Plan Adopted For West African Railway Interconnectivity
March 12, 2000 


LAGOS, Nigeria (PANA) - Construction work on the West African regional railway interconnectivity is to begin in June 2003 in line with the Master Plan adopted six years ago. 

A statement by ECOWAS said this was the outcome of four-day meeting jointly organised by ECOWAS, the Economic Commission for Africa and the Union of African Railways. 

The meeting, which adopted a "fast-tract" approach to the implementation of the Master Plan, also urged West African governments to adopt "institutional changes through the introduction of new legal framework that will put the railways on the competitive and commercial basis." 

The plan envisages that requests to donors for financial assistance to conduct feasibility studies for the regional railway, should be forwarded this month, while "the execution of economical preliminary cost estimates and detailed engineering studies should have been completed by February 2001." 

The statement said the meeting was attended by ECOWAS representatives from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, as well as officials of the ECOWAS Fund for Co-operation, the African Development Bank, the ECA and the Union of African Railways. 

The statement quoted ECOWAS executive secretary Lansana Kouyate, as having charged the participants to come out with "a plan of action that will interconnect the railways of West Africa, and promote joint private-public partnership." 

He blamed the operating difficulties of existing railways in ECOWAS member countries on "deplorable conditions of lines, inadequacy of fixed installations and signalling equipment, obsolete locomotives as well as difficulties in obtaining spare parts." 

Kouyate was, however, said to have expressed delight at the "renewed upsurge of strong political will to develop the railways as a means of cheap mass transit, and the transfer of haulage of goods from roads to the rails, to protect road infrastructure." 

In another development, the ECOWAS secretariat has announced 2001 as the date for the first West African Festival of Arts at a venue to be decided later. 

A five-member ad-hoc committee involving Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire, is said to be working out details of the event expected to feature 2,000 participants and more than 6,000 spectators. 




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