Congolese Government Lauds Partnership With African Development Bank, Seeks Enhanced Climate Funding
The Republic of the Congo, May 21, 2024 — The Congolese government has lauded the African Development Bank Group for its vital support in the nation’s development, particularly in infrastructure, where the Bank stands as the country’s key partner.
Government representatives gave the commendation during a three-day visit by the African Development Bank Group’s Vice-President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade. During this visit, she engaged with several ministers on political dialogue and support for the Bank’s operations.
Jean-Jacques Bouya, Congo’s Minister of State for Regional Development, Infrastructure, and Road Maintenance, praised the “very positive cooperation with the African Development Bank in the infrastructure field” and expressed eagerness to expand this partnership, highlighting the Bank’s comparative advantage in funding infrastructure across the continent.
The Bank Group has significantly contributed to Congo’s infrastructure development, including the construction of the Ketta-Djoum road, part of the Yaoundé-Brazzaville corridor, and the first section of the Ndende-Dolisie road linking Congo to Gabon. The Bank also funded fibre-optic networks connecting Congo to Cameroon and the Central African Republic and is financing studies for a road-rail bridge between the two Congos. Alongside Africa50, the Bank is leading efforts in resource mobilisation for these projects.
The road-rail bridge between the two Congos
The bridge is part of a larger project, the Kinshasa-Ilebo railway project. This project, part of the PIDA Priority Action Plan, consists of a 1.575-kilometre toll bridge over the Congo River. It will include a single railway track, two road lanes, sidewalks, and border checkpoints, and will be connected to existing road infrastructure in both countries. In 2019, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo signed an Intergovernmental Agreement to expedite the construction of the bridge linking the two capitals. Initially estimated in 2017 to cost $459 million, the project aims to establish a direct connection between the two cities. The current traffic by boat of an estimated 750,000 people a year and 340,000 tons of freight could grow to over 4 million people and 3 million tons of freight by 2025. However, the proposed project dates back further to 2008, when ECCAS, on behalf of the two governments, submitted to the African Development Bank a request for the financing of the study on the road-railway bridge between Kinshasa and Brazzaville and the feasibility study on the Kinshasa-Ilebo railway.
The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) is made up of eleven Member States: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and Chad. In the field of transport, ECCAS’s strategy focuses on the Consensual Development Plan for Transport in Central Africa (PDCT-AC), which includes 14 priority projects encompassing all the transport infrastructures that support the international trade of the States of the region (main ports, international airports, railways, river, and lake networks). In 2023, ECCAS noted that, in the context of transport, road transport facilitations had been launched, and their focus will be to fill the important missing links of the major West-East (Lagos-Mombasa) and North-South (Tripoli-Cape Town) trans-African corridors.
Detailed project design has been available since December 2016. So, let’s hope that further progress will be made soon.
Documents of Interest:
- https://map.au-pida.org/projects/show/20140001
- https://map.au-pida.org/projects/show/1640001
- https://www.icafrica.org/fileadmin/documents/Transport_Meeting/S4-Congo-River-Road-Rail-EN.pdf
- Grant funding terms of reference: https://www.afdb.org/sites/default/files/documents/projects-and-operations/multinational_-_study_on_the_road_-_rail_bridge_between_kinshasa_and_brazzaville_and_the_kinshasa_-_ilebo_railroad.pdf