By FREDERIC MUSISI & MARK KEITH MUHUMUZA
Posted
Friday, April 29
2016 at
01:00
In Summary
Benefits. With Uganda choosing to export oil through the port, Daily Monitor explores the many advantages Tanga offers to Uganda
Officials from Uganda and Tanzania will in the coming days meet to fine-tune the work plan for the development of the proposed Shs11 trillion crude oil export pipeline.
The 1,400km pipeline will run from Hoima District in the Albertine Graben through Masaka and Mutukula in Uganda to Bukoba, Biharamulo, Shinyanga, and finally to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania.
For Tanga – the oldest port in East Africa having been established by Portuguese traders around 1500 as a trading port for ivory and slaves – the development will likely rouse the city port that had faded off the region’s trading map following the rise of Mombasa (further north) and Dar es Salaam (further south).
Tanga remains Tanzania’s second largest port though, handling about 700,000 tons of cargo annually, according to the Tanzanian Ports Authority (TPA). It handles a negligible amount of cargo – if at all – to and from Uganda.
While recent discussions and developments have majorly revolved around the pipeline, for Uganda, a landlocked country, the development could finally open up an alternative and perhaps a more reliable route to the sea.
Currently, Uganda heavily relies on the Indian coastal port of Mombasa in Kenya for more than 90 per cent of its in-bound and out-bound cargo, nearly all of it by road. The port is congested and it takes up to four days to clear goods out of the port. The construction of a new standard gauge railway along the old 1892 Uganda railway route from Mombasa through Nairobi, Kisumu to Tororo and Kampala, once completed, might shift some cargo onto the rails but experts have repeatedly warned that it is risky business to rely on one access to the sea.
So what opportunity in real terms does Tanga present to Uganda and Tanzania?
Old plan, new need
In the 1960s, then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere and his Ugandan counterpart Milton Obote (both socialists by political orientation) mooted the idea of Uganda leasing the port of Tanga from Tanzania so it becomes Uganda’s point of access to the sea as an alternative to Mombasa.
Tanga had been eclipsed by the growth of Dar es Salaam and with the sisal export trade, the mainstay of the port dwindling, Tanzania wanted to create a new use for the port that would bring in revenue and stimulate the city.
The plan, however, died at its infancy with the overthrow of Obote in 1971 and the ascendency to power of Idi Amin. After Amin was overthrown in 1979, the idea remained an on-and-off talking point which never crystalised into concrete action.
Instead much attention was focused on the use of the “southern route” as an alternative import/export avenue for Uganda. The southern routes follows Tanzania’s central railway which runs from Dar es Salaam port through Dodoma to Tabora and finally to Mwanza port on the southern shores of Lake Victoria. From Mwanza, wagons were then loaded onto ferries docking at Jinja or Port Bell on the northern shores of Lake Victoria.
To complete the railway-ferry route, Uganda in 1983 commissioned three large capacity wagon ferries to ply the lake from Mwanza (in Tanzania) to Jinja and Port Bell. They were MV Pamba, MV Kaawa and MV Kabalega each with capacity to carry 44 20-foot containers mounted on 22 40-foot railway wagons.
The route had previously been plied by only two smaller wagon ferries – MV Uhuru and MV Umoja – that belonged to the defunct East African Community. Idi Amin’s government then ordered and fully paid for three larger ferries from Belgium whose construction was, however, completed four years after his ouster.
The southern route was active for many years until 2005 when all Uganda’s marine vessels were grounded following the sinking of MV Kabalega after it collided with MV Kaawa. Today, there are almost no imports or exports that go through this Mwanza route.
Making Tanga route reality?
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