North South Corridor gets R9bn funding fillip

At the recent high-level “aid for trade” summit hosted by Zambia and attended by a number of regional heads of state, more than US$1-billion (over R9-bn) of funding was committed by development partners to the upgrade of regional road, rail and port infrastructure, and to the support of trade facilitation measures. The current situation is that poor road and rail infrastructure and long waiting times at borders and ports are creating significant costs and hampering regional producers’ ability to access regional and international markets. This need for major regional infrastructure development to increase regional competitiveness was agreed by the tri-partite summit, involving the three regional economic communities – the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa); the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The trio of bodies also agreed to implement the aid programme in the transport, power and trade facilitation projects along the North-South Corridor traversing eight countries in East and Southern Africa. This is a combination of two traditional corridors (Durban Corridor and the Dar es Salaam Corridor) linking Durban and other ports in Southern Africa to the Eastern African port of Dar es Salaam. The Durban corridor has direct links into the Beira, Maputo, Walvis Bay, Benguela and Lobito corridors. The port of Dar es Salaam links to the central, Tanzanian and Kenyan corridors – and to the eastern DRC through Uganda and Rwanda. SA president and SADC chairman, Kgalema Motlanthe, told the summit: “The challenging economic environment, which was brought into sharper focus at the G20 Summit, brings a greater level of urgency to the efforts of Comesa, EAC and SADC to bring together our respective regional integration programmes in order to further enlarge our markets, unlock our productive potential, increase levels of intra-African trade and enhance our regional prospects. “As we seek to expand regional markets in Africa, the North-South Corridor programme will place us in a stronger position to respond effectively to intensifying global challenges.”