TAZARA Railway

The Tazara Railway, also called the Uhuru Railway or the Tanzam Railway, is a railway in East Africa linking the port of Dar es Salaam in east Tanzania with the town of Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia's Central Province. The single-track railway is long and is operated by the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority.
The governments of Tanzania, Zambia, and the People's Republic of China built the railway to eliminate landlocked Zambia's economic dependence on Rhodesia and South Africa, both of which were ruled by white-minority governments. The railway provided the only route for bulk trade from Zambia's Copperbelt to reach the sea without having to transit white-ruled territories. The spirit of Pan-African socialism among the leaders of Tanzania and Zambia and the symbolism of China's support for newly independent African countries gave rise to Tazara's designation as the "Great Uhuru Railway", Uhuru being the Swahili word for freedom.
The project was built from 1970 to 1975 as a turnkey project financed and supported by China. At its completion, the Tazara was the longest railway in sub-Saharan Africa. Tazara was also the largest single foreign-aid project undertaken by China at the time, at a construction cost of US $406 million.
Tazara has faced operational difficulties from the start and was kept running by continued assistance from China, several European countries, and the United States. Freight traffic peaked at 1.2 million tons in 1986, but began to decline in the 1990s as the end of apartheid in South Africa and the independence of Namibia opened alternative transport routes for Zambian copper. Freight traffic bottomed out at 88,000 metric tons in Fiscal Year 2014/2015, less than 2% of the railway's design capacity of 5 million tonnes per year.
In February 2024, the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation submitted a proposal for the upgrading of the Tazara to standard gauge, as well as for a concession to operate the line. A corresponding Memorandum of Understanding was signed at the 9th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing in September 2024. The refurbishment is to commence as a public private partnership.
On 21 March 2025, the Citizen published that Tanzania is receiving an investment of 1.4 billion US dollars from the CCECC for the rehabilitation of the Tazara railway. One billion will be invested in the repair of the tracks, safety and efficiency, and a further 400 million in the purchase of new locomotives and wagons.

Route

Running some from Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, on the coast of the Indian Ocean to Kapiri Mposhi, near the Copperbelt of central Zambia, the Tazara is sometimes regarded as the greatest engineering effort of its kind since World War II. The railway crosses Tanzania in a southwest direction, leaving the coastal strip and then entering largely uninhabited areas of the vast Selous Game Reserve. The line crosses the Tanzam Highway at Makambako and runs parallel to the highway toward Mbeya and the Zambian border, before entering Zambia, and linking with Zambia Railways at Kapiri Mposhi.
From sea level, the railway climbs to at Mlimba, and then reaches its highest point of at Uyole in Mbeya before descending to at Mwenzo, the highest point in Zambia, and settling to at Kapiri Mposhi.

The Tanzanian interior

Upon leaving the coast, Tazara runs west, through the Pwani Region, then dips south of Mikumi National Park and enters the wilderness in the northern part of the Selous Game Reserve in the Morogoro Region. The Selous is one of the largest faunal reserves in the world and passengers can often see wildlife such as giraffe, elephant, zebra, antelope and warthog, which have become accustomed to the rumbling of the trains. The railway crosses the Great Ruaha River for the first time in the Selous.
Further south, the railway cuts through the fertile Kilombero Valley, and skirts the great Kibasira Swamp. The next section, between Mlimba and Makambako was to be long, and presented the builders of the railway with the greatest challenge. To lay track across rugged mountains, precipitous valleys and deep swamps, it was necessary to construct 46 bridges, 18 tunnels, and 36 culverts. Because of the heavy rainfall in this area, intricate drainage works had to be integrated with every feature. The most spectacular feature is the bridge across the Mpanga River, which stands on three tall pillars.
At Kidatu, a metre gauge branch railway connects to the Central Line at Kilosa.
The TAZARA then climbs into the Southern Highlands of the Iringa Region and levels out onto a rolling plateau. Here, in the coffee and tea country of the Njombe Region, the weather becomes noticeably cooler, the air sharper. On the approach to Makambako, the Udzungwa Mountains National Park rise to the north, while the Kipengere Range roll ahead to the south. Makambako is one of the meeting points of the railway and the Tanzania-Zambia Highway.
From Makambako the railway and the highway run a parallel course towards Mbeya running past the Kipengere Range that towers to the south. Here in the Mbeya Region, the Tazara crosses several upstream tributaries of the Great Ruaha, which are lined with belts of forest and grasslands.
After the Kipengere Mountains, the Uporoto Range takes over with the Usangu Flats stretching to the north. From Mbeya town, both the railway and the highway heads northwest to Tunduma where they cross the border into Zambia.

