Zimbabwe’s government this Tuesday announced a funding agreement for the upgrade of the Chirundu border with Zambia, to reduce delays on a vital gateway connecting \u200cthe central African copperbelt to southern African ports.<\/p>\n
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The deal between Zimbabwe and its private sector partners, the Chirundu Border Consortium, clears the path to construction work, the country’s transport and Infrastructure Development Ministry said in a statement on \u2060Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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The Chirundu border, inaugurated as Africa’s first one-stop border post in 2009, is a key gateway on the North-South Corridor, handling freight between ports in South Africa and Mozambique and the Zambia-Democratic Republic of Congo Copperbelt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Traffic through the crossing includes copper, cobalt, fuel, mining equipment, reagents, fertilizers and other traded goods, with trucks often facing bottlenecks and lengthy delays.<\/p>\n
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The border modernisation project will overhaul \u200cold \u2060infrastructure, introduce advanced operational and processing systems to reduce delays and congestion at one of Africa’s busiest transit points, the Ministry said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Ministry did not disclose the final investment for the public-private partnership project, \u2060but Zimbabwe’s Cabinet has previously said the project would cost $66.8 million and be operated by private investors for 20 years under a concession \u2060agreement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Safaga International, which led the $300 million upgrade of Zimbabwe’s Beitbridge border with South Africa, is leading the Chirundu border project. \u2060South Africa’s Strategic Partners Group is also a strategic investor in the project.<\/p>\n
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Standard Bank is the lead debt arranger and senior lender.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":40744,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-46195","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Zimbabwe's government announced a funding agreement for the upgrade of the Chirundu border with Zambia","published_date":"2026-09-22 18:06:13","news_description":"Zimbabwe's government announced a funding agreement for the upgrade of the Chirundu border with Zambia","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46196,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46195\/revisions\/46196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=46195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}