Infrastructure Towards a real takeoff

Congo has no shortage of resources or job-creating projects but for most economic operators the real take-off depends on creating or rehabilitating infrastructure. That is why the State has pulled out all the stops. The past few months’ most notable strides include the recent start-up of the 70mw Congo power plant and the grand opening in June of the first module in the new Maya-Maya international airport designed and built by China’s WIETC to handle 1.5 million passengers a year (compared to 495,000 for the former airport). Jean-Jacques Bouya, the minister in charge of major infrastructure construction projects, hopes the second module’s opening will foster the emergence of a veritable economic cluster. “The idea is to make Maya-Maya a hub for our sub-region,” he says. Meanwhile, as the port of Pointe-Noire is upgraded and the first stretch of the RN1 (now viable almost to Dolisie) between Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville to bring the political capital out of its economic and logistical isolation nears completion, the Congo-Ocean Railway (CFCO), long considered the national economy’s bottleneck, is bound to play a major role in development. Combined with the road, it will help ease congestion in the hinterland, enabling Pointe-Noire, the Congo basin’s maritime gateway, to again become the multimodal platform it was in the days of the Trans-Congo Communications Agency (ATC), a State company that managed the railway. There is still no light at the end of the tunnel but the CFCO, which is undergoing a modernisation programme the State launched in 2007, is clearly moving forward: the purchase of new rolling stock and technical and logistical cooperation with SNCF International has already boosted freight traffic by 30%.

The upgraded port is likely to strengthen the role of PointeNoire, ocean gateway to a 16-million-km2 hinterland with 100 million people. It will also be the first transshipment platform for vessels travelling from Asia to West Africa. In the framework of the Priority Investment Programme (PIP) focusing on the Autonomous Port of Pointe-Noire (PAPN), the container terminal (Congo Terminal) was granted to the Bolloré group, which includes the African subsidiary of the French group Bolloré Africa Logistics and the partners Socotrans, Samariti and Translo. The successful bidder will invest 374 billion FCFA (€570 million) in the concession by 2036. Work on expanding and updating the container terminal started in late 2010. When completed 34 to 42 months later, storage capacity should more than double from 17 to 38 hectares of open area and the draught will increase to 15 meters, enabling the port to accommodate the latest-generation ships.

A FUTURE LEAP FORWARD When the 34 shore gantries and 14 more dockside gantries are added the PAPN should be able to take a big technological leap forward and accommodate five times more containers than now at a faster pace. It will be in a position to offer the same quality of service as its major European, American or Asian counterparts. The first goal of the large-scale project, which began a little less than five months ago, is to rebuild and extend pier G and reclaim around 30 meters of land from the sea. “In the long term we’re heading towards 400,000 TEU,” [editor’s note: twenty-foot equivalent unit] says Congo Terminal MD Bertrand Codron, “which is tremendous progress”. Stage two, focusing on the D piers, is set to start in 2015. By Élodie VERMEIL

INTEGRATING PROJECTS

Congo is betting on crossborder roads to open up to neighbouring markets..

CONGO’S PRESIDENT, currently the serving chairman of the Economic Community of Central African States (Cemac), has made the most of his country’s central geographical location to develop integrating infrastructure projects. For instance, regional airline Air Cemac has its headquarters in Brazzaville, poising Congo to reposition itself as the subregional hub in time for its economic emergence by 2025. Congo must be able to import from and export to neighbouring countries at lower cost. That is the reason for the 575km crossborder road from Sangmélima, southern Cameroon to Ouesso, northern Congo, which also connects Brazzaville and Yaoundé. The African Development Bank (ADB) backs the project, which has socio-economic spinoffs for both countries. “The agricultural and forestry potential of the regions crossed make them ripe for dynamic, autonomous development, but they are also amongst both Congos poorest and most remote areas,” the bank says. “A road like this will help achieve the government’s development goals by facilitating subregional integration, improving mobility in these regions and making them easier to reach from Yaoundé and Brazzaville.” Another gigantic project involves building a four-kilometre road-rail bridge between Brazzaville and Kinshasa over the River Congo. Financed by the ADB in the framework of Nepad, it is part of a planned road connecting northern and southern Africa from Tripoli, Libya to Cape Town, South Africa via Windhoek, Namibia. The road should foster the growth of economic activities between both countries, and the port of Pointe-Noire could become the main unloading centre for goods on their way to Kinshasa. By François BAMBOU