‘Holistic approach is crucial to improving regional logistics’

Southern Africa must pool
its resources to re-imagine
its railway sector otherwise
repetition of services and red tape
will see its efforts fail.
Deputy Minister of Transport,
Jeremy Cronin, said there was
no point in wasting resources in
every country, setting up a rail
safety regulator. “We are wasting
by being repetitive and by having
so many regulators we create our
own red tape that causes major
delays and confusion.”
He said while it was important
that South Africa did not sell
itself as “Uncle Sam in Africa”,
it had to take a leading role in
creating synergy in the region.
“We need one single regulator
to implement a uniform policy
across the region that will
facilitate and allow for the
increase of trade. In this one stop
borders are very necessary.”
He said while Chirundu – the
first one-stop border in Southern
Africa had been in operation for
some time, it was having little
impact on the movement of
freight as the focus remained on
passengers.
“We must make it easy to move
freight and that means having
systems across the countries that
allow for this. As Africans we
have many technical problems
as well as a lack of capacity,
but finding solutions to this is
important.”
Cronin said a logistics system
was more than just establishing
a cross-border rail network. “It
includes the entire package – all
transport, but also Customs,
taxes, engineering, construction.
We have to pool our resources
and share across our region to
bring rail back to this part of
Africa, but also to allow us to
create an infrastructure that is
easy to use and to our benefit.”