Abidjan-Niger Railway

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Abidjan-Niger Railway
Route of the Abidjan-Niger Railway
Route length: approx. 1,150 km
Gauge : 1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Legend
Service / freight station - start of the route
 0 Port-Bouët 6 m
Station, station
 Treichville 1 m
   
 Pont Félix-Houphouët-Boigny (across Ébrié lagoon )
Station, station
 Abidjan lagoon 10 m
Station, station
 Anyama 82 m
Station, station
 Agboville 32 m
   
 Dimbokro railway bridge (via N'Zi )
Station, station
 Dimbokro 114 m
Station, station
 Bouaké 312 m
Station, station
 Katiola 326 m
Station, station
 Tafiré 402 m
Station, station
 Kouroukouna 374 m
Station, station
 Ferkessédougou 332 m
Station, station
 Ouangolodougou 328 m
border
 617 Ivory Coast / Burkina Faso 297 m
Station, station
 Niangoloko 337 m
Station, station
 Banfora 320 m
Station, station
 Bobo Dioulasso 443 m
Station, station
 Siby 369 m
Station, station
 Koudougou 314 m
Station, station
 Ouagadougou 297 m
Service / freight station - end of line
 1150 Kaya 340 m
Train express 11 on November 2, 2017 on the journey from Treichville to Ouagadougou

Under the name Abidjan-Niger-Bahn there is a meter-gauge railway line from Port-Bouët and Treichville on the Ivory Coast in West Africa to Niger in the Sahel . Depending on the information, the 1,245 to 1,264 km long route connects Burkina Faso in the north with the Ivory Coast and the Atlantic in the south. 617 km are in Burkina Faso.

history

In 2005, the Malian architect Sheikh Abd El Kader found plans for the following railway lines in French West Africa in the archives:

Not all of these lines were drawn across their entire line. However, this shows that the French wanted to solve the seclusion of those areas with an overall concept.

At the time of colonization, Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) and the Ivory Coast formed a common French colony . As early as 1898, the Houdaille mission was commissioned to look for a way to develop the interior from the coast. The route was approved the following year, but the deep-sea port of Abidjan was only determined after a mission in 1901. Previously the port was in Grand-Bassam . The first port in Abidjan was Port-Bouët, which was supplemented by that of Treichville after the opening of the Vridi Canal into the Ébrié lagoon .

A high-performance means of transport was required for the removal of raw materials and for the supply of workers, which is why Abidjan was set as the starting point of the railway line. The railway was to be built as far as Niamey in Niger, as the name testifies. Another mission under Robert Wallace Crosson-Duplessis established the route for the first 78 km in 1903.

construction

Construction began on January 12, 1904, reaching Agboville in 1907, Dimbokro in 1908 and Bouaké in 1912 , which was to remain the end point of the route during the First World War . After the war, construction work resumed in 1919. The division of Upper Senegal and Niger created the new colony Upper Volta , which had to be connected to the sea, which necessitated a change in the route so that Niger should no longer be the final destination of the route. The line continued via Katiola , which was reached in 1924, to Ferkessédougou , which was connected to the railway in 1929. On January 25, 1934, Bobo was reached, the first town in the former Upper Volta, because the colony no longer existed at that time. After the Second World War , Koudougou was reached on May 16, 1953 and Ouagadougou in 1954, the station of which was opened on October 30. Since then, the route from Ouagadougou to Kaya , north of the Burkinabe capital, has been extended.

Further construction through the Sahel began in February 1985 and the line to Kaya opened in December.

Operation during colonial times

The railway was operated by the Régie du Chemin de Fer Abidjan Niger (RAN, French for "Regiebetrieb der Abidjan-Niger Railway"). Until the 1950s it was decisive for the socio-economic and spatial planning development of the area crossed by the railway. While the already existing cities of Abidjan and Bouaké continued to grow thanks to the railway, the cities of Agboville and Dimbokro were only created through the railway. In the cities served by the railways, industrial companies were set up that processed products from the primary sector : in Abidjan several sawmills , in Dimbokro and Bouaké cotton coring plants and in Bouaké also a rice mill. The importance of the railway waned with increasing motorization in the 1950s and the relocation of the center of agricultural production further west.

Operation as a binational government company

The Ivory Coast and Upper Volta agreed to continue the joint operation by the RAN even after gaining independence. In its heyday, RAN employed over 6,000 people. Their working conditions were better than those of the other civil servants, but still worse than those of the private workers. In 1985, former World Bank employee K. J. Budin was appointed director. Within a few years by 1988, around 600 jobs were cut.

