Due for completion by mid-1999
TRANS-AFRICA Rail Corporation, which recently inaugurated its first South East Africa Container Express train to the new transhipment terminal at Kidatu, will build a new inland dry port near the Ugandan capital Kampala.
The Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) said when announcing this latest development that Trans-Africa Rail had now been licensed to do business in Uganda. But, they announced, the establishment of a dry port near Kampala needed to come ahead of efforts to establish the rail link between South Africa and the Great Lakes region of East Africa via Zambia and Tanzania.
The UIA is the governmental body responsible for licensing all new investments in Uganda.
According to the UIA the new port will be built at Kamanve, about ten kilometres east of the city centre in an area already identified for an industrial park. The dry port should be ready for business within the first six months of 1999 and Kamanve will be connected by rail to the East African Railway system linking Uganda with Kenya.
Once this link has been completed it will become possible to rail goods all the way from South Africa to Uganda and Kenya via the transhipment terminal at Kidatu. From Kidatu goods will travel on to Mwanza on Lake Victoria along the metre gauge railway, from where they will be ferried 300 km across the lake to Port Bell in Uganda and finally to Kamanve, before being distributed to their final destination.
BY TERRY HUTSON
