Malawi unveils plans for new railway link to Tanzania as transport costs squeeze consumers

Malawi has dramatically ramped up plans to build a brand new north-bound railway connecting the landlocked nation to the Tanzania-Zambia rail network, in a bold bid to slash transport costs that are currently crippling businesses and piling fresh misery onto struggling households.

The ambitious scheme would link Malawi to the Tazara line — the bi-national railway that already carries cargo and passengers between Zambia and Tanzania's bustling Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam.

Astonishingly, Malawi currently has no functioning railway network beyond Lilongwe, with infrastructure limited to a patchwork stretching between Blantyre and the capital, and between Balaka and Nayuchi in Machinga.

Secretary for Transport and Public Works Bright Kumwembe dropped the bombshell plans during the opening of a two-day Central Corridor National Stakeholders Dissemination Workshop, branding the railway a "flagship project" under the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency — and revealing the scheme will be rolled out in carefully staged phases.

"This project will be done in phases. Currently, we are working on a feasibility study which is being assisted by the corridor itself. The African Development Bank has actually vouched that they are going to provide resources for that feasibility study," he said.

And Kumwembe didn't hold back when it came to describing the devastating impact of Malawi's transport woes on ordinary consumers, branding costs a "killer issue" for the country's entire economy.

"We are hovering about 50, 60 percent of costs and that is felt by the buyer or the consumer in the country because all those costs are passed on to the consumer," he revealed.

The scale of the crisis is staggering: transport costs are estimated to account for a jaw-dropping 60 per cent of Malawi's import and export expenses — a burden that ultimately lands squarely on the shoulders of hard-pressed shoppers.

Malawi officially joined the Central Corridor in December 2023, becoming the sixth member state granted access to the Port of Dar es Salaam — a lifeline port already handling close to 70 per cent of the nation's cargo. Existing alternative routes run through Nacala, while the once-vital Beira corridor remains disconnected entirely.

The push for a new northern route comes as Malawi's existing rail infrastructure languishes in a state of alarming disrepair.

The southern rail link to Nsanje, which once connected Malawi to neighbouring Mozambique and Zimbabwe, has lain dilapidated ever since the catastrophic wash-away of the Mtayamoyo Bridge in Nsanje back in 1999 — a quarter of a century ago.

Efforts to rehabilitate the south have fared little better. The 72-kilometre Marka-Bangula line in Nsanje has been plagued by repeated delays since construction began in May 2022.

The project, handed to China Railway 20th Bureau Group at a hefty K68 billion, has already blown through two deadlines — November 2023 and April 2024 — thanks to a toxic combination of contractor changes, devastating cyclones and the kwacha's sharp devaluation. The price tag has now ballooned to a staggering K100 billion-plus.

The stakes could hardly be higher for ordinary Malawians already buckling under a brutal cost-of-living crisis. The basic needs basket for an average urban family has now rocketed to a punishing K1 million a month, while fuel prices have surged by more than 120 per cent since October 2024 — when petrol cost just K2,530 a litre.