German firm to construct railway line linking Uganda to Sudan

KAMPALA, Uganda, July 12, 2004 (AP) — A German firm is set to begin aerial mapping of northern Uganda for the construction of a railway line linking the country to oil-producing regions of Sudan , Ugandan officials said Monday.

Thormahlen Schweisstechnik AG has concluded mapping the Sudanese part of the proposed line and will begin surveying the Ugandan side in two weeks, said Paul Orono Etyang, chairman of the Uganda Railways Corporation.

Construction of the 240-kilometer railway line will take one year and cost about EUR130 million, said Klaus Thormahlen, managing director of the German company.

The line is part of a project seeking to link southern Sudan and Kenya’s Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, a Thormahlen official said in a telephone interview from Spain. The project will take six years to complete and will involve the construction of 2,500 kilometers of railways, costing EUR1.3 billion, Thormahlen said.

The railway project is expected to help in the reconstruction of southern Sudan , ravaged by a 21-year civil war. More than 2 million people have perished, mainly through war-induced famine.

Government and rebel negotiators are meeting in Kenya to hammer out final details of a cease-fire agreement and work out final points of a series of peace deals.

“We shall start construction at the beginning of next year,” the Thormahlen official told The Associated Press. “There are lots of goods to transport, there are minerals, there is timber, there are people and the railway line would enable them to transport all these.”