China, Tanzania and Zambia signed an initial agreement to rehabilitate a decades-old railway aimed at improving the rail-sea transportation in resource-rich East Africa, Chinese state media said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of the memorandum of understanding on refurbishing the 1,860 kms (1,156 mile) Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railway with the Tanzanian and Zambian presidents, who were in Beijing attending the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n
The single-track TAZARA railway was built between 1970 and 1975 through an interest-free loan from China, offering a cargo transport route from Zambia’s copper and cobalt mines to the sea on Tanzania’s coast that bypasses South Africa and the former state of Rhodesia.<\/p>\n
Commercial operations of the line, derided by some Western governments at the time as the “bamboo railway”, began in 1976. The multi-year project had involved the construction of two dozen tunnels and hundreds of bridges by tens of thousands of Chinese and African workers.<\/p>\n
“China is willing to take this summit as an opportunity to make new progress in the revitalisation of the Tanzania-Zambia railway, cooperate to improve the rail-sea intermodal transport network in East Africa, and build Tanzania into a demonstration zone for deepening high-quality China-Africa Belt and Road cooperation,” said Xi, according to state media.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the World Bank approved $270 million in financing to help improve connectivity between neighbours Tanzania and Zambia and boost regional trade.<\/p>\n
In February, China proposed to spend $1 billion to rehabilitate the rail line through a public-private partnership model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China, Tanzania and Zambia signed an initial agreement to rehabilitate a decades-old railway aimed at improving the rail-sea transportation in resource-rich East Africa, Chinese state media said on Wednesday. President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of the memorandum of understanding on refurbishing the 1,860 kms (1,156 mile) Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railway with the Tanzanian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":20,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32,2362,30],"tags":[396,131,3081,394],"class_list":["post-13214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","category-southern-africa","tag-china","tag-tanzania","tag-tazara","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}