CULTURAL FