big investment in African railway instructure is needed

from Newsday :-

More than $50 billion will have to be spent in Africa in the next decade to build more than 4,000 km (2,400 miles) of additional rail infrastructure to unlock the continent’s bulk mineral resource potential, Mining Weekly reports.


Financial services firm Standard Bank said that infrastructure would continue to be the biggest challenge to exploiting the continent’s vast deposits of bulk commodities, particularly iron ore, manganese, and coal.

“As mining activities in key regions expand, mining output is starting to exceed existing rail capacity despite ongoing efforts to upgrade and maintain these rail links. Inadequate rail networks are limiting the economic potential of some of these commodity hot spots on the continent,” Standard Bank Power & Infrastructure global sector head David Humphrey said. The bulk commodity-mining sector in West Africa and Mozambique, in particular, was expected to drive further investment in railways in the next decade.

An enormous quantity of iron ore has been discovered in West Africa and could potentially attract $25 billion of infrastructure investment in the next decade, Standard Bank said. In Mozambique, rail and port infrastructure will likely attract investment of more than $20 billion in the next ten years. “High-quality coal reserves of more than 3 billion tons and the area’s proximity to large markets like India and the Far East will require investment in high-volume rail links to maximize the economic potential,” Humphrey noted.