WHY PICK CHINA?

WHY PICK CHINA?

THE importance of picking China lies in the fact that they showed both Tanzania and Zambia as far back as the late 1960s and early 1970s that as far as construction of railway lines, they were second to none in the world.

Secondly, China is one of very few countries in the world that is not complicated when it comes to negotiating with it for any economic deal or development.

And this is especially so when it deals with a developing country like Tanzania. Indeed, China would not have built Tazara had they been complicated.

Both Nyerere and Dr Kaunda approached the Chinese government having been turned down by the West.

And the former came in and built the best railway line in the continent in terms of the rough and difficult terrain the railway line passes through to the Zambian station of Kapiri Mposhi.

Had that railway line been built by a western country it would have cost Tanzania a fortune and it could have taken longer with its cost rising with each passing stage.

Secondly, Tanzania has another example of the Chinese government’s willingness to work with developing countries, namely the on going construction of an Olympic size International Stadium close to the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam.

On completion of the Stadium it would have a sitting capacity of 60,000, meaning that Tanzania would now be in a position to host the All Africa Games.

This is because it would have the stadium complete with a running track, an international swimming pool and an indoor stadium for hosting games such as basketball, netball, boxing, you name it.

And all the three structures would be state of the art. According to well informed sources, the three structures would be comparable to any international Stadium, swimming pool and indoor stadium in the world.

In fact Tanzania’s main problem would be how to maintain such structures.

In terms of railway line engineering, the Chinese last year proved to the world that they were second to none in the area when they built a railway line linking their country and Tibet.

The railway line is 16,500 metres above sea level, making it the highest railway point in the world!

And because of the high altitude, it is said that during construction, Chinese railway engineers and workers had to carry on their back oxygen tanks because of the thin air in the region mountain ranges through which the railway line was being built.

Because of the thin air, it is reported that trains that would be plying in the region would be pressurised in the same way planes are.

What is more, the Chinese engineers drilled numerous hills in the same way they had done at Mlimba, in Morogoro region which is 1,000 metres above sea level.

And again Mlimba is the highest railway point in Africa. What this means is that there is no railway line in Africa that has such highest railway point like Mlimba.

Soon after completion of the railway line, it required two engines to tug coaches and wagons along the Tazara line, especially at Mlimba.

The point is, if Kikwete’s administration wants to kill two birds with one stone, that is, create more than one million jobs while at the same time solve the country’s huge infrastructure problem once and for all, then it has to face the Chinese with the proposed suggestion.

At present one of the problems facing Tanzania, as far as the exploitation of the iron ore at Liganga is concerned, is said to be the huge amount of power required for such a job.

But Liganga is close to massive deposits of coal which could be used as source of energy for smelting iron ore from Liganga.

Alternatively, the Government could enter an agreement to build a maze of railway line in the country as soon as beginning next year, but with a clause that the Chinese government would be part of the exploration of the iron ore deposits once the required power for smelting iron ore is obtained.

Indeed, if they could build Tazara through their own raw material, why should they fail to build the required maze of railway lines in the country that would go a long way towards solving, once and for all, the country’s present massive transport problem?

It is important for the present administration to realize that one of the reasons why President Kikwete received a landslide victory last year is because many Tanzanians, especially the youth, believed that he would give them jobs.

For instance when he addressed a massive rally at the Jangwani playing grounds, during the election campaigns last year, most of the people were not only youth, but were also either semi literate or illiterate.

The two groups too elected Kikwete because they believed that he would give them jobs, secure jobs at that.

The question is if he does not build a maze of railway lines during his term in office, how is he going to provide the one million plus jobs?

It is only through the construction of a maze of railway lines in the country through the use of our own resources, iron ore from Liganga and Chinese or any country that would be ready to get into a barter payment system that President Kikwete would be able to give more than one million jobs.

What is more, most of those million plus jobs would be for keeps. This is because on completion of such maze of railway lines, the Government would require workers- skilled and unskilled to man the railway line.

Construction work would absorb all kind of workers from engineering graduates from the country’s universities to technicians, semi literate and illiterates.

