Works minister Innocent Bashungwa officiated at the meeting in Dar es Salaam yesterday bringing together sector ministers, top officials and a selection of consultants, setting the framework to rehabilitate in a fast-track manner the project, which some believe can solve trade bottlenecks on the eastern side of the continent.
The minister expressed appreciation for the Egyptian authorities for its efforts to bring countries traversed by the officially used version of where the road passes, to rehabilitate it to a usable highway facilitating trade expansion.
Tanzania forms part of the Great North Road when it takes an easterly trajectory, reaching 1600km when arriving at the Namanga border post in Arusha Region, having passed through Mbeya, Iringa, Dodoma, Manyara and then Arusha Region, as usually the road is tracked from Cape to Cairo rather than vice versa.
There are maps which show the road on a more straightforward path in the central Africa side, where it would briefly pass through Tanzania near the Lake Tanganyika Rift Valley zone upwards to Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan, before reaching Sudan and eventually Egypt.
For decades official references to the Great North Road is the easterly version taking a long stretch of middle Tanzania, where the total length is billed at 10,228km from the far south to the northern end of the continent.
The meeting focused on the road in an Egyptian version of the Great North Road as proceeding from Cairo, despite that traditionally it was a dream of British trading firms to connect South Africa with the northern outreaches.
While the talks in Dar es Salaam do not mention Botswana in the trajectory, online tourism entries talk of exploring Botswana's best game reserves on land and on water on an exciting 11-day mobile camping safari aligned with the Great North Road. North of Botswana is Zimbabwe and then Zambia where the great Victoria waterfalls are found, before moving up to the Tanzanian border at Tunduma.
The minister said that the partnership between Tanzania and Egypt in infrastructure development would address key infrastructure challenges and unlock new opportunities for economic advancement.
He expressed the government’s keenness on joint cooperation with Egypt in the various fields of transport and the increase of trade between the two countries through a comprehensive vision in all fields, including the transport sector.
As Egypt is far ahead in the area of technology and innovation, the collaboration will greatly help Tanzania to implement its projects by taking up updated adhering to high standards and technology, he stated.
Capacity building in the cooperation drive shall equip Tanzania’s experts in the construction sector, he said, pointing at youth engineers needing essential exposure to take up construction work more effectively.
Kamel El Wazir, the Egyptian Minister of Transport praised efforts by President Samia Suluhu Hassan for opening up the country and placing a conducive environment facilitating greater cooperation.
El Wazir said construction of the Cairo-Cape Town highway will aid in shortening travel time between the north and southern parts of Africa to an average of only five days on land, realising the dream of a real Great North Road.
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