Middle East funds will help build new Swazi highways

Swaziland has secured nearly R700m to build key highways in the eastern portion of the country, facilitating traffic to the Moz border and a new international airport. The airport, under construction near the eastern hamlet Sikuphe, will be a nonstarter without a new highway to connect it to Manzini, where an existing national highway heads westward to the Matsapha Industrial Estate, Mbabane, and border posts offering access to Gauteng. Also, road transport badly requires a replacement for a narrow two-lane highway that – 30 years after its construction – is the only route eastward from Manzini to the Mozambique border. The current highway was built to transport sugar cane, and runs directly through Swaziland’s largest game park, Hlane Royal Game Reserve, where each year dozens of animals perish in road traffic accidents. The dual carriageway proposed for Sikhuphe will cover the portion of that route to the airport, and a second highway will move traffic to the Moz border. Funding from various sources has now been committed for highway construction, Swaziland’s Ministry of Public Works and Transport told FTW. Middle Eastern money will be used, the fruits of King Mswati’s many trips to build alliances with Arab nations of that region. For an 18 km highway from Manzini to Sikuphe, the Arab Bank for Economic Development (BADEA) and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) have pledged a combined R178 m to build the route. Construction is scheduled to take two years. The two development funds have also pledged a much larger sum, R500 m, to build a 50km stretch of highway from the Sikuphe airport highway to the Mozambique border. No construction timetable is available.