Zambia to rehabilitate three rail lines in 2024
Zambia plans to rehabilitate 150 km of the Zambia Railways, TAZARA, and Mulobezi Railway lines, the 2024 budget documents have revealed. Total railway transport rehabilitation is expected to reach 67 million Kwacha, up from K57 million in the 2023 budget, according to the figures in the budget.
The Ministry of Finance has allocated K234.4 million to the Road and Rail Transport Services Sub-programme in the budget. The Ministry of Transport and Logistics will embark on pursuing the key result areas as set out in the Eighth National Development Plan (8NDP). The total estimates of expenditure for the Ministry of Transport in 2024 stand at K504.8 million.
Overall, the Air, Road, Maritime, and Railway Transport Development Programme has been allocated K388.2 million. Part of this has been set aside for the acquisition of assets, which include railway transport rehabilitation and the development of maritime harbour infrastructure.
The Ministry of Finance stated that the allocations to the Air, Road, Maritime, and Railway Transport Development Programme will enable the government to maintain, develop, modernize, and integrate rail, air, and water transport infrastructure. This will also facilitate post-concession operations of the Walvis Bay Dry Port.
The government further plans to conduct a corridor route assessment and promulgate one transport regulation to ensure harmony with the Tripartite Transit Transport Facilitation Programme (TTTFP) model laws.
Zambia Railways has a network stretching almost 1,200 km and covers the entire area between Victoria Falls Bridge on the border with Zimbabwe and Sakania on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. This includes the country’s Copperbelt Province, the copper mining hub. Zambia Railways connects to the Tanzania Zambia Railways Authority (TAZARA) at Kapiri Mposhi in central Zambia. The Chipata-Mchinji network, which connects Zambia to Malawi and Mozambique, is also part of the Zambia Railways network.
During the 2021 fiscal year, the company moved a total of 884,771 metric tons of cargo and provided its passenger service to 102,498 people.
The budget documents indicated that K17.2 million will be spent on the rehabilitation of the TAZARA railway line in Zambia. The Zambian government recently announced a significant development for TAZARA when it revealed that a Chinese concessionaire is poised to take control of the railway as early as the first quarter of 2024.
TAZARA, a multimillion-dollar railway project inaugurated in 1976, stands as the most significant foreign aid project ever undertaken by the Chinese government. Budget documents showed that K1 million Kwacha has been allocated to the rehabilitation of the Mulobezi Railway line.
In May, Zambia Railways Limited temporarily suspended the operations of the Mulobezi passenger train service from Livingstone to Mulobezi and vice versa. The suspension was necessitated by the unsafe condition of the Bombwe Bridge, which is undergoing repairs after the government allocated funds for its repair. The project is estimated to take 33 months and consists of a five-span railway bridge with a total length of approximately 75 m. The bridge is designed with substructures that include four reinforced concrete piers and abutments with piled foundations. Mulobezi Railway was originally constructed to carry timber from Mulobezi to Livingstone in the Southern Province of Zambia.
