THE railway station at Lubumbashi, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s second city and the centre of its mining trade, has seen better days. Outside the 1920s Belgian-built whitewashed station, hawkers sell bus tickets south to Zambia and South Africa. Travellers would do much better buying one than going inside—trains in Congo are not for the faint-hearted.
In the ticket hall, standing by a timetable on a blackboard, Baudouin Kalubi, the station master, explains that the next train will depart the following morning to Kindu, about 1,600km (1,000 miles) north. From there passengers can get on buses towards the Congo river. The train is, Mr Kalubi proudly explains, an express, with a new Chinese locomotive. That means it should go at an average speed of 15kph. “It is not the TGV,” he admits, referring to France’s high-speed trains. Yet in Congo there are so few roads that if you can’t afford to fly, the train is all that is left.
Over the past half-century, Africa’s mostly colonial railways have mostly atrophied. According to the International Union of Railways, in 2014 sub-Saharan African trains carried about 158 billion...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/1t55D35
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