Published: May 7, 2009
Western donors including the World Bank, African Development Bank and the UK government, pledged US$1.3bn in aid at a summit in early April, to help improve travel infrastructure on the North-South corridor connecting northern and southern Africa.
The announcement was made at a unique regional summit in Lusaka in Zambia, that brought together representatives of three regional economic communities – the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and the East African Community (EAC) – who pledged to create a free trade area across their 26 member states.
Speakers at the summit bemoaned the poor infrastructure interconnecting African states, which is hindering cross-border trade. The African Development Bank estimates that travel costs in Africa are 73% higher for exporters than they are in the western world.
African Union vice-chairman Erastus Mwencha, who spoke at the opening of the summit, estimated that transport constitutes 20-40% of production costs for landlocked countries on the continent, compared with 10% in developed nations.
He added that it takes an average of six days for goods to be cleared at a customs check point at many African borders, while in African habours it takes about three days for goods to be offloaded from ships. "With such costs, there is no way Africa can become competitive or integrated into the global economy," Mwencha said.
The North-South Corridor comprises two priority Nepad (New Partnership for Africa's Development) corridors: the Dar-es-Salaam Corridor, which links the Tanzanian port of Dar-es-Salaam with the Copperbelt; and the North-South Corridor, which links the Copperbelt to southern ports in South Africa.
The Corridor services eight countries: Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. Local media reports suggest the project will see the renovation of 5,000 miles of road, and 373 miles of railway.
The conference agreed that a tripartite fund be established to accept funding from development partners who could be used to finance identified projects and programmes needed to make the transport corridors in eastern and southern Africa, including the North-South Corridor, more efficiently. The fund will be hosted at and managed by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).
Pascal Lamy, WTO director general, says the North-South Corridor is an example of a highly innovative regional ‘Aid-for-Trade’ approach that can transform competitiveness and enhance regional trade flows.
"The project will promote development and poverty alleviation in the Southern African region and promote deeper regional integration. Such initiatives have never been more urgent than in the current global economic climate," Lamy adds.