Proposed Jangwani Bridge: A solution looking for a problem?

Over the past two decades, Tanzania has witnessed a surge in infrastructure projects, a concerted effort to recover from decades of stagnation. The promise of progress has led to ambitious endeavours, as leaders try to outdo their predecessors by constructing new, bigger, and shining developments. But not all that glitters is gold.

One of those projects is the proposed new Jangwani Bridge. Positioned across the flood-prone lower Msimbazi River basin, connecting Morogoro Road with Dar es Salaam’s central business district, the bridge is possibly Tanzania’s busiest, catering to over 500,000 daily commuters.

 While the prospect of a new 390-metre-long bridge to address existing issues generates excitement, it is crucial to pause and scrutinise the true cost of ‘progress’, particularly when confronted with what may seem like well-intentioned yet questionable public initiatives.

With a staggering cost of $200 million, the Jangwani Bridge endeavour aims to address two primary concerns: the need for a new bridge and an increase in the river channel’s flow capacity.

The existing Jangwani Bridge grapples with congestion and frequent flooding. Congestion, once notorious, has somewhat alleviated due to infrastructure developments such as the Tanzanite Bridge, government relocation to Dodoma, and businesses moving away from Dar’s CBD. The first phase of the Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit (DART) system has also played a pivotal role, reducing congestion by 30 percent.

However, the lingering issue of floods has intensified in recent years. Prolonged rainfall invariably disrupts transport services across the Jangwani Bridge, including Dart’s operations, as the bridge struggles to accommodate flash floods.

 Technical reports, including those from JICA, Tanroads, and the World Bank, attribute these recurrent floods to ‘rapid sediment built-up’ in the Jangwani valley. Interestingly, this is what led JICA to recommend raising the bridge by 3 metres to mitigate this issue in 1984 since the bridge had only 1-metre give which was not enough.

 In 2023, the government is once again contemplating raising the bridge’s height. A recurring question emerges: Is building higher the most effective solution, or should we be focusing on sustainable management of upstream human activities?

To be fair, it is possible to raise the bridge so high that further shutdowns would become practically impossible. But this idea ignores the fact that Jangwani already has a functioning bridge which, barring rapid siltation, works quite fine. The natural solution then doesn’t lie in building higher and higher but in arresting the issues that affect the river’s water flow capacity and the flood plain.

This is part of the work that the World Bank, the financiers of the Jangwani Bridge, proposes to do for Msimbazi too. Thus, the new bridge is a part of the bigger Msimbazi River Development Project.

The plan involves improving the river channel and floodplain, relocating the Jangwani bus depot, addressing informal settlements, establishing a city park, reforesting riverbanks, and managing solid waste to enhance the overall capacity and environmental sustainability.

These are excellent ideas and I have written several articles in the past to highlight how they can be made even better. The issue here, though, is why the new bridge?

The new bridge solution is wasteful because it makes the existing bridge redundant. Had we started with dredging for capacity and managing what goes into the river channel, we would have eliminated the need to invest tens of millions of dollars into a new bridge.

 Removing informal settlements, management of solid waste, and reforesting the river valleys, that is, things we must do anyway to proactively transform Dar, will increase the flow capacity – so why start with the least transformative yet most wasteful solution of them all?

There is another dimension to this issue. Phase 5 of the DART project proposes building a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor spanning from Sam Nujoma Road, through Sinza, Mwananyamala, and Kinondoni, crossing the Msimbazi River to Upanga West.

The corridor is of great interest indeed – it will not only connect those areas directly to the CBD but will also bring hundreds of thousands of people within the magical 500 metres of the DART network. The bridge in this corridor would become an additional link to the CBD.

 But, most importantly, the bridge would provide a socio-economic link between the high-income Upanga West neighbourhood and the low-income Kinondoni and Mwananyamala neighbourhoods, thus promising transformation and growth. It is exciting to observe that Hananasif is just a bridge away from an economic nirvana.

The question remains, then, why are we proposing to build the Jangwani Bridge? Which problems are we trying to solve that don’t have better and less wasteful alternatives?

It looks to me that the Jangwani Bridge is a solution looking for a problem. I think the World Bank’s decision to finance this solution is self-serving at best. The Msimbazi River Development Project is a powerful idea – but the new Jangwani Bridge takes the glitter off that project. This cannot be accidental. Let’s follow the money for answers.