A second strategically positioned bridge over the Zambezi River is set to have a far-reaching impact on road transport routes within the SADC countries – and between South Africa and its northern trading partners in particular.
Due to open in March 2019, the Kazungula Bridge will join Zambia to a narrow 150-metre-wide strip of Botswana, bypassing Zimbabwe. If and when a one-stop border post is opened at the border transit times for trucks will reduce from 30 hours to six.
It will give hauliers serving the Zambian and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) an alternative to the route through Zimbabwe at either Victoria Falls to Durban, or via Katima Mulilo to Walvis Bay/Cape Town.
They will be able to bypass the congestion at Beitbridge entirely, as well as the Zimbabwean “roadblocks”.
The 1 000-km Botswana route to Pioneer Gate starts on the A33 and heads south, joining the A3 at Nata, which in turn meets the main A1 north-south road at Francistown.
Durban is a further 863 km, and Cape Town 1 398 km.
From the A1 much of the hauliers’ support infrastructure required for the route is in place – trucking companies are already using Botswana as an alternative route to the Beitbridge crossing.
What will possibly take longer to materialise is the benefits of a rail link, which is being built together with the road bridge.
Writing in Mmegiblogs, Sandy Grant says “this is getting frustrating and baffling. For what seems a long time now I have been banging away about the Kazungula railway bridge without getting even a whisper of a response from the Ministry, from Botswana Railways (BR) or even from SADC.”
There is, he says, no clear indication of how the Zambian rail system is going to be linked to South Africa.
Rail aside, the new bridge will give shippers more choice over which port to use.
Kazungula also joins up with Katima Mulilo in Namibia via a 141-kilometre link to join the main Namibian logistics corridor linking Walvis Bay and the Copperbelt – a distance of 1 390 km.
In 2004 the completion of the Katima Mulilo bridge that crosses the Zambezi river to connect Namibia with Zambia opened up new logistics routes and changed the regional economic landscape.
Massive ongoing investment in the port of Walvis Bay can be traced to the replacement of a ferry service with the 900-metre-long bridge. Without the road link the Walvis Bay-Ndola-Lubumbashi Development Corridor would be far less competitive, assuming it existed at all.
Kazungula’s new bridge has the same potential to disrupt the status quo.
CAPTION
Part of the temporary bridge mounted to facilitate the construction of the permanent Kazungula bridge.
