Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana have joined forces to upgrade a railway line linking the three countries while building a new Botswana-Zimbabwe-Mozambique Railway and a deep-water port.
The agreement were signed during a tripartite meeting held at a resort just outside Maputo, Mozambique this Friday. The projects have been discussed before and the focus now is on implementation. The projects, New Zimbabwe reported on July 11, are set to boost the southern African neighbours’ economies while entrenching integration of the region.
Additionally, they plan to build the port at Techobanine on Mozambique’s Indian Ocean coast and the new line that will run for 1,700km to Botswana through Zimbabwe. Both projects are meant to move coal from Botswana to Techobanine for export.
“The proposal has been there for some time to make the linkage,” Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Mozambique Victor Matemadanda is quoted as saying.
“In fact, the idea is to connect the region through Zimbabwe. As you know, Zimbabwe and Botswana railways have been linked and worked together in the past; the same arrangement was there between Mozambique and Zimbabwe.”
Moreover, New Zimbabwe writes that the plans to develop the port and supporting rail link were mooted some years ago but are “expected to be finalised through a tripartite agreement signed this week.”
Similar Projects to the Botswana-Zimbabwe-Mozambique Railway
China is keen to use the Tazara rail line to transport mining exports from Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The refurbished Tazara railway will compete directly with a railroad backed by the US and EU to link Zambia’s copper belt and the mineral-rich DRC to the Lobito port on Angola’s Atlantic coast.
Brussels and Washington announced in late October they would fund the rail project to connect the resource-rich region of Zambia to an existing line to the Lobito port.
The US and EU are eager to secure minerals that are vital for making batteries and advanced electronics – including cobalt, which comes from the DRC and Zambia. Most of these minerals are now exported to China for processing. Zambia opens memorial for Chinese railway workers who died building Africa’s Tazara line.
Chinese Commencement of the Construction of Tazara
China’s involvement in the Tazara railway began in the 1970s, when Beijing was facing its own financial difficulties.
At the time, Zambia was desperate for a railway link to the Tanzanian coast to transport copper, its main export. Neighboring white-controlled Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, had cut Zambia’s only route to the sea in response to the postcolonial transfer of power to Zambia’s black majority. China stepped in when Western countries declined to fund a new railway, building Tazara for about 1 billion yuan (US$140.5 million).
From 1970 to 1975, about 50,000 Chinese workers built 1,860km (1,155 miles) of track stretching from Zambia’s copper belt to Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean. Lastly, It remains China’s biggest overseas project to date and succeeded in boosting Beijing’s political capital during the Cold War.
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