China has announced a three-pronged port development investment worth $2.2 billion to boost its Belt and Road ambitions, and two of the locations are in Kenya and Tanzania.
The first infrastructural newbuild project is set down for Bagamoyo north of Dar es Salaam and will cost $740 million.
Reports out of London today say that Ningbo-Zhousan Port Co intends to construct an urban compound on the mainland side of the Zanzibari channel.
The compound, modelled on Hong Kong’s Port of Shenzhen, will consist of large-scale logistics facilities that include warehouses, industrial parks, at least one international airport, banks and railway hubs.
Elaborating on its decision, Ningbo-Zhousan identified the Bagamoyo Special Economic Zone as an ideal access point for establishing sea, road, and rail linkages with Burundi, Malazi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all of which are landlocked.
Further north on Africa’s East Coast, fast emerging as a strategic region on the continent for trade partners to the east and Middle East, lies the other port China is homing in on – Lamu.
Situated 240 kilometres north of the Port of Mombasa, Lamu has long been earmarked for investment upgrades thanks to its 10km coastline and convenient draught of almost 18 metres.
China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) intends to extend the existing port’s capacity at a cost of $787m, and it is scoped to potentially include 23 berths with an industrial network spanning across the region and consisting of road and rail linkages into Ethiopia and South Sudan.
Mention has also been made of oil pipelines but it’s not clear if Uganda’s oil developments in the Lake Albert region form part of China’s ambitions for the Lamu Special Economic Zone, as the oil from that region will be piped out through the north of Tanzania.
Nevertheless, with plans for the development of an industrial city at Lamu being part of CMPH’s investment, the port is expected to handle almost 24m tonnes of deep water cargo by 2030.
As for details of the third location of the announced Belt and Road plans, China remains schtum.
It was reported, however, that it could be somewhere in Turkey to improve trade linkages from the Mediterranean into Asia Minor and beyond.