Zambia

The Tazara enters northeastern Zambia in the Nakonde District, in the Muchinga Province, and heads southwest to Kasama. It then turns due south and crosses the Chambeshi River en route to Mpika. After entering the Central Province, the railway again turns to the southwest, running along the northern foothills of the Muchinga Mountains, past Serenje and Mkushi to Kapiri Mposhi, located due north of the Zambian capital, Lusaka.

Passenger service

As of February 2016, two passenger trains per week traverse the entire TAZARA in each direction. Departures are on Tuesdays and Fridays in each direction. The brand new Express train travels Fridays from Dar and Tuesdays from New Kapiri Mposhi. The Ordinary train makes all possible stops, and the Express service makes fewer stops The entire journey, as scheduled, takes 36 hours, though delays can extend the trip to as long as 50 hours or more. Trains on the TAZARA are slower than overland bus service but cheaper and safer. The TAZARA trains have attracted foreign tourists wishing to see the landscape and wildlife along route.
Rovos Rail of South Africa operates the Pride of Africa, a luxury train, that runs periodic tours from Cape Town to Dar es Salaam via the TAZARA.
The TAZARA tracks are also used for passenger commuter rail service between Dar es Salaam and its suburbs. The Dar es Salaam commuter rail was launched in 2012 to relieve traffic congestion. The TAZARA offers two routes on its 20.5 km rail network.

Rail gauge and standards

The TAZARA has a track gauge of, also known as the Cape gauge, which is widely used throughout southern Africa. TAZARA connects to the Cape-gauge Zambia Railways at Kapiri Mposhi. The remainder of Tanzania’s railways have metre gauge tracks. A transshipment station with a break of gauge station was built in Kidatu in 1998.
Except for the rail gauge, TAZARA generally reflects Chinese railway standards of the 1970s. The technical characteristics of the line were:

Couplers: Janney
Brakes: Air/vacuum
Axle loading: 20 metric tons
Sleepers: Concrete on main line, Wood at turnouts and on bridges
Rail: High-manganese steel, 45 kg/m, mostly jointed
Signals: Semaphore
Design speed:
Design capacity: 5 million metric tons per year
Loading gauge: Limited by 22 tunnels in the Udzungwa Mountains
Equipment

Locomotives

At the moment the railway operates three types of locomotives as listed below:

Type	Quantity	Manufacturer	Notes	Sources
SDD20	10	CSR Qishuyan
U30C	10	Krupp	Variant of GE U26C, not to be confused with the identically named GE U30C.
CK6		CSR Chengdu	Shunting locomotive

History

Origins of the project

In the late 19th century, Cecil Rhodes envisioned a railway from British Rhodesia to Tanganyika to carry copper ore. After World War I, Tanganyika was handed over to the United Kingdom for administration as a League of Nations Mandate, and British colonial authorities again explored the idea. Still, from the outset, the Western powers refused to construct the Tanzam railway because it would have been unprofitable for Western investors.
Following World War II, interest in railway construction revived. A map from April 1949 in Railway Gazette showed a proposed line from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri Mposhi, not far from the route that would eventually be taken by the Chinese railway. A report in 1952 by Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners concluded that the Northern Rhodesia-Tanganyika railway was not economically justified, due to the low level of agricultural development and the fact that existing railways through Mozambique and Angola were adequate for carrying copper exports. A World Bank report in 1964 projected that only 87,000 tons of cargo would be carried between Zambia and Tanzania by the year 2000, not enough to support a railway, and recommended that a road be built instead.
In 1961, Tanganyika became independent under the leadership of Julius Nyerere, and in 1964 the country joined with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanzania. Also in 1964, Northern Rhodesia was granted independence as Zambia, under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda. Both Nyerere and Kaunda were charismatic socialist African leaders who supported the self-determination of their African neighbors. A railway connecting their two countries would help to develop the agricultural regions of southwestern Tanzania and northeastern Zambia.