North-South Corridor gets $1.2bn upgrade

Africans can look forward to some major improvements to the region’s North-South Corridor following the ending of the Regional Trade Facilitation Programme (RTFP) in October. Established six years ago as part of an initiative by the World Trade Organisation’s Regional Aid for Trade, the RTFP was directly mandated to improve the efficiency of the North-South Corridor, which runs from Durban to the Zambian copperbelt, DRC, Malawi and the port of Dar es Salaam. “An excess of $1.2 billion has been pledged by international donors to the RTFP to improve the corridor. Many programmes have been launched and it certainly has established a secure foothold from which to move forward,” says Barney Curtis, executive director of the Federations of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta).