Speaking at Monday’s opening of the Kazungula multimodal bridge across Zambia’s Zambezi River border with Botswana, Zambia’s President Edgar Lungu recommitted his country to building another bridge that will possibly change the face of bulk-haul logistics in the sub-Saharan region.
Provisionally called the Kasomena-Mwenda toll road bridge and border post, the project entails an upgrade of the N5 from the copper-mining nerve centre of Lubumbashi north-east to the Luapula River between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia.
The crossing will most likely be immediately south of Kasenga from where it will proceed in an easterly direction before heading north-west to Zambia’s Nakonde border post with Tanzania.
Flanked by his counterpart from the DRC, President Felix Tshisekedi, Lungu remarked that it was gratifying to see him at the Kazungula opening.
Once the Kasomena-Mwenda project is complete, "it is expected to decongest the Kasumbalesa border post on the Walvis Bay and the Ndola-Lubumbashi corridor", Lungu said.
However, as was the case with the Daewoo E&C-built Kazungula Bridge, the Kasomena-Mwenda project is already delayed.
Whereas work was set to commence in March, the sod-turning ceremony with Tshisekedi and Lungu was only said to be going ahead yesterday.
It’s not clear whether this indeed happened.
Zambia’s fiscal standing, not to mention that of the DRC, is in no position to allow for a major infrastructural project that will require significant road upgrades and construction of a bridge across a river in dense jungle.
Kazungula was meant to be completed by 2018, but the government in Lusaka’s consistent failure to meet financial commitments, as agreed with Daewoo, regularly delayed work on the bridge.
Be that as it may, it should be noted that at one stage cynical cross-border transporters scoffed at the possibility of a bridge replacing the use of pontoons to cross the Zambezi on the north-south route between Zambia and Botswana.
Should a similar multimodal bridge be built across the Luapula, it will shorten by at least 300 kilometres the distance between Tanzania’s Port of Dar es Salaam and Lubumbashi, cutting out the south-eastern extremity of the DRC that forces Zambian traffic all the way around.
Currently Beira is the closest port to Lubumbashi, at 1 608 kilometres.
If the Luapula Bridge is built, Dar es Salaam’s distance from Lubumbashi will shrink to around 1500km.
The ports of Walvis Bay and Durban, respectively, are at 2 432 and 2 833 kilometres – give or take – from Lubumbashi, whether via Kazungula or the Beitbridge-Chirundu route through Zimbabwe.
Considering the clear distance advantage of Dar, it comes as a no-brainer where the DRC and Zambia will choose to heavy-haul their copper – in much-increased quantities.
Against the beautiful backdrop of the Kazungula Bridge, Lungu, who was also flanked by his peers from Gaborone and Dodoma, summed up his region’s logistical ambitions when he said: “This bridge, in my view, will add more integration between Zambia and Botswana, Tanzania, the Republic of Congo and the East African region.”