TANZANIA SGR PROJECT MAKING GOOD PROGRESS

Recently media reports indicated that the Ugandan SGR project officers who visited their counterparts in Tanzania in April 20023 were stunned by the rapid progress that the Tanzania SGR had achieved. It was reported that 98.8% of the works on the initial phase of the Tanzania SGR project from Dar-er Salaam to Morogoro of 300km had been completed. It was also reported that the works on the second, third, and fourth phases of the project were already underway. Last month in May, two contracts worth $2.2bn were awarded to two Chinese companies to do the last and final stretch of the Tanzania SGR project which will see the SGR extended to Burundi, DRC, Rwanda, and the Ugandan southern border.

This last phase which will see a construction of 2,102km is envisaged to be completed by 2026. This implies that Tanzania will have successfully done its modern electric standard gauge railway stretching a distance of over 4,000km. That for sure won’t be a mean milestone for the country and the Great Lakes region.

What is clear from what is happening in Tanzania is that our friends are making progress. To them, all that was planned is what is happening. They are destined to reap big.

What should be interesting to note is that the commissioning of the East African SGR dream as a strategic Northern Infrastructure Corridor was commissioned here in Munyonyo in 2014. The hope and thinking then was that the SGR running from Mombasa through Kampala to southwestern Uganda, the three land-locked countries of Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC would be able to transport their cargo to the Mombasa port easily and efficiently. This would also serve to increase and improve inter-state trade among these countries. At the commissioning at Munyonyo, there seemed to be enthusiasm and commitment by all the heads of state from Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Ugandans were very upbeat about this envisaged transformational and visionary project.

Our neighbors the Kenyans went back and got to work. By May 2017, exactly two and half years after the Munyonyo commissioning, the first phase of the Kenya SGR of 579km running from Mombasa to Nairobi had been completed and commissioned. In October 2019, the extended line from Nairobi to Suswa – Naivasha a distance of 120km was also commissioned.

Today June 2023, on our part, no single SGR railway slipper has been laid down yet! We are told that probably the construction of the Uganda SGR from Kampala to Malaba may start in September this year.

The last time, we were told of some progress on the SGR front was when we heard that only about 50% of the compensation and land acquisition for the SGR route had been completed

SOURCE: AllAfrica