Abidjan - The road corridor between Côte d'Ivoire and Mali, financed by the African Development Bank (AfDB), improves the mobility of goods and people, reports a press release published by APO Group, Monday, November 09, 2020.

At the Ivorian-Malian border, work on the road corridor between Côte d'Ivoire and Mali is almost complete. But even before its completion, the infrastructure already relieves carriers and local populations in both countries.

The Bamako-San Pedro corridor, work on which was launched in 2015 for completion scheduled for June 2021, was financed to the tune of US$233 million by the AfDB, including US$198 million from its low-interest loan window. concessional, the African Development Fund.

The work is part of the implementation of the Road Development and Transport Facilitation Program on the Bamako-Zantiebougou-Boundiali-San Pedro corridor.

Work on the Zantiébougou-Ivorian border route (140 km) on the Mali side has been completed and provisionally delivered. On the Côte d'Ivoire side, the works of the Kani-Fadjadougou section (lot 1) are finalized and those of lot 2 (Fadiadougou-Boundiali section) are 86% complete. The two lots represent a distance of 135 km.

According to a report on the status of implementation and results (ERA) published on October 27 by the Bank, the impact of the project is already being felt on the beneficiary populations in view of the volume of traffic on the roads completed or in progress. Classes.

Travel times, which were six hours in 2014 on each of the sections from Zantiébougou to the Ivory Coast border and from Boundiali to Kani, were now reduced to between one hour 40 minutes and two hours last May . This represents a total gain of $3.6 million per year for carriers.

According to the report, the processing time for container traffic at the port of San-Pedro, in Côte d'Ivoire, will increase to three days compared to ten days in 2014, once the interconnection of customs IT systems, the implementation a single port window at the port of San-Pedro and an electronic tracking system for goods and vehicles along this corridor will have been implemented.

In addition, the crossing time for a truck of goods at the border between Côte d'Ivoire and Mali is expected to decrease from a full day to only about three hours, after the construction of the single border control post.

As for the operating cost of three-axle vehicles, it has been cut in half, from 1.8 dollars per kilometer in 2014 to almost 90 cents. The rural access index in the project intervention area is close to 60% in 2020, half of which concerns women, against 25% in 2015. This index measures the proportion of the rural population with less than two kilometers of an all-weather road.

By the end of the project, four centers and six multifunctional platforms dedicated to women will be built. In addition, five schools, five health centers and two bus stations will be renovated as well as five local markets and a border livestock market will have to be built.

The project also provides for the construction of twenty boreholes (ten per country), managed 100% by women. Ten solar lighting systems will be installed, ten kits of processing tools and intermediate means of transporting agricultural products will be provided to the populations, 80% of them to women. Twenty tricycle vehicles and four ambulances for transporting the sick and pregnant women will be delivered to ten health centres. Finally, about 200 kilometers of rural roads will be rehabilitated in various localities on both sides in the two countries.

"At the end of the works, the project will notably allow an increase in the volume of trade passing through the land borders between Côte d'Ivoire and Mali from 59,200 tonnes to 392,400 tonnes, i.e. a growth rate of 34%" , concludes the AfDB report.