The Board of Executive Directors of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has approved a project for Swaziland for the amount of UA 30 million (approximately 47 million dollars) to improve the standard and quality of the road linking Manzini to Mbadlane in the area of Manzini in Swaziland.

The city of Manzini provides employment to more than 250,000 Swazis who will directly benefit from the project in terms of economic activities and travel cost and time.

The road also connects to the main tourist and social infrastructure situated in Manzini, directly linking to South Africa, the country's largest trading partner. It also provides easy access to the new international airport serving the entire population.

"The development objective is to improve regional interconnectivity thus improve efficiency within the trade value-chain, particularly on exports, to increase trade flow and generate revenue for the country and thus reduce poverty," said the director of the Department for Transport and Information and Communication Technologies at the AfDB, Amadou Oumarou.

The project is aligned with the two pillars of the Bank's Southern Africa Regional Integration Strategy Paper 2011-2015 (RISP), namely, regional infrastructure and capacity building in support of infrastructure interventions.