Operation with two companies

In 1989 the RAN was split up and dissolved. The Ivorian sector was taken over by the newly created Société Ivorienne de Chemin des Fer (SICF) (French for: Ivorian Railway Company), the Burkinabe by the equally new Société des Chemins de Fer du Burkina Faso (SCBF) (French for: Railway Company of Burkina Faso). Several express trains ran daily from Abidjan to Bouaké (six hours' journey) and Ferkessédougou , as well as slower trains at lower prices.

Ivory Coast (SICF)

Various factors resulted in the country being drawn into a vortex of debt. According to a World Bank report, jointly responsible were the taking out of too many loans from international banks, which made too much money available, but also changed conditions in the cocoa trade, politically motivated appointments and corruption. All of this had both a direct and an indirect influence on the railway. In the early 1980s it was no longer possible to renew rolling stock and infrastructure . This drove up the operating costs massively.

The first managing director of SICF, Yao Koukaou , was a former driver with no experience in the railway industry. He initiated a highly competitive course. Without consulting the trade unions, who were also not prepared for this, the workforce was reduced by a third, in key areas such as signal control or security, clearly too much, as the deficiencies in the infrastructure area were not remedied, which could only be compensated by using more staff. This led to operational bottlenecks and overtime for staff.

In March 1993 a new restructuring was initiated which, in the opinion of the unions, brought a number of advantages. The annual report for the year mentioned shows 30 percent less embezzlement and a 60 percent higher availability of the locomotives. Obviously the maintenance was organized more efficiently. This showed what the state enterprise would have been capable of. However, the privatization process had already started; in October 1992 the new merger of the two parts of the route and their privatization had been announced.

The most important union in the Ivorian part was the Syndicat National de la SICF (SYNASICF) (French for: National Union of SICF). During the privatization in 1995 , the name was adapted to the new circumstances. More about the new SYNTRARAIL below.

Operational situation

SITARAIL

privatization

The private consortium SITARAIL ( Société Internationale de Transports Africains par Rail , French for: International Society for African Rail Transport) is a subsidiary of SAGA, which belongs to the Bolloré Group , which is active in the freight forwarding sector. SAGA handles around 50 percent of Burkina Faso's imports and exports. After two other interested parties withdrew, SITARAIL was the only candidate to take over the route. Nevertheless, the negotiations lasted two and a half years from March 1993 to autumn 1995. The signed contract also differs significantly from the original tender. A senior member of the government committee joined SAGA during the negotiations. SITARAIL is leasing the rolling stock and infrastructure for a profit- related user fee from the new state-owned Société de Gestion du Patrimoine Ferroviaire (SIPF) in the Republic of Ivory Coast and the Société de Patrimoine ferroviaire du Burkina Faso (SOPAFER-B) in Burkina Faso. Certain conditions regarding public interest (passenger traffic) were made.

Sitarail Loko CC 22108 has left the Bobo-Dioulasso station and is pulling a mixed freight train with a refrigerated container in the direction of Abidjan, May 2006.

A major difference to the tender are the planned investments for renewal. Originally the license holder (as SITARAIL) should have carried this alone. SITARAIL is now contributing eight billion francs of the planned 40 billion CFA francs. 3.5 billion of this is a loan from the French development bank ( Caisse Française de Développement CFD). The rest comes from loans made available by bilateral and multilateral aid organizations in return for a guarantee from the government of the Republic of Ivory Coast. The South African Comazar handles the operation .

Supervisory authorities

The two national bodies SIPF and SOPAFER-B are the regulatory authorities for SITARAIL. Employees of the SIPF told the World Bank that it was very difficult to carry out this task. For personal reasons, the information provided by SITARAIL could not be checked, although the user fees to be paid depend on this.

An efficient and competent supervisory authority would be particularly important in the case of SAGA / SITARAIL, since SAGA has a kind of monopoly in rail transport through SITARAIL and itself dominates the road transport market. Since road transport causes around 15 percent higher costs than rail transport, higher user fees (linked to profit) could endanger the supremacy of SAGA. In 1997, SAGA's competitors described the railway's competitive battle as unfair. To what extent the matter presents itself today cannot be judged. Although the structure is a little different, it will still be realized. Above all, it is clear that Bolloré continues to have a large financial commitment and that Comazar, a subsidiary of the holding company of the South African railways, is responsible for the operation.

