Nigeria Starts $3 Billion China-Financed Upgrade of Railway Line
The Export-Import Bank of China’s offices in Beijing on Jan. 13. Photo: VCG
(Bloomberg) Nigeria’s government began a $3 billion rehabilitation of a railway line that links major cities in Africa’s most-populous country.
The project marks the latest step in an ambitious plan to create a nationwide rail network intended to aid Nigeria’s economic diversification away from crude oil. The development is designed to revamp a dilapidated 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) line that begins in the southeastern oil hub of Port Harcourt and terminates in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.
The contract “has the objective of resuscitating the once vibrant railway transportation in the eastern corridor of the country,” President Muhammadu Buhari said at a ceremony in Port Harcourt via video link on Tuesday. The Nigerian unit of state-owned China Civil Engineering Construction Corp., or CCECC, will carry out the work.
The prices of cement have risen by 67% in the South-East states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.
This is as some residents of the North-Eastern part of the country also complained of price hike of cement, which they attributed to the scarcity of the product and the activities of middlemen who try to capitalize on the situation.
According to a report from the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), a market survey conducted at various wholesale and retail shops in the eastern zone shows that the price of the product has almost doubled when compared to the price in 2020.
What the cement traders in the eastern states are saying
ADDIS ABABA－With the help of a Chinese construction company's "commendable work efficiency", the Ethiopian government aspires to improve the country's fuel distribution network with the timely completion of a Chinese-contracted railway project, said an official.