Covid-19 may very well be the catalystin moving Southern Africa’s cargo off road and onto rail.According to Duncan Bonnett of Africa House, while there is no indication as yet that this is the case, much can be said for the rail solution when it comes to lockdown conditions and social distancing.“I would like to believe that this will see rail volumes grow,” he said.
“Instead of having truck queues of 80km long at border posts as is the case at the moment in countries like Kenya and Uganda, rail might very well be the way of getting around some of the Covid-19 challenges – especially in terms of cross border.”He said if one compared the movement of cargo with 500 trucks to a train, the latter made far more sense in reducing the risk of not only the spread of the novel coronavirus but also contracting it.“If there is a driver and co-driver in every truck, we are talking about a minimum of 1000 people that have to cross the border compared to only a handful of people in a train carrying the same amount of cargo.”
He said it was not only now during the pandemic that the benefit of rail was being realised.
“There has been a strong drive in many countries in the region to shift bulk cargo in particular off roads and onto rail. On the North-South Corridor, countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and even Mozambique are all trying to enact legislation that will shift the transport of commodities such as copper, cement, steel and even agricultural products from road to rail.”One of the major concerns of many governments is the impact of freight transportation on the road networks.According to Bonnett it was therefore an economic imperative for several governments in Southern Africa to not just move some of the heavy bulk commodities from road onto rail, but also to underpin the financial viability of those railways.
“Covid-19 suggests we need a different way of doing business. Maybe it is time to change, and instead of having thousands and thousands of trucks rampaging across the borders, sitting for days at border posts, to have more trains.”Bonnett said the biggest challenge lay in convincing trucking communities the change wa s nec e s sa r y.“In most countries the trucking communities are politically quite powerful, and it is not always easy to convince governments that need to be elected into office to make the complete switch from road to rail. It has traditionally been one of the biggest stumbling blocks in trying to unlock the value of rail projects.”
But, said Bonnett, integrated networks – including road, rail, sea and air solutions – were what it was ultimately about.“Covid-19 suggests we take a good look at how we do things and interact with each other and make some necessary changes.”
