Railway projects are increasingly being put on hold across Africa because they often need an anchor project of some sort to justify their existence.According to Duncan Bonnett, a director at Africa House, the global outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic will not improve the situation.“The decline in commodity prices will impact on railway projects, and the increase in the cost of delivery of some of that infrastructure will also halt projects.”He said while some projects had only been delayed others had been postponed indefinitely.“That is not because the underlying value proposition of the project has changed, but simply because it is not possible to get financiers and developers into markets to evaluate them properly.”He said these types of projects would continue to be affected as long as travel bans continued. “The size and cost of these projects dictate that developers will not make decisions without visiting sites in person. We have seen this in Angola and other countries on the continent. We therefore expect that while international travel is not allowed more project delays will occur.”Bonnett said despite the delay in projects the actual value proposition of rail had in fact increased substantially in Africa over the past ten years.“The colonial rail systems work pretty well, even if they served colonial purpose. The intention of most of these lines was to export commodities,” he said. “The deepening integration of that infrastructure is being driven by a number of factors, of which the ongoing value of commodity exports is at the forefront. Also, the value-added manufacturing that is increasing and the growth in regional economies are important developments.”He said a country like Namibia, which saw itself as a gateway into the rest of Southern Africa, was highly focused on rail development.According to Bonnett, the value proposition for rail would always be there. While there might be fewer investments when prices were low, the fact was that demand for minerals remained and that they still had to be moved, preferably in the most cost-effective manner.According to a World Bank Report, over the next 20 years there will be demand for some 3 billion tons of energy minerals – be they copper, platinum, graphite, cobalt or lithium – to transform the world’s power and energy sectors.“Africa has these minerals and a lot of these commodities are found in landlocked hinterlands. This will require the introduction of major rail systems as road will simply not be suitable for that volume of mineral transportation.”
