What's happened

 

Tanzania's Minister of Transport, Omar Nundu, announced on December 23 that the Chinese company, Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCEC), will conduct a US$450 million feasibility study and implementation of the railway project.

 

"We hope implementation will start very soon and that the feasibility study will take between three and six months and the project completed by 2015," said Nundu. Managing Director of CCEC, Wang Xiangdong said that experts would arrive in the Tanzania next week. He said the feasibility study will be completed by April 2012 followed by the construction of the railway line and ports.

 

According to a report from Uganda,

 

"It is understood from sources close to the action in Kampala that China has offered preferential credit terms to pre-finance the feasibility study... and that the entire financing of the project may well also be arranged by China, clearly aiding their desire to establish further political and economic strongholds in the Eastern African region and cement its greater influence on the continent as the hunt for the remaining global resources intensifies."

 

Another report from Uganda stated, "The Parliament did not need to approve the deal because the Chinese are carrying out the feasibility study free of charge." says Ugandan Minister for Transport, Mr. Ambraham Byandala.  

 

Read more:  

  

Tanzania and Uganda sign rail pact with Chinese firm

  

China's double edged Christmas present to Tanzania and Uganda rattles conservationists

 

  

What It Means

 

Instead of a highway, a railway would bisect the great migration. It would have the same or worse destructive impact as a commercial highway.  The Serengeti as we know it would be destroyed.  

 

A swath of land in a critical area would be removed from the Park, bisecting it two. An access road, power lines, settlement, trade, and mining would inevitably follow. An article in the Uganda press states, "The railway would also open up pending mining concessions in the area between Serengeti and Musoma and possibly give the much needed green light for a soda ash factory at Lake Natron in Tanzania."

 

We knew this was a possibility and have reported on it.  

See a Serengeti Watch presentation here

 

The Tanzanian government announced the project last April, and there were subsequent references to it in the following months. In October of this year, the press reported that the Presidents of Uganda and Tanzania had formed a task force to fast-track the project. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said that the Musoma link was "the lifeline of the Uganda of his dreams." These dreams now include export of oil, estimated to be $2 billion a year for the next 20 years.  

 

At the end of June this year, Tanzania Minister for Transport Nundu said, "We intend to involve Public-Private sector Partnership (PPP) for the development of agriculture, agro-industry, manufacturing, tourism, mining, transport and service sector."

 

The whole idea has been met with skepticism by transportation experts, who argued that the enormous cost and risk would deter investors. It would involve not only constructing a railway, but a series of ports and a crossing of Lake Victoria, with expensive and time consuming land-water transfers. Moreover, such a corridor would have to compete with: an upgraded Uganda-Kenya railway, with a railway from Rwanda to Tanzania already being planned, and with a possible new railway from Sudan to a port at Lamu (a World Heritage Site) on the Kenya coast.

 

According to one expert, the upgraded Uganda-Kenya railway alone "would make the Tanga link uncompetitive in terms of freight costs relative to the route through Mombasa, Kenya, if capital costs were to be factored into the freight rates."

 

However, these same experts also concede that, should the railway be built, the shortest, most logical, and most likely route would be through the Serengeti.

 

References:

 

Uganda plan $2.7b new port-lake railway 

Corridor of Destruction 

 

 

 

Last June, Transport Minister Nundu stated that the project will consider concerns by Tanzanians and the international community of the need to preserve Serengeti National Park's ecosystem. According to the press report,

 

"The proposed multi-billion-shilling railway project to run from Tanga via Arusha to Musoma will steer clear of the much contested stretch in Serengeti National Park by 100 kilometres to preserve the ecosystem, Transport minister Omari Nundu said here yesterday." Read the article here.

 

But the risk is high that the Chinese study will recommend a route through the Serengeti National Park. The final decision on the routing is the responsibility of the Tanzanian government and the outcome of the feasibility study. Bypassing the Serengeti would add considerable cost and time, and quite possibly this factor alone will determine whether this development project will even be feasible. Uganda would not stand in the way if it crossed the migration route. China presumably would not care either.   

 

 

We need to dig in and renew and intensify our support of the Serengeti. This is a critical time. The future of all East Africa's great game parks and reserves hangs in the balance.

 

(1) We'll keep up the pressure. We need your support to help us do this. Please donate what you can.

 

(2) We need to support the legal case.

 

Kenya has an enormous stake in all this. It's railway is currently the sole outlet for landlocked Uganda, and it has plans to upgrade the railway to carry even more traffic. It not only stands to lose a significant amount of income from its transport sector, if the railway crosses the Serengeti ecosystem, its tourism trade would be devastated as well.

 

This fact is the driving force behind the current legal case being brought in the East African Court of Justice. This case offers hope for a long lasting solution. Read more below.