Months after the much-hyped Kazungula Bridge across Zambia’s touch-point with Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia’s Caprivi Strip was finalised, transporters are nowhere near knowing when the bridge will be handed over to the respective road authorities for use.
Word on the ground has been that it’s imminent, since the bridge’s lights were turned on in September last year, as if to signal that southern African logistics could be in for an early Christmas surprise.
Now, with One-Stop Border Post (OSBP) agreements remaining unsigned, according to inside sources, it looks like the water of the Zambezi is going to pass underneath the bridge for some time still before anything on wheels is allowed to cross it.
“There’s been lots of talk about it,” says Mike Fitzmaurice, an OSBP consultant who heads up the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta).
“Some people in the transport industry are saying it will be the 1st of April, but I can’t see how that’s going to be. From what we’ve heard, the necessary bilateral agreements between Botswana and Zambia haven’t been signed yet.”
When this can be expected, a red-ribbon cutting with much fanfare and the usual sleep-inducing observation of protocol by speech-loving, self-congratulating bureaucrats, also remain under wraps.
That’s to say the public sector administrators in Gaborone and Lusaka know themselves.
For all intents and purposes, uncertainty about when the bridge is “coming online”, as transporters like to say, is a ‘secret’ because even those who should know are none the wiser.
Consequently, cross-border interests who stand to benefit from such a crucial logistical link by providing an improved trade service to the region, are kept in the dark.
“It’s really unfortunate,” says Fitzmaurice. “The bridge has offices at each end but they’re not furnished. Nor is there accommodation for the staff. One wonders how this could be. How come they didn’t make provision for such necessities as part of the contract to build the bridge?”
According to a transporter focusing on Copperbelt logistics, the reason for the delay is government coffers in Lusaka running dry.
“They haven’t paid their share to the contractors. Botswana has but not Zambia because they haven’t got the money. They’re defaulting on repayments and I can’t see how soon they’re going to pay for the bridge.”
Another guess he hazarded was that the government of Edgar Lungu, facing possible defeat at the polls in August, was holding back till then to score political points with a grand bridge opening.
Meanwhile, cross-border transporters are chomping at the bit over a bridge whose completion, because of Zambia’s dire fiscal situation, has been delayed since 2018.
To add to their frustration, the Road Development Agency in Lusaka has decided to close the Livingstone-Vic Falls border crossing into Zimbabwe from March 1 (see related story posted earlier today).
Said the Copperbelt haulier: “It’s a farce (the word he used was decidedly stronger).
“From March we now have to go to Kazungula where there is nothing – unlike Livingstone – not a lodge or anything in sight to spend the night. Moreover, Zambia-Zimbabwe trips (to the south-west) now have to go through Botswana which means more tolls. That’s all it’s about, making money.”
In the meantime the Kazungula Bridge straddles the Zambezi at its confluence with the Chobe like a white elephant while pontoons still ferry trucks between Zambia and Botswana – at best a “dicey situation”, Fitzmaurice adds.
