Burundi President Évariste Ndayishimiye and Tanzania Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa joined in a ceremony launching Burundi’s first railway that will link with the new standard gauge railway of Tanzania. The ceremony was held on Aug. 17 with laying the foundation stone of the railway that will eventually link landlocked Burundi to the Tanzania port of Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean.
The 282 km (175 mile) standard gauge railway project will be 160 km southeast of the capital Bujumbura. The rail line will become part of the Central Corridor which envisions linking the Port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania with Burundi and eventually the Democratic Republic of Congo. The railway will be constructed by the China Railway Engineering Group and China Railway Engineering Design and Consulting Group. The cost of the project is estimated at $2.1 billion and will be funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Tanzanian bank CRDB. Tanzania’s largest commercial bank, the latter co-financed the giant Julius Nerere Hydropower Project with a capacity of 2.1 GW, which began full operation earlier this year. The rail project will take six years to build and eventually extend to Uvira and Kindu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
