Zaire TRANSPORTATION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Figure 11. Transportation System, 1993
Ferry on the Congo River, Équateur Region
Maréchal Mobutu Bridge over the Congo River near Matadi
Courtesy Agence Zaïre Presse
Zaire's severely dilapidated transportation
infrastructure is
perhaps the major constraint on the country's economic
development.
The country's large size and the physical limitations
imposed by
its topography are major factors in the underdevelopment
of the
transportation system, but poor management by inefficient
parastatals and corruption are primarily responsible for
the
sector's daunting deficiencies. During colonial times, the
transportation system was well developed to transport food
products
from Kivu and minerals from Shaba (then Katanga Province)
to the
Atlantic Coast for export. The transportation
infrastructure has
been neglected since independence, however.
Roads traditionally played a secondary role in the
Zairian
transportation network, behind railroads and waterways. A
network
of approximately 145,000 kilometers of roads exists in
Zaire,
although the country's vast interior is virtually devoid
of roads
(see
fig. 11). Only 2,500 kilometers are paved, originally
including the 350-kilometer Kinshasa-Matadi link, which is
nearly
thirty years old and was not built for the heavy loads it
carries.
By 1992 there were reports that only about forty
kilometers of the
Kinshasa-Matadi road were still paved. The road from
Kikwit to
Kinshasa and the links among the mineral centers of
Lubumbashi,
Kolwezi, and Likasi in Shaba also are paved. In the early
1990s,
the entire road network had slipped into a state of
serious
disrepair; a journey of 150 kilometers could take up to
twenty-four
hours.
The situation has obvious implications for the movement
of both
passengers and in particular freight, 80 percent of which
reportedly moved by private road transport in 1988. This
vital
service is, however, in jeopardy in the early 1990s.
Trucks, spare
parts, and fuel are in short supply, and the condition of
most
roads (especially secondary and rural roads) ranges from
appalling
to unusable. Local residents and entrepreneurs, religious
groups,
and some large companies have attempted to maintain some
roads but
with limited success nationwide.
Official passenger transport services in Kinshasa are
also
inadequate, but their unofficial, mostly unlicensed
suppliers have
been able to fill much of the gap. Deploying an armada of
pickup
trucks, covered trucks, and taxibuses, they provide half
the city's
public transportation, offering better service at a lower
cost to
the city's workers and residents.
Zaire has 5,138 kilometers of railroad in three
discontinuous
lines. A 366-kilometer standard-gauge (1.067 meter) line
links
Kinshasa with Zaire's main port of Matadi. Over 1,100
kilometers of
narrow-gauge (1 meter and 0.6 meter) rail connect towns in
northeast Zaire. The bulk of the system, however, consists
of a
network of standard-gauge lines in southeast Zaire used
primarily
to export minerals. International connections exist with
Angola's
Benguela Railway (not operating in the early 1990s), with
the
Zambian and South African rail systems, and with
Tanzania's rail
lines via a ferry across Lake Tanganyika.
The Zairian National Railroad Company (Société
Nationale de
Chemins de Fer Zaïrois--SNCZ) is headquartered in
Lubumbashi, the
regional capital of Shaba. Since 1974 SNCZ has been a
state-owned
company, responsible for the operation and maintenance of
the rail
line between Lubumbashi and Ilebo on the Kasai River. The
National
Transport Board of Zaire (Office National des Transports
au Zaïre--
Onatra) manages the Matadi-Kinshasa line as well as
transport on
the Congo River.
The railroads, too, are in desperate need of repair.
Train
transport is slow, cumbersome, and unreliable. Little
attention has
been paid the railroads since independence. The railroads
are
suffering from a lack of working locomotives and rolling
stock as
well as deteriorating railbeds. In the late 1980s, SNCZ
undertook
a US$75 million rehabilitation effort financed by the
World Bank,
the African Development Bank, and the governments of
Belgium,
France, and West Germany. By 1989 the project was at the
half-way
point in terms of committed funding. It sought to
refurbish 263
kilometers of the Kinshasa-Matadi and Lubumbashi-Ilebo
links. Track
beds were rebuilt and new rail and cross ties installed.
The plan
called for the overhaul of twenty diesel locomotives and
thirty-
eight electric locomotives as well as for the purchase of
new
rolling stock and material to manufacture rail cars
locally. Most
of the project had been set for completion in the early
1990s, but
little if any progress was expected in light of the
prevailing
economic chaos.
The rail and river transportation network between the
copper-
mining region of Shaba and the country's principal port of
Matadi
is called the National Route (Voie Nationale). This
network is
Zaire's lifeline, a 2,665-kilometer combination of
railroad between
Lubumbashi and Ilebo, river transport from Ilebo to
Kinshasa, and
rail once again between Kinshasa and the port of Matadi.
