ANGOLA: negotiations with Siemens for the construction of the tramway in Luanda
In Angola, the city of Luanda will soon have its first tram line. The project is now only awaiting the formalization of the partnership between the Angolan State and the German firm Siemens.
Angola wants to adapt its demographic growth with environmentally friendly public transport infrastructure. As a start, the Angolan government plans to provide the capital Luanda, currently populated by 9.2 million people, with a tramway. The Luanda Light Railway project is in the negotiation phase with the German engineering group Siemens through its subsidiary Siemens Mobility.
At a cost of 1.3 billion euros co-financed by the Angolan Ministry of Finance and the private sector, the first 39 km double track line is called the “yellow line”. It will connect the port area of Luanda to the city of Kilamba created in 2008. If the contract is signed, Siemens Mobility will therefore be responsible for supplying “68 light four-car vehicles” .
The company based in Munich in southern Germany will also implement the signaling, telecommunications and traction power supply systems over a total length of 149 kilometers, as well as the traffic control system. of the future Luanda tramway. The initiative will be the first of its kind in this Central African country where populations are used to buses and taxis for daily travel.
These new railway tracks will be added to the African tram network spread across 15 cities on the continent, notably Casablanca and Rabat-Salé in Morocco which have six operational lines for a total of 156 stations. But it is Algeria which has the largest number of stations (173) in North Africa with seven tramways in the cities of Algiers, Constantine, Oran, Sétif, among others. East Africa, for its part, has been strengthening since 2015 with the Addis Ababa tramway which serves up to 120,000 passengers in the capital of Ethiopia.