Conclusion of the privatization

Brendan Martin and Marc Micoud from Public World drew a cautious conclusion in their report Structural Adjustment and Railway Privatization in 1997:

“The concession operation in the Republic of Ivory Coast is presented by the World Bank as a prime example of rail privatization in Africa. In view of the World Bank's preference for restructuring through the award of concessions, it supposedly also shows as a model how the many problems of the African railways with regard to investments, management and customer satisfaction could be mastered. However, optimism appears premature. At the moment, the Ivory Coast model can neither be described as a failure nor a success, especially since the investments in the planned amount have to be realized first. Rather, there is reason to believe that the problems that privatization is intended to solve could have been eliminated without the risk of a private monopoly if the management of the state-owned companies had had the same loans as the concessionaire in the Republic of Ivory Coast. "

Civil War in Ivory Coast

When the civil war broke out on September 19, 2002, train traffic collapsed. Burkina Faso lost touch with the sea. That was also bad for SITARAIL, since around half of the 240,000 passengers and around 80 percent of the freight tonnages came from Burkina Faso. Since the head office is located in the Abidjan region and the diesel for operation is also supplied via this port, operations between Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso also had to be discontinued. It was not until May 2003 that freight trains ran again on sections in the south, and from July 10th a combined passenger and freight train to Dimbokro . The international connection was reopened for freight traffic from February 2004 and for passenger traffic from April 2004 after a year and a half break until Bobo Dioulasso. The first train to Burkina on April 1, 2004 carried 60 passengers and the same number of security guards. There was a continuous train in each direction once a week.

SITARAIL ran into financial difficulties as a result of the war-related stagnation that lasted for months. On July 8, 2004, the company in Ouagadougou signed an agreement with the two partner countries in which the two countries granted SITARAIL payment deferrals so that it could invest the money in the urgently needed expansion of the company instead of paying the leasing installments.

Unions

The most important railway workers' union is the Syndicat des Travailleurs du Rail (SYNTRARAIL) (French for: Union of railway workers). SYNTRARAIL replaced SYNASICF in the privatization and is a member of the Ivorian trade union federation Union Générale des Syndicats de Côte d'Ivoire (UGTCI) (French for: Joint Federation of the Ivory Coast trade unions).

In contrast to the 1980s, the union was armed with privatization . At the beginning of 1995 she asked the government for information about the feared job cuts and their conditions. Since the government did not respond, the railway was on strike by blocking the Treichville exit point with a locomotive. Negotiations began a few days later, but the strike was not broken off until the talks were over. SITARAIL reduced the number of employees from 4,000 (which already meant a workforce reduced by a third compared to the number in the mid-1980s) to 1,815 employees. The union received 14 months of severance pay instead of the planned seven, and the right to early retirement was reduced from 20 to 15 years of service. She could not get retraining. On the other hand, the new company agreed to give preference to companies that had been founded by former SICF employees as contract companies. The maintenance of the tracks, the fleet management of the company fleet and the printing of timetables and tickets were assigned accordingly. Former employees are also preferred for new hires, but on the same terms as new employees.

Development after 2010

The railway bridge over the N'zi near Dimbokro, which collapsed in 2016, was rebuilt in 2017

In 2016, the SITARAIL license was renewed. The company committed to modernizing the route. This work started on December 4th, 2017. They should take eight years to complete and 260 billion CFA Francs (approx. 400 million euros) should be invested. The work includes the rehabilitation of 853 km of the railway infrastructure , 50 structures, a depot and 31 train stations. Vehicles are also to be modernized and two new passenger trains are to be purchased. The aim is to be able to transport two million tons of general cargo , three million tons of minerals and 800,000 travelers per year after the work is completed .

In the north of Burkina Faso there is the large manganese deposit Tambao , which relies on an extension of the Abidjan-Niger Railway to transport the ore. The potential production is 3 million t per year, more than three times the current amount of freight on the railway line. The mine is being developed by Pan African Minerals , but has been idle since early 2015 when the Burkinabe government blocked the project.

In September 2016, the northern segment of the six- span Dimbokro railway bridge over the N'Zi River collapsed when a freight train crossed it, disrupting rail traffic for a long time. Nobody was harmed during the accident. In September 2017, traffic was again secured throughout.

In November 2017, three passenger trains per week operated between Abidjan and Ouagadougou. Departures were Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, with the departures on Tuesdays as a train special with fewer stops and the departures on Thursdays and Saturdays as a train express . A 2nd class ticket cost 31,000 CFA francs (approx .: 47 euros) for the entire route, and a 1st class ticket 35,000 CFA francs (approx .: 53 euros). The 1st class coaches have upholstered seats, are air-conditioned and have a bar. 2nd class has unpadded plastic seats and is not air-conditioned.

In 2019, three railcars, nine intermediate cars and three control cars were acquired by Appenzeller Bahnen . The vehicles are air-conditioned at ABH in France, the railcars are converted into generator cars and the drive is expanded. The trains are later pulled by American diesel locomotives.

numbers

Rolling stock

Tank car from the Gestoci company on the Abidjan-Niger Railway

The figures refer to the year 2001. In brackets the total number, on the left the number of operational equipment.

  • Locomotives: 18 (24)
  • Freight wagons: 549 (631)
  • Third party cars: 151 (197)
  • Passenger cars: 20 (24)

staff

  • 1980: 6,000 (RAN)
  • 1988: 4,000 (SCFI and SCBF; 1,602 SCBF)
  • 1995: 1,815 (SITARAIL)
  • 2001: 1,720 (SITARAIL)
  • ~ 2015: 1,450 (SITARAIL)

Freight transport

Freight traffic in Dimbokro station (2017)

In 2001, SITARAIL transported over 800,000 tons of freight on the single-track route. Around half of this was accounted for by mineral oils, 15 percent by clinker and ten percent by sea containers. Wheat and grain each make up around 3.5 percent of the tonnage of goods. As a result of the war, the tonnage dropped to an estimated 290,000 tons in 2003.

In 2015, 900,000 t of freight were transported again.

passenger traffic

In 2001, 243,041 passengers were carried over 93 million passenger kilometers. According to a press release from 2016, the number was 300,000 passengers per year.

Route length

  • 1970: total 1,155 km, 517 km in Burkina Faso (Abidjan - Ouagadougou)
  • 1985; total of 1,245 km, 617 km in Burkina Faso (Abidjan - Ouagadougou - Kaya)

literature

swell

  1. ↑ cheich Abd El Kader: La ville de Koulikoro et le «Dakar-Niger", "Quand le train allait, tout allait" (2). May 30, 2005, archived from the original ; accessed on January 11, 2020 (French).
  2. ^ Jean-Claude Faur: La mise en valeur ferroviaire de l'AOF (1880-1939). 1999, archived from the original ; Retrieved January 11, 2020 (English, English-language notes on the original French-language source from 1969).
  3. ↑ a b c d Foussata Dagnogo, Olivier Ninot, Jean-Louis Chaléard: Le chemin de fer Abidjan-Niger: la vocation d'une infrastructure en question . In: EchoGéo . No. 20 , 2012 ( html ).
  4. ^ Construction of the RAN ( Memento from November 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Embedding of SITARAIL in the structure of Bolloré / Comazar ( Memento of April 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Situation in 2002/2003
  7. ↑ Timetable since 2004
  8. ↑ L'avenant n ° 3 de la convention SITARAIL - Le train sifflera ( Memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Revised Abidjan - Ouagadougou concession signed. In: Railway Gazette. August 5, 2016. Retrieved April 23, 2017 .
  10. ↑ red: Abidjan – Ouagadougou – Kaja line . In: IBSE-Telegram 325 (December 2017), p. 10f.
  11. ↑ Morgane Le Cam: Burkina: la mine de Tambao bloquée par un conflit entre l'Etat, un aventurier des affaires et Bolloré . In: Le Monde . February 9, 2017 (French).
  12. ↑ Bridge collapses under a freight train . Published on Abendblatt.de of the Hamburger Abendblatt . Accessed September 15, 2017.
  13. ^ Frédéric Garat: L'express Abidjan-Ouaga: 32 heures d'aventures . Released on September 15, 2017 by Radio France Internationale . Accessed September 15, 2017.
  14. ^ Gregor Rom: Photo of the departure plan in Treichville station . Recorded October 22, 2017.
  15. ^ Gregor Rom: Photo of the price table at the Dimbokro train station . Recorded on November 1st, 2017.
  16. ^ Gregor Rom: Photo of a 1st class ticket . Recorded on November 3, 2017.
  17. ^ Christian Ammann: From Appenzellerland to Ivory Coast. In: Railway amateur. August 9, 2019, accessed October 9, 2019 .
  18. ↑ SITARAIL Statistics ( Memento from October 31, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ↑ a b c La Côte d'Ivoire et le Burkina Faso renouvellent leur confiance à Sitarail. Bolloré Transport & Logistics, August 2, 2016, accessed April 23, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Les trains de la Sitarail sont dans le rouge
  21. ^ Les transports routiers ( Memento of November 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Web links