Boats to nowhere
Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, is one of Africa’s great frontier towns. But the big ships are not sailing any more.
Simon Mkina in Kigoma
For more than a century, the lakeside town of Kigoma has connected Tanzania to its neighbours. The MV Liemba – the oldest ferry in the world – usually sails south, to Zambia. The MV Mwongozo used to head north, to Burundi’s major city Bujumbura, carrying 800 passengers and 200 tonnes of cargo. And a fleet of small wooden boats traverse the 40km width of Lake Tanganyika, to the DRC and back.
Collectively, these vessels form one of East Africa’s most important economic networks. The lake’s calm, open waters connect the people and goods of four different countries, which might otherwise be inaccessible.
Kigoma is this network’s central node.
This multicultural city of 2.5-million people, built on the hills that overlook the lake, can be astonishingly beautiful: especially at sunrise and sunset, when the sky is painted with vibrant colours. The beauty cannot disguise the poverty, however: this is one of Tanzania’s poorest regions, despite an abundance of natural resources.
For many residents – some of whom are refugees from neighbouring countries – the cross-border trade offers an economic lifeline, and the dusty streets near its port bustle with traders laden with fish, fruit and textiles.
But over the past decade their trade has grown significantly more complicated: Both the MV Liemba and the MV Mwongozo have been removed from active service, leaving no government-owned ferries operational on the lake. No other ships can carry the same kind of loads as these two large ferries, nor can they travel the same long distances. Traders are suffering.
“Business was thriving, and life was good when the ferries were in operation. Now, it’s just a struggle to make ends meet,” said Julie Mucco, a Burundian trader who used to run a profitable business selling women’s clothing. She specialises in khanga, a light cotton cloth worn throughout the Great Lakes region. She would source her cloth from the DRC and sell it in Kigoma, but the absence of reliable and affordable transport has crippled her trade.
Similarly, Shaaban Hamis Ally, a Kigoma fish trader, used to sell 500kg of dagaa (dried sardines) every week to buyers from Burundi, DRC and Zambia, at a price of 25,000 Tanzanian shillings ($9) per kilo. Now he is limited to customers from Burundi, which can be reached via a long, arduous road journey, and is lucky to shift a fifth of that.
The road less travelled
Just 234km separate Kigoma from Bujumbura. But once you factor in the border crossing, the state of the roads, and the poor condition of the buses that ply them, it can take as long as 13 hours to cover this distance – as The Continent discovered this week.
There is a single large bus, operated by the Burundi Public Transportation Corporation, that travels the route each day. It is 15 years old. It leaves at 7am every morning, carrying more than 90 passengers per trip – despite being designed to hold only 60.
The vehicle is in poor condition: some windows are missing, seats are worn out, and the interior resembles a mobile garage, littered with spare parts and repair tools, as it is expected to break down at any time.
The driver’s dashboard is cluttered with loaves of bread, snacks and unopened bottles of Saint Anne wine. None of the dashboard instruments – not the odometer, speedometer, tachometer, temperature or fuel gauge – was working.
At the border itself, the wait was long. Despite the East African Community’s commitment to the free movement of citizens across the borders of member states – both Burundi and Tanzania have signed up – Burundian immigration officials asked everyone the same question in Kiswahili: “Chai yetu iko wapi.” Where is our tea? The “tea”, in this case, costs between $2 and $4 per passenger.
While the road to the Tanzanian border was decent, on the Burundi side things began to deteriorate quickly.
“Umushoferi uriko uratugirira nabi!” the passengers cried out in Kirundi. Driver, you’re hurting us with all these potholes!
They would rather be on a ferry.
High and dry
The MV Liemba began life in Germany in 1913, as the Graf van Goetzen. From there, it took 5,000 wooden crates to move it to its permanent home on Africa’s deepest lake – Lake Tanganyika.
It arrived at the beginning of World War I, and was swiftly converted into a warship that gave imperial Germany absolute control of the lake.
When the tides of war turned against the kaiser, the ship was scuttled to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. No matter: it was salvaged from the lake floor a few years later, before being sunk again in bad weather.
Somehow, after being salvaged a second time, British authorities found that its engines and boiler were still in working order – and so put it to work.
“The halt in operations has made life difficult for people in Kigoma and Burundi, who relied heavily on the ferry for trade and transport,” Titus Mnyanyi, who has captained the MV Liemba since 1999, told The Continent.
He emphasised the significant role both the MV Liemba and the MV Mwongozo have played in alleviating poverty in Kigomo – already one of Tanzania’s poorest regions – and noted that their absence has worsened the economic situation.
Fortunately, plans are also under way to refurbish the MV Mwongozo, which stopped sailing in 2014, according to Erick Hamis, the director general of the Tanzania Shipping Company. He acknowledged the suffering that the breakdown of the ferry services on Lake Tanganyika has caused, and said that the government is doing everything it can to deliver reliable transportation. This includes the ongoing refurbishment of the MT Sangara, a fuel transport vehicle, and the construction of a new passenger ferry with a capacity of 600 passengers and 400 tonnes of cargo. In addition, the state plans to build a shipyard in Kigoma.
These promises, if delivered, have the potential to revitalise Kigoma town and the surrounding region – whose future, as always, is inextricably bound up with the lake and the ships that sail upon it.
Hello! I’m cycling through Africa at the moment and was going to get the ferry from Burundi to Zambia. Is it still possible on smaller boats? Thanks, very interesting post!