Tree-planting campaign opens transport opportunities on SA-Lesotho route

Last week saw the launch of a United Nations programme to plant one million trees in sparsely forested Lesotho. And local and SA transporters will be pressed into service over the next few months and years as the ambitious tree-planting programme continues. The campaign commemorates the UN’s 64th birthday. “These (saplings) will mostly come over the border from nurseries in South Africa,” Mohau Mokoatsi, national spending assessment officer for UNAIDS told FTW. The goal is to use trees to shore up hillsides to address the problem of severe soil erosion in the country, which is threatening areas that remain suitable for cultivation (only about 11% Lesotho’s land mass). A desire by the transportation ministry reported by FTW early this year to build Lesotho’s first railway has proceeded to the consultative phase, transport sources say, with a feasibility study next. The country wants to become a transhipment point for SA freight that would benefit from some more direct routes if shippers could move by rail through Lesotho. Sources say that transport authorities have noted the record of Swaziland Railway, which has sustained its operations, not through domestic transport but by transhipment business of SA goods going through that country.