year.