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| Features |
| Corridor of hidden wealth |
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by
Gospel Mwalwanda, 04 April 2003
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When the Nacala Development Corridor (NDC) investors conference began at the Mozambican port of Nacala, business woman Joyce Selemani was yawning at Cuamba railway station 533 kilometers away, as she impatiently waited for a Malawi-bound train.
Selemani, 30, had arrived at the station days before Malawi’s President Bakili Muluzi, his Mozambican counterpart Joaquim Chissano, and Zambia’s Vice President Enock Kavindere flew to Nacala for the February 27-28 investors conference.
She had with her 60 bags of maize, which she was taking to the Malawi border post of Nayuchi for sale. She had hoped to return quickly, get another lot, and make a second trip there.
But on the fifth day, Selemani was still stuck at the railway station with her merchandise, visibly weary and hungry. Inwardly, she wished something could be done to rehabilitate the rail line from Nacala to Nayuchi to facilitate quick movement.
Unknown to her, that was exactly one of the issues that had brought the three leaders and tens of prospective investors together. When Selemani heard about the conference, her spirits were lifted.
“When I heard about the meeting, I was overjoyed,” Selemani told this writer, who was among a team of Malawian journalists who travelled to Nacala by rail to cover the conference, when he met her at Cuamba railway station on their return journey.
Selemani, a Malawian national living in Nampula province with her Mozambican husband, said: “To me and countless other business people, repairing the rail line will mean a lot to our lives. We depend on it.”
However, while appreciating the need to restore the region’s hinterland access to Nacala, its nearest port, the NDC is not only about rehabilitating the trade route.
A brainchild of Presidents Muluzi and Chissano, the NDC came into being after the two leaders met and discussed the need to develop the region from the port of Nacala to Malawi.
During the inauguration of the corridor in Nampula on September 28, 2000, a provision was made for Zambia to join later. Zambia signed a letter of intent to join the NDC on July 31, 2001 and from that time, the country had been treated as the NDC’s third member, before formally being incorporated at the Nacala investors conference.
“Their intention was to reduce poverty because most of the people living along this line live below the poverty line, yet they have a lot of untapped resources,” says Luke Jumbe, NDC coordinator.
The NDC, which has received invaluable support from the South African government, is an ambitious project which aims to create conditions conducive to investment in transport, agriculture and agro-processing, fisheries, cattle breeding, commerce, industry, mining and tourism, by so doing improve the lives of the corridor’s estimated 16 million people.
The NDC uses what is known as Spatial Development Initiative (SDI) methodology, developed in South Africa as an integrated planning tool aimed specifically at promoting investment-led growth in regions of the country that were undeveloped but had potential for economic development, according to Jennifer Smith of the Department of Trade and Industry’s regional SDI support Unit in the Development Bank of Southern Africa.
“It is a methodology, which has the potential to transform a transport corridor into a long-term development corridor. This involves a process in which the public sector develops or facilitates conditions conducive to private sector investment and public-private-community partnership,” says Smith, explaining the concept in an SDI support programme titled “Creating new wealth in Southern Africa”.
Then with technical assistance, she says, the public sector identifies and offers investment opportunities to private sector investors.
However, Smith advises that “the process calls for high level of commitment and persistence from political champions, responsible government officials and development specialists.”
President Muluzi, in agreement with Smith’s words, in his speech at the start of the Nacala conference called for firm commitment and dedication among people in the region to implement the programmes of the initiative.
Muluzi told the conference: “The Nacala Development Corridor is surely ready for investment and it beckons all our bilateral and multilateral partners, and the private sector to invest in it.
“…I challenge the private sector to take greater interest in investing in the corridor so that they can maximise and create jobs which are essential in our tireless efforts to reduce poverty.”
The NDC extends from Nacala through Entre Lagos to the Malawi border at Lake Niassa, and includes the region along the railway spur line from Cuamba to Lichinga.
In Zambia, the NDC covers all districts in the Eastern and Northern provinces, Luangwa, Chongwe, Chibombo, Kabwe, Kapirimposhi, Serenje, and Lusaka district.
In Malawi, it covers the whole Southern Region and districts of Ntcheu, Dedza, Salima, Lilongwe, and Mchinji in the Central Region, and the Islands of Likoma and Chizumulu on Lake Malawi in the North.
At the Nacala conference, each NDC member country presented their investment opportunities to investors. The area covered by the NDC in Malawi has numerous projects, which government is investigating and these are in mining, forestry and fish farming, manufacturing, tourism and agriculture sectors, among others.
But of all Malawi’s projects, building a petroleum pipeline from Nacala to Liwonde where a refinery would have to be set up, and turning Liwonde town into a dry port, are the priority of the Malawi government.
For landlocked Malawi, petroleum is very expensive and the government could not have chosen better projects as its priority.
President Muluzi told the Nacala conference that the construction of a pipeline would not only reduce the cost of transporting petroleum, but would also lower prices of commodities.
“It would greatly lower the cost of commodities and essential services requiring fuel energy as well as spur industrial growth. Hand in hand with this important project would be the creation of a dry port at Liwonde. Land for this project has already been identified,” Muluzi said.
Transport and Public Works Minister, Clement Stambuli, also concurs with the Malawi leader, saying the two projects would contribute immensely to government’s poverty alleviation efforts.
Speaking to the Malawi delegation upon arrival in Nacala, Stambuli said it was vital that Malawi should have the pipeline because the huge expenses incurred in transporting fuel over long distances affected commodity prices.
He said the proposed pipeline would lower prices of fuel and commodities, and in turn people would be empowered economically.
Jumbe says the NDC has already started yielding results. He told MANA: “There is more interaction between Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique. For instance, in Mozambique, you see many Malawians selling potatoes in Nampula. Traffic on the railway line has more than doubled for both imports and exports.”
The NDC, he says, is carrying more than 35 percent of Malawi’s requirements, adding that most of the traffic that used to go to Beira has been “recaptured.”
Says Jumbe: “Our intention is to have 50 percent of Malawi’s imports and exports on the Nacala line. This will be done by improving facilities at the port of Nacala and rehabilitation of the 77-kilometre sector of the corridor.”
During his two-day stay in Nacala, President Muluzi had a joint audience with Chissano, and a representative of railway investors, Jack Edlow.
Edlow told presidents that investors were willing to start repairs on the 77-kilometre stretch between Cuamba and Nayuchi, which was damaged during the 16-year civil war.
Business people like Selemani cannot wait to see the stretch in question, which is causing untold anguish to travellers, repaired. While news of the Nacala conference thrilled her, Selemani said she did not want to get too excited, lest the line did not get repaired as promised.
“The three leaders did well to create the corridor, but they will have wasted time and money if they were to abandon their plans. That will be tantamount to condemning us to a life of misery,” she said. “My fervent wish is to see their plans brought to fruition for the good of us all.” —Mana
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