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New deal intensifies competition between the Mombasa and Dar es Salaam ports for the dominance of trade routes in East Africa

On 20 December 2022, Tanzania signed a contract with two Chinese companies to build the final section of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line, which will link the country's main port with its neighbours. This section, corresponding to 506 kilometres of railway tracks, will link the port of Dar es Salaam to the city of Mwanza on the southern edge of Lake Victoria, with eventual stretches to Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda.

The Tanzania SGR is a railway system, which is being built in phases, that aims at linking the Dar es Salaam port to the landlocked Rwanda and Uganda, with plans of expansion to Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as part of East African Railway Master Plan. At the moment, the line reaches the city of Morogoro, located 196 kilometres west of Dar es Salaam, with other phases still under completion. These include the Morogoro-Makutupora section (completion status: 91.32%), Makutupora-Tabora (3.26%), Tabora-Isaka (0.49%) and Isaka-Mwanza (19.70%). In the end of January 2020 Tanzania, Burundi and DRC also signed an MoU for the construction of a "Tripartite" railway line that will connect three countries from Uvinza, in Tanzania, to Kindu, in Eastern DRC, through the cities of Musongati, Gitega, Bujumbura and Uvira. The MOU, which was revised on Mar 7, 2022, was followed on 12 June 2022 by the approval by the Ministers of Transport of the 3 States of the report of the steering committee for the implementation of the project. Plans are to connect the 3 countries with trains that will travel up to a speed of 160 km/h (for passenger transport) and 120km/h (for cargo).

In the Tanzania government’s plans, the country aims at becoming the regional hegemon in controlling the trade routes in the region, a role that so far has been played mainly by Kenya, thanks to the availability of a 700-kilometre SGR linking the port of Mombasa to the country’s hinterland. The Kenya SGR is part of the Northern Corridor transit network planned to link the Great Lakes Region with the Indian Ocean, but the line at the moment ends in the city of Naivasha, located about 90 Km. north-west of Nairobi, from where cargo is transferred to Uganda and other East African countries by both road and secondary rail links.

The SGR project has a highly strategic importance for East Africa, because it will facilitate the transport of heavy minerals such as nickel, cobalt and copper, commodities of which especially DRC and Tanzania are rich, and whose prices are continually soaring on the international markets, due to the increasing demand especially by the automotive sector for the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles. It must be noted that railway transport remains the most economically efficient solution for transportation of heavy and bulky goods over long distances. According to the Tanzania government estimates, the new railway will reduce cargo transportation costs between the Dar es Salaam port and the DRC from a minimum of $6,000 per tonne to about $4,000 once it becomes fully operational. Transportation time is expected to fall from the current 30 days by truck to 30 hours by 2027.

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