Construction of a 651-km electrified single track standard gauge railway line linking the Eastern Africa countries of Tanzania and Burundi has received a $696-million financing from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the project’s initial mandate lead arranger.
The new $3.93-billion standard gauge railway (SGR) line will run from Tabora in Tanzania to landlocked Burundi’s mineral-rich Musongati area.
The project, to be implemented under design and build arrangement, has three components that include Tabora to Kigoma (411 km), Uvinza to Malagarasi (156 km), both in Tanzania and the Malagarasi to Musongati section (84 km) in Burundi.
A contract for the construction of the Tabora to Kigoma SGR line was awarded in December 2022 to China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. (CCECC) and China Railway Construction Co. (CRCC). The section encompasses 411 km of the main line with 95 km of alternating lines.
The new line will connect the mining region around Musongati to world trade via the Dar es Salaam seaport. Musongati has considerable mineral resources, including the world's 10th largest nickel reserves as well as deposits of lithium and cobalt. Dar es Salaam already accounts for 80% of Burundi's import and export trade, according to the AfDB.
An initial project brief shows the Tanzania/Burundi SGR line has a design speed of 160 kph for passenger trains and a maximum of 120 kph for freights trains.
Furthermore, the railway will have 60 kg steel rail per meter specified by UIC standard with the sleepers designed to be 2.6 m long pre-stressed monoblock concrete to be laid 600 mm apart or at least 1,667 sleepers per kilometer.
The contractor will also use ballast with minimum thickness of 300 mm requiring at least 2.5 cu meters for each meter.
Moreover, the contractor will use the elastic rail fastening method in fastening the rails that will be continuously welded using the flash-butt procedure.
AfDB says it will structure and mobilize financing of up to $3.2 billion from commercial banks, development financial institutions, export credit agencies and institutional investors.
The eventual plan is for the Tanzania/Burundi SGR line to be extended in the next phase to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the world's largest cobalt producer, which accounted for more than 70% of global production in 2022.
This next phase of the project for Burundi, overseen by the Burundi Corp. in charge of Railways (ARTF) and DRC’s National Railway Co. of the Congo (SNCC), will run from Gitega to Kindu.
In March 2023, the two countries picked infrastructure advisory, design, and engineering consultancy firm Zutari Group, in partnership with Canadian advisory services provider CPCS, as the contractor for a $3.2-million feasibility study and preliminary engineering design of the proposed extension line from Gitega to Kindu through Bujumbura and Uvira.
The planned new SGR lines in both Burundi and DRC will be an extension of the ongoing six-phase, 2,000-km modern railway network that Tanzania is separately constructing under five contracts by Turkey’s Yapi Merkezi, China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. and China Railway Construction.
