The ships, 'MV Pamba' and 'MV Kaawa' docked at Port Bell, Kampala in
this 2006 picture. Uganda is now moving to revive transport and trade on
Lake Victoria. PHOTO | MORGAN MBABAZI | NMG
Absence of modern vessels, railway connections and cargo
handling facilities at ports continue to hamper efforts to revive trade
and transport on Lake Victoria between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Port
Bell, for instance, is Uganda’s main link to Kenya and Tanzania through
the Kisumu and Mwanza ports, but until recently, was abandoned with
ships plying the route grounded.
Water transport on the lake took a hit after a 2005 accident in which two Ugandan ships — MV Kaawa and MV Kabalega — collided while transporting goods to and from Tanzania.
MV Kabalega capsized after the collusion while MV Kaawa was rescued but has been grounded at Port Bell ever since.
A
commission of inquiry was set up and it recommended that both vessels
be rehabilitated and issued with new certificates of worthiness, but the
process was interrupted by the privatisation of the railway network
when a contract was awarded to Rift Valley Railways in 2007.
This
led to the abandoning of the port to water hyacinth and the vessels to
bats and mice. The railway line connecting Port Bell to Kampala was
vandalised. The story was the same for the Jinja port, which has similar
facilities to Port Bell.
The abandonment by the government forced traders to turn to haulage of cargo via road from either Dar es Salaam or Mombasa.
Agreement
The
revival of a multimodal transport route from Dar es Salaam Port to Port
Bell in Kampala through the use of trains and wagon ferry services was
on the agenda when Tanzanian President John Magufuli met his Ugandan
counterpart Yoweri Museveni on November last year.
The
meeting discussed modalities of implementing the memorandum of
understanding on joint co-operation for improvement of ports, Lake
Victoria inland waterways and railway transport services.
The
agreement signed last year in July establishes the use of trains and
wagon ferry services in the Central Corridor, which starts from Dar es
Salaam Port and serves Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
Challenges
Now,
Uganda is working round the clock to ensure that the Corridor is open
on its part but is facing financial constraints. The railway line from
Port Bell to Kampala has, however, been renovated at a cost of Ush1
billion ($263,270).
The government has rehabilitated the port and now two ships — Uganda’s Mv Kaawa and Tanzania’s Mv Umoja ply the Mwanza — ply Port Bell route.
Reports
indicate that government borrowed Ush160 billion ($48 million) from two
German banks — AKA Bank and Commerzbank AG — to develop the port.
Charles
Kateeba, executive director of the Uganda Railways Corporation, the
body that runs the port, said that the restored service includes the
22-wagon capacity Mv Kaawa and 200m long general user berth
that allows only two vessels to dock at a time. The port receives
general user cargo and wagon ferries.
“What we plan to
do in the future is to increase the length to 400m. It means we can
accommodate up to four ships from current two,” Mr Kateeba said.
Even with the capacity to handle two ships, the port can only load or offload a single ship in an hour.
With
two vessels carrying 22 wagons and each wagon carrying 40 tonnes, a
total of nearly 1,800 tonnes can be carried per round trip.
Rehabilitation
Uganda plans to increase the tonnage by rehabilitating the defunct MV Pamba but the government has failed to secure the needed funds, estimated to be $4 million.
“Our
plan is to run about 10 to 12 trips per wagon ferry. We plan to prepare
the second ship so that we have two Ugandan and one Tanzanian vessels.
If that happens the total capacity will be 63,000 tonnes per month,” said Mr Kaeeba.
However, there are no plans to rehabilitate the sunken MV Kabalega because “it doesn’t make business sense,” so the government is better off buying a new ship.
The
Jinja port, which has similar facilities with Port Bell has not been in
use since 2007, when operations at Port Bell stopped. The railway line
connecting the port was also vandalised but the general user cargo side
is fine and does not need rehabilitation.
URC has secured funds to rehabilitate the railway line by March next year for operations to resume.
Mr
Kateeba said that there is an overwhelming response from the business
community wanting to use the route way beyond what the government had
expected in a short period of time.
“Right now we have
more cargo, so we are trying to build up our response capacity. The
major constraint now is wagon supply and the number of ships,” said Mr
Kateeba.
These ambitions, however, are hindered by the
fact that some traders still do not find the water route attractive or
flexible enough and there are more imports than exports on the Ugandan
side which creates a discrepancy in the size of cargo.
“If
we had enough exports so that every ship carried the same tonnage and
it went full with exports and came back with imports, we should be able
to carry our maximum capacity,” said Mr Kateeba.
In Kenya, the railway line from Nakuru to the Kisumu port was also abandoned. One of the Kenyan vessels, the MV Uhuru that used to ply the Port Bell route, stopped operations in 2006.
SGR
While
the Mombasa Port remains the favourite route for many Ugandan traders,
the Kisumu Port would be the best option, but there is currently no
activity between Port Bell and Kisumu. This is mainly because of a
missing railway line at the Kenyan port, which Uganda officials say
Kenya is reluctant to construct.
“We are not able to go
to Kisumu now because there is no rail connection to Kisumu. The line
between Kisumu and Nakuru is dysfunctional and there are no plans from
the Kenyan side to restore the line because they want to connect Kisumu
to the standard gauge railway,” said Mr Kateeba.
There is hope that the SGR will connect Kisumu to Uganda.
Uganda
contends that transport around the lake should not be limited to the
links of Mwanza, Kisumu, Jinja or Port Bell but rather should look at
general trade, tourism and sports between the islands on the lake.
Key
among these Islands is the Kalangala archipelago. The government is non
committal on plans to revive the landing sites, passenger and freight
services to the islands.
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