(Because
of rapids below Kinshasa, the river is not navigable
between
Kinshasa and Matadi.) It is the only route between the
mining
region and the ocean entirely within Zaire. This route
became even
more crucial after the 1,400-kilometer Benguela Railway
linking
Shaba to the sea via the Angolan port of Lobito was closed
in 1975
because of the Angolan civil war. (In 1991 plans were
underway to
reopen this rail line following an agreement between
Portugal and
Belgium, but no further progress had been made by 1993.)
Zaire once
sent almost half of its exports via the Benguela Railway.
Mineral
shipments traveling via the National Route to Matadi can
take as
long as two months and average about forty-five days.
Moreover,
because the load on the route is limited, Zaire has been
forced to
rely heavily on South African rail lines for between 33
percent and
40 percent of its mineral exports.
Inland waterways have traditionally been an important
mode of
internal transportation, but in the early 1990s, river
transport
was limited because the marking of navigable channels had
been
neglected, and barges were both old and in short supply.
The Congo River is the most significant of the
country's
rivers, and both passenger and freight ships ply the
navigable
section between Kinshasa and Kisangani. In late 1993,
however,
there were reports that riverboats had ceased operating
between
Kisangani and Kinshasa because of lack of fuel and spare
parts.
Ports are limited because Zaire, nearly landlocked, has
only a
tiny coastline of just forty kilometers. Matadi on the
lower Congo
River is Zaire's principal port and handles 90 percent of
the
country's nonmineral exports. Efficient cargo and
passenger
transportation at the Atlantic port of Boma, at Matadi,
and between
Ilebo on the Kasai River and Kinshasa are constrained by
lack of
equipment, the need for better charting and maintenance
along the
two rivers, and the fact that Matadi is a relatively
shallow port
and thus not accessible by large vessels. Donor countries
have
attempted to improve service at the ports of Kinshasa and
Matadi,
and a new deep-water port at Banana on the Atlantic also
was at one
time under consideration but has been abandoned given the
economic
situation prevailing in the early 1990s.
The cut-off of aid to Zaire and the deterioration of
the
economy in the early 1990s have halted economic
development
efforts, and shipping, like other forms of transport, is
in serious
disarray. According to one report, Zaire's maritime
company has
been forced to sell off all its boats.
Large distances between urban centers and a lack of
modern
ground transportation make air transport of particular
importance,
although domestic air services deteriorated substantially
in the
1980s and 1990s. The number of airlines serving Zaire had
increased
significantly in the 1980s, and included the formation of
at least
two private Zairian airlines that competed with the
state-owned
national carrier, Air Zaïre. Both the number of
destinations served
within Zaire and the international links grew
substantially in the
wake of liberalization measures begun in 1983. Several
European
carriers as well as Air Zaïre and a private airline, Scibe
Airlift,
linked Kinshasa to places in Europe and the rest of
Africa. But by
1992 most foreign airlines no longer landed at Kinshasa's
airport,
which was badly damaged by looting in late 1991. (Some
flights
resumed in late 1992.) People wishing to enter Zaire by
air must
land in Brazzaville in Congo and take a ferry across the
Congo
River to Zaire.
Air Zaïre has been under the management of the French
airline,
Air Transport Union (Union de Transports Aériens--UTA)
since the
fall of 1986, but became virtually bankrupt as a result of
the
country's economic crisis in the 1990s. Air Zaïre once
operated
four jets, but one was repossessed by Belgium and another
by Israel
for nonpayment of debts. Mobutu reportedly commandeered
the other
two to bring in newly printed bank notes from the printer
in
Germany.
The Postal and Telecommunications Board provides
overseas
telephone and domestic and overseas mail service. In 1984
the
country had only 30,300 telephones, almost all of them in
the
capital. A new satellite ground station was installed at
Matadi in
1985, which greatly improved the quality of international
calls.
Calling Brussels from Kinshasa, in fact, was reportedly
far easier
than making a connection to a city in the interior. An
American
company, in partnership with local business interests,
established
a cellular telephone system for Kinshasa in June 1991. In
1990
there were reported to be 32,000 telephones in Zaire, but
by 1992
the telephone system as a whole was reported to be
dysfunctional.
Broadcast facilities increased throughout the 1980s,
and
residents of most larger towns can now receive radio and
television
programming. Fourteen cities have television stations.
There were
an estimated 40,000 television sets and 3.7 million radio
receivers
in Zaire in 1990. The capital has one medium-wave
amplitude-
modulation (AM) radio station and one frequency-modulation
(FM)
station with programming in French; there are two other AM
and two
FM stations in other cities. Five shortwave stations
transmit
programming in French, Kiswahili, Lingala, and several
other
languages to listeners in more remote areas. All radio
stations are
government owned and part of the Voice of Zaire (Voix du
Zaïre)
network.
The state of telecommunications in the early 1990s was
reported
to be deplorable. The only reliable national radio network
is said
to be that of the Roman Catholic Church.
Data as of December 1993
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