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Upgrade work will be carried out on a road in Tanzania’s Kigoma Region now that financing has been secured. A loan worth US$257.7 million from The African Development Bank (AfDB) will help finance the work. The 260km road connects Manyovu with Kabingo and the work is expected to take 36 months to complete. The work is important as it will provide better transport to an area of Tanzania that has suffered from poor connectivity in the past.

Construction work is starting on two important road projects in Kenya. These are for the Dongo Kundu Southern Bypass and for the Mau Highway. The Mau highway project is worth US$2 billion and forms part of the route that links Kenya’s key port at Mombasa through its capital Nairobi to the border with neighbouring Uganda. The 180km Nairobi-Nakuru-Mau section of the A104 route will feature two lanes in either direction. The deal is being handled under a package that includes design, financing, maintenance a

Work is now starting on the 234km road that will connect the Ethiopian town of Togochale with Berbera Port in neighbouring Somalia. The project is being carried out in three phases and will cost US$400 million in all, with this first 72km section costing some $90 million. The project is of key importance to both countries, as well as for East Africa’s economy as a whole. Landlocked Ethiopia’s economy has been growing healthily in recent years but has been constrained by a lack of access to a port. Meanwhile

A study is being carried out for a proposed combined use tunnel project in Turkey. The proposal is for a tunnel featuring three levels that would be able to handle both 75,000 passengers/hour by rail and 120,000 vehicles/day. The study should be complete during 2019, with a tender process expected soon after. Should the project go ahead, the build-operate-transfer model will be utilised.

Construction work is starting in the Philippines for the new link that will connect the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx) and the South Luzon Expressway (SLEx). The project is costing nearly US$430 million, with the link being built by local toll road firm NLEX Corp. The new link road will be 8km long, running from the end of Harbor Link in Caloocan City to the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in Santa Mesa of Manila. The road link will be elevated and the work is due for completion in 2021.

The contract for a major new expressway project in China has been won by a consortium. The Guizhou Jianhe-Liping Expressway should cost close to US$1.9 billion to build and take three years to construct. The group handling the work comprises CRRC Kunlun Investment Group Co and divisions of China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC). The expressway deal includes a 30 year concession to operate the tolled. Link. The project is being handled under the PPP model that includes viable gap funding, equi

A new completion date has been set for the La Linea Tunnel project in Colombia. The work should now be finished in late 2020, although the project was originally intended to be ready by late 2016. The various contracts to complete the Cruce de la Cordillera Central route will be awarded in April 2019 by the national road institute (Invias). The contracts will include strict measures to ensure that contractors will comply with all the terms of the deal. The Colombian Government previously allotted US$204.5 m

Work is starting on Cambodia’s Phnom Penh-Preah Sihanouk Expressway. The 190km route will be the first expressway in Cambodia and the project is costing US$1.9 billion. This route is being built by the Chinese contractor China Communications Construction Company with two lanes in either direction and the country plans to have a total network of around 850km of expressways following the same design by 2020. By 2040, the aim is to have 2,230km of expressways, although this will cost an estimated $26 billion i