By Abdel Monem Fawzi
From Cape Town in South Africa to Cairo in Egypt stretches more than 4,000 miles, from the far north of Africa to the southern tip of the continent, passing through the desert, through swamps, valleys and mountains.
This is a journey unparalleled in world history. The trip will become a reality very soon after the completion of about two thirds of the road (the northern and southern sections). The remaining part of the road is still being implemented.
This road is one of the biggest incentives for development in modern Africa because it includes two of the continent’s most developed parts, namely Egypt and South Africa, ensuring the movement of commodities, tourists and investments, if appropriate projects are established to help integrate and achieve Africa’s dream without borders.
This project, known as the Trans-Africa Highway, has a road network now developed in cooperation with the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank, with a length of 10,228 kilometres, to connect Egypt and South Africa, and other countries between them, including Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Egypt has established new ports and new infrastructure with a total cost of around $11 million to ensure that the country will fully benefit from the new African corridor.
The highway promotes the development of Egypt and other African countries and allows African states to easily access European markets through Egyptian seaports, a gateway to Europe. This will stimulate new trade and economic opportunities.
Connecting Cairo with Cape Town allows the states of North Africa to benefit from the ports of South Africa. This connection also facilitates and increases trade with Brazil, Russia, India and China, all BRIC countries.
Intercontinental Network
The road fulfills an old dream to establish an intercontinental road network. The first time a person traveled from Cape Town to Cairo was overland in 1924 when the British Empire first proposed a route between Cairo and Cape Town in the 19th century. Major Court Treatt, using two Crossley cars to chart a road across Africa, was the first successful road trip from South Africa to Cairo, but failed in attempts to build the Cape-Cairo railway.
This road represents a commercial model to study the impact of improving the quality of regional road infrastructure in the ECOWAS sub-region, from its current level to the level of roads in South Africa in trade and the use of regional interfaces. It is gratifying that the Cape-Cairo corridor is not only a road; it is a model of integration, interrelationship and common exchange of African cultures to integrate, near distances and common borders and ensure the quality of the road.
The reason is that poor road conditions not only impede economic growth, but also kill it.
An estimated 24.1 people per every 100,000 people die in sub-Saharan Africa in traffic accidents each year, according to the World Bank’s 2013 report, in part because highways are substandard. Traffic deaths are expected to increase by 80 per cent by 2030. The region has the highest number of casualties in the world, although there are fewer vehicles.
The road is part of projects to establish a network of connections and promote complementarity between the continent’s countries, such as the connecting line between Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea – Cape Town.
By 2024, the waterway will link ten African countries, stretching between Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean, led by Egypt, and will establish a maritime navigation line along the Nile for small and medium-sized commercial vessels to promote bilateral trade.
Multimodal transport
Egypt signed contracts for feasibility studies with a Belgian-German consultancy office. The contract is worth $650,000, funded by the African Development Bank. This came after the completion of a preliminary feasibility study in May 2015. It cost $500,000.
The $12-billion plan includes nine countries, namely Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
The Egyptian government and the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) launched the project in June 2013 with the idea of promoting “multimodal” transport by integrating river, rail and road transport facilities along the Nile River Corridor and developing river management capabilities. This project will promote economic development in the Nile corridor through increased trade and regional integration, as well as the transport of goods and people.
The integration of multimodal transport includes sections along the Trans-African Highway (Cape Town-Cairo, Lagos-Mombasa, Dakar-N’Djamena-Djibouti and Cairo-Dakar), as well as the large ports of Alexandria, Suez, Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.
Egypt has included a number of potential project elements, including supporting the economic development of the Nile Basin by raising the level of trade and transportation of goods and people, building a shipping line that links Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea via the Nile River.
The land project is currently under the umbrella of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). It links the southern part of Africa with its northern part. The African Development Bank and other international organisations finance the road project implementation. The project is jointly handled by several Egyptian, Saudi, Sudanese companies as well as by companies from other countries. Although the project is expected to be completed in 2024, some parts of it will be operational this year.
The fulfillment of this dream still faces some problems, including security instability in some African countries. This is a major challenge, but the spirit of development co-operation under the banner of Africa without borders will surely eliminate all obstacles.
