Mozambique has a role to play in Africa’s second railway revolution

[John Ashworth]

Mozambique has a role to play in Africa’s second railway revolution

most of the railways on the African continent were built during the colonial period with a very clear objective – transporting raw materials as quickly as possible to the coast and to factories in other parts of the world.

The trade between these commodity-producing countries and even domestically was something that was given little attention, the article notes.

This continuing reality is, however, being overcome by a second wave of railway construction, which pays more attention to the real needs of African countries, in the case of those being built to connect the ports of Mombasa and Dar-es-Salaam, in the Indian Ocean, to landlocked countries in the Great Lakes region.

Mozambique could be one of the major players in this second railway revolution as, while its railways serve primarily to carry coal, they could also serve to support the growth of cross-border trade...