The Civil Engineering Contractor May 2019 | Page 34

PROJECT ALERTS
Procedural Conceptual
Road infrastructure Road infrastructure
Mali and Côte d’Ivoire Mozambique
This road infrastructure and transport link project
provides an alternative route to open up access from
landlocked countries in the hinterland to the Gulf of
Guinea and its international ports. Connecting Mali and
Côte d'Ivoire, it involves the development of multinational
road infrastructure and transport links along the Bamako-
Zantiebougou-Kolondioeba-Boundiali-San
Pedro
corridor shared by Mali and Côte d’Ivoire.
The works include the installation of solar-powered
lighting systems in several locations, the construction of
multipurpose centres for women’s associates, and the
provision of farm produce processing kits. The project
will be the largest of its type to be implemented in Mali.
The project will connect Mali and the northern part
of Guinea to San Pedro, an important international port
in Côte d’Ivoire. The project consists of improvement
and maintenance work on 140km of the corridor in Mali
and 135km in Côte d’Ivoire. The works are expected
to reduce travel times by 70% and significantly lower
the cost of transportation between Mali and the Port
of San Pedro. Upgrading of the Mueda–Negomano Road Phase
II between Mueda-Roma (94km) in Cabo Delgado,
Mozambique, is at the conceptual stage, through
developer National Roads Administration Mozambique. It
is a public-private partnership, classified as Open Tender,
with the timing being 2019 onwards.
The government has received financing from the
African Development Fund and intends to apply part
of the agreed amount to payments to finance design
review studies for the Mueda–Negomano Road Project
Phase II between Mueda-Roma (94km) in Cabo Delgado.
Completion of this route is seen as strategic, as it is
part of the project to consolidate the EN1National
Highway, including the Mueda–Negomano section. The
construction of the 70km Negomano–Roma road will
start this year.
Design Tender
Power infrastructure Mining infrastructure
Zimbabwe Mpumalanga
The Bulawayo thermal power plant in Matabeleland,
Zimbabwe, is due for refurbishment, with the Zimbabwe
Power Company (ZPC) having shut down the station
frequently due to problems caused by the antiquated
machinery. The project is back to the design phase with
ZPC having rejected the only financing advanced for
pricing reasons.
The delay is facilitated by the fact that Zimbabwe
currently has an electricity oversupply, an official says,
permitting it to shut down two power plants. The power
stations, with a combined installed capacity of 190MW,
had not been operating recently for a few weeks,
according to ZPC’s power generation update. Munyati
has a capacity to produce 100MW, while Bulawayo can
produce 90MW.
The country, which has until recently been battling
to generate sufficient power to meet its consumption
needs, has been relying on imports, particularly from
neighbouring South Africa and Mozambique. ZPC used
to import 300MW from Eskom of South Africa and 50MW
from Mozambique’s hydro, Cahora Bassa. Exxaro proposes to relocate the Matla Coal Mine 1
surface infrastructure and access shaft from the farm
Haasfontein 85 IS Portion 5 to the remaining extent of
the Farm Bakenlaagte 84 IS, Mpumalanga. The shaft area
with associated infrastructure, including the pollution
control structures, will be approximately 69ha in extent.
The mine has been in operation for more than 30 years.
The current underground mining front is more than 17km
from the existing surface infrastructure and access
shaft. Relocation is essential to the continued economic
viability of the mine. Opencast mining would have
destroyed the wetlands completely, so the specific short
wall mining method, combined with the river diversion,
was a way of saving the wetlands. Through innovative
engineering design and specialist environmental input
from Golder Associates, Matla has been able to mine
the coal underground with limited impact on the surface.
Matla’s Mine 1 was currently on care and maintenance
while the remaining mine shafts — Mine 2 and Mine 3 —
were forecast to produce 7.7Mt in the 2017 financial year
against Eskom’s contracted volumes of 10.1Mt.
32 | CEC May 2019
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