Urban transport is offering very real opportunity to the project cargo sector – especially in East Africa. According to Deanne de Vries, senior vice president for Agility Africa, while many don’t think of urban transportation when they talk about breakbulk and project cargo, it’s creating real opportunity for the logistics industry. “Urban transport projects not only offer opportunities to project logistics companies, but decongesting cities helps traffic flow which ultimately means goods get to their end customer or the port of export more quickly, making the life of the logistics fleet manager easier,” she said. Several urban transportation projects have been undertaken in East Africa in the past few years. The Nyere Bridge over the Dar es Salaam bay opened in April 2016 while the first phase of the Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit (DART) system started operations in May 2016. Closer to home the longest suspension bridge in Africa (3km) is currently being built in Maputo as part of a larger plan which includes a ring road around the city, two new main roads out of the city, and rehabilitation of five existing bridges in Mozambique.
