Private sector must play a role in upgrading transport corridors

‘Can’t rely on government’ LEONARD NEILL IT’S UP to private transport operators to identify and address problem areas on the 17 corridors in Southern and East Africa. They can’t rely on the authorities to do this for them, says Barney Curtis, executive officer of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta). The next step, adequate funding for sustained intervention, must be sourced from donor agencies, many of them international, he told delegates to a ‘Doing Business in Africa’ seminar, organised by Africa Trade in Gauteng recently. Fesarta, he said, will lobby the Regional Economic Community (REC) in each sector to reach agreement on the importance of the issues which arise. “We can do this through our governments, but there is no assurance that the governments will take the issues forward.” Curtis pointed out that this had already been achieved on the TransKalahari Corridor, linking Gauteng with the West Coast port of Walvis Bay, and travelling through Botswana. This project is funded by a USAid initiative programme. The more northerly Dar Corridor, which links the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania with Zambia, Malawi and the DRC, has had an interim corridor management committee in place for the past year. Its objective is to identify and address impediments to the free flow of transport along both road and rail links on the corridor. On the other hand, the North-South Corridor which includes Beit Bridge, the busiest border post in Africa, has its special set of problems. It handles in the region of 500 vehicles daily, but intervention by authorities has been delayed due to problems being experienced in Zimbabwe. “A considerable amount of work has been done on Beit Bridge, and the pressure from the private sector has resulted in the border opening for 24 hours,” said Curtis. “When the border post came to a standstill a year ago, a task team was set up to try to find solutions to the delays. Many recommendations were made, some were implemented, and the team was disbanded. Now the task team is to be re-assembled to help sort out existing problems at the border.”