Tanzania to spend $14bn on railways

Tanzania plans to spend $14.2-billion to construct a new rail network in the next five years financed with commercial loans, the Transport Minister Samuel Sitta said, as the country aims to become a regional transport hub.

Tanzania, like Kenya, seeks to exploit its long coastline and upgrade existing roads and railways to serve land-locked neighbouring countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.

Projects include a 2,561-km standard gauge railway connecting the port of Dar es Salaam to Tanzania’s land-locked neighbours, Rwanda and Burundi at a cost of $7.6 billion, Sitta said.

Two additional lines, to cost $6.6-billion, would connect Dar es Salaam to the coal, iron ore and soda ash mining areas in the south and northern parts of the country.

However, Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, is already building a multi-billion-dollar standard gauge rail line, backed by China, to run from Mombasa to the border with Uganda, aimed at cutting the high price of trade in the region.