The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Government of Tanzania recently signed the agreement for a soft loan of USD 180 million to build the Dodoma City Outer Ring Road.
The 110.2 km project will provide efficient road transport access to Dodoma City, the rest of the country, as well as other countries in the East African Community (EAC), thereby contributing to poverty reduction and improved living conditions of the people.
The project is being implemented by the Tanzania Roads Agency (TANROADS), the Agency under the Ministry of Works, Transport, and Communication with the duty of maintaining and developing trunk and regional road network in mainland Tanzania.
The project is planned to be implemented over a four-year period at a total cost of USD 214.69 million
It will be jointly financed by the AfDB, the Africa Growing Together Fund (AGTF, jointly backed by the AfDB and the People’s Bank of China), and the Government of Tanzania.
The AfDB will finance 64.28% of the total cost, equivalent to USD 138.00 million, while the AGTF will finance USD 42.00 million representing 19.56% of the total project cost.
For its part, the Government of Tanzania with finance 16.16% of the total project cost, or USD 34.69 million as counterpart funds.
The project is expected to provide a major boost to the country’s and sub-region’s integration with a large swath of Africa, being at the cross-roads key regional and continental trade routes, namely; the Trans-African Highway (TAH 4) Corridor and the Central Corridor (CC).
TAH4 is a strategic route connecting Cape Town (South Africa) to Cairo (Egypt) through Gaborone (Botswana), Lusaka (Zambia), Dodoma and Arusha (Tanzania), Nairobi (Kenya), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Khartoum (Sudan).
The Central Corridor links the port of Dar es Salaam to Tanzania’s interior and secondary cities such as Mwanza, Kigoma and to four landlocked neighboring countries namely Burundi, Rwanda, DRC, and Uganda.
The Central Corridor is significant for Tanzania in that it handles 90% of the Country’s total trade (imports and exports), and 40% of the cargo handled by the Port of Dar es Salaam is transit cargo for DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda via the Central Corridor.