The Kikwete administration ought to consider this: Supposing construction of the maze of railway lines throughout the country employees over one million people and each person has between five and ten people to support behind him or her, what would be the trickle down effect?

OTHER BENEFITS:

The immediate benefits to be reaped from construction of such maze of railway lines throughout the country is that, one, the arable land in the country which is one of the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa would be opened up to agriculture, livestock and industrial development.

Instead of depending on expensive trucks, what with the on going galloping fuel prices, for transporting agricultural produce and industrial goods, the maze of railway lines would take care of that.

And because the gauge of the railway line would be linked and similar to that of Tazara, the railway line would be able to carry more and heavier goods to neighbouring countries of Zambia, DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, northern Mozambique, Malawi and other countries.

And once the present power problem is solved once and for all, Tanzania national grid linked to that of other Southern Africa Development Community’s (SADC) member states, it would be possible for Tanzania to link its maze of railway lines to power.

The implication of this is that trains along the massive maze of railway lines would be powered not by fuel, but by electricity in the same way Inter-City trains are powered in Europe, meaning that they will be travelling at a speed of between 200 and 250 kilometres per hour!

In terms of distance and time span, what this means is that a train from Dar es Salaam to Iringa which is 500 kilometres away, would take less than three hours! The same thing could be said about a train travelling along the central line to Kigoma.

Instead of taking four days, it would take less than a day! The foregoing infrastructural revolution through the maze of railway lines is quite possible because unlike our neighbours Kenya and Uganda, we have iron ore and we should make use of it now!

It is better to be left with half of iron ore deposits because we have exchanged them with another country, but solve our present transport problem rather than to continue suffering from all kinds of transport problems.

Such a massive railway construction project would require for instance the central line to be raised so high that no floods would destroy it, making it passable throughout the year in the same way Tazara is.

Secondly, the railway line could be protected with fence, especially in areas where it goes through national parks like the Selous Games Reserve.

If the present administration goes ahead and implements such a project, it would take not less than ten years to complete it and the beauty of it is that by the end of the project, Tanzania would have transformed itself economically into an emergent African nation.

And only with the possession of such massive maze of railway lines can Tanzania be able to entice bona fide investors.
With such a railway system from Mtwara to the border with Malawi and Mozambique and from Tanga to Musoma and from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma and other neighbouring countries, there would be no pile up of goods at the Tanzanian ports along the Indian Ocean.

If Tanzania can serve well its neighbours as gateway to the Indian Ocean and by extension, to the other parts of the world, it should be able to have enough money to finance its entire government budget!

Tanzania has been talking about what it refers to as the Vision 2025 in which it hopes to reduce poverty quite considerably.

To me I don’t see how Tanzania is going to realize such an ambitious goal by that year if it does not take its infrastructure, and in particular, railway line seriously.

It is important for the present Government to realize that roads, no matter how many it builds in the country, would take it nowhere because roads don’t last long.

Besides, they require repair now and then. But a railway line is quite different. Consider the Tazara as a case in point. The only time we have had derailment has been through sabotage not because of bad engineering or lack of maintenance.

Even the weakest railway line (in terms of its small gauge which is no more in use in the world) like the central line, it has served the nation faithfully since it was first built by the Germans in 1901!

And if the present Tazara is well maintained, it can serve the two countries for more than two centuries and that should be Tanzania’s way forward, construction of a maze of railway lines rather than roads.

Construction of roads would be meaningful and would last long if we have a maze of railway lines covering the length and breadth of our nation.

Another important thing to bear in mind is that with over 940,000 square kilometres, Tanzania is one of the largest countries in Africa.

If countries like Germany that are almost twice the size of Tanzania, depend on railway lines for their transport as opposed to roads, what makes us insist on construction of roads rather than railway lines?

As noted by President Kikwete, land is our main resource for extricating ourselves from abject poverty we are in.

But the only way of doing that is not through those financial institutions which dish out money even to people who are not trained in business, but through opening up our land so that peasants and farmers can transport cheaply their agricultural produce through trains rather than fuel guzzling trucks and other types of vehicles.

Once our peasants and farmers realize that there are cheaper means of transporting their agricultural produce from point A to point B, then they would not need to be pushed into agricultural endeavours.

Ends.