A road can change everything: the landscape it crosses, of course, but also the economic life of an entire region and the daily lives of the surrounding populations.
For Hamuza Nakwala, a small trader in northern Mozambique, it was a road in the Nacala corridor that changed his life. You can recognize Hamuza from afar, by his skullcap and his beard, and by his old black bicycle.
Hamuza's bicycle is his work tool. He trades in agricultural products (corn, soybeans, sesame, beans) from the neighboring farms of Nacala, which are very much in demand in the region, and delivers them on his bicycle to Cuamba, located about 50 kilometers away.
"Before the road, I had to ride my bike for almost seven hours. Now it takes less than two hours to get to the town of Cuamba," says Hamuza Nakwala. Today, he can even easily make the round trip twice a day without any major issues.
He is smiling, as are all the shopkeepers in the towns he passes through and the small roadside vendors who no longer have to wait for customers for hours on end.
Economic activity has recovered in the region. Journeys are shorter, vehicles are less stressed, road safety is better and traffic is more fluid. As a result, more products are now available for sale at lower cost in the markets.
The road benefits the entire population of the two provinces it passes through - some two million people who are now able to move around more easily and are able to access schools and health centers that they had difficulty reaching in the past.
The new road stretches over 600 km through Nampula and Niassa, two of Mozambique's ten northern provinces. It links the port city of Nacala - the deepest natural harbour on the east coast of Africa - to Lichinga, the capital of Niassa province. In the past, it took a whole day to travel the almost 700 km between the two cities; today, the journey takes 9 hours.
The road is also part of the Southern African Development Community's (SACD) major strategic regional transport corridor, which links Nacala to the Zambian capital Lusaka over 1,700 km.
The African Development Bank Group is the largest donor to the project, and has been allocated $190 million through the African Development Fund, its concessional funding window. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Korea Exim Bank and the European Union have together contributed $164 million, with a further €46 million from the Mozambican government.
