Mozambique

Mozambique has almost 3,000 km of railways, but these were destroyed after the war of independence. The national railway company, Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique, CFM, estimated that in order to recover them, over € 18,000 M should be invested.

To attract private investors and share the costs, Mozambique has adopted a legal framework, which develops public-private partnerships (PPP). So far, it has been the mining industry that has stimulated the development of rail-port systems and has led the modernization of the rail network around corridors connecting inland countries with ports in Mozambique. The corridor linking the port of Maputo in the south, to the port of Beira in the centre and the port of Nacala in the north are the main centres for regional economic development, not to mention the transport of passengers, which the CFM has also predicted.

In these large infrastructure projects, Spanish companies can contribute a lot. In this country, reaching almost 3,000 kilometres long, a north-south connection is necessary. This is an area of great potential, given its geographical location as a natural transit corridor and point of access to the sea for several landlocked countries, reason for which the restructuring of its rail system is so important. Projects for freight rail systems include Nacala and Beira. In the first case, it is a key corridor for landlocked neighbouring countries such as Malawi and Zambia, with the support of the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Meanwhile, the “Beira Railway Project” aims to rehabilitate the system in central Mozambique.