Nsanje Port i Malawi åbnede officielt i 2010, men den fungerer ikke og ligger stille hen, måske fordi et vigtigt naboland ikke var med på planerne og en betydningsfuld vandvej dårligt kan tage pramme.
NSANJE, 10 May 2012 (IRIN): Visitors arriving in Nsanje, the sleepy capital of Malawi’s southernmost district, are greeted by a large yellowing billboard announcing: “The dream becomes reality. Nsanje Port opens October 2010.”
But those who go to the port will find little more than a concrete quay (betonkaj) with a couple of dozen mooring posts (fortøjningspladser), and a few fishermen manoeuvring crude dug-out canoes through the murky (mudrede) brown waters of the Shire River.
For former President Bingu wa Mutharika, the construction of an inland port at Nsanje meant linking land-locked Malawi with the Indian Ocean port of Chinde, 238 kilometres away in neighbouring Mozambique, through the Shire-Zambezi Waterway project.
The aim was to reduce the high costs of importing and exporting goods by road via Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre and the Mozambican port city of Beria – a round trip of about 1.200 kilometres.
And here comes Mozambique
But Mutharika’s enthusiasm for the project was not matched by his counterpart in Mozambique.
As Mutharika presided over the official opening of the port in October 2010, flanked by former Zambian president Rupiah Banda and Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, he had to give a humiliating admission (indrømmelse) to the crowd gathered to witness the arrival of the first barge (pram):
The Mozambican government had called for environmental and feasibility studies before it would allow any barges to navigate the Zambezi River portion of the waterway, which flows through its territory.
Since then, the port has sat idle (ligget stille hen), gradually shedding (afgive) nuts (møtrikker) and bolts (bolte / nagler) to vandals and becoming the focus of increasing resentment (modstand) from local people promised jobs and development.
Nsanje resident Rose Samuel, 32, said the only improvement to the town has been the paving (asfaltering) of a 50-km stretch of road linking Nsanje with Bangula, the next town. Much of the remaining 130 km of road between Nsanje and Blantyre has yet to be tarred.
“There is no evidence that Nsanje will ever be a big port city,” said Samuel.
“We have heard that down the river it is so narrow that a ship can not pass, so we do not think the port will be in use anytime soon,” noted he.
Land grabbed
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95438/MALAWI-Dream-fades-for-inland-port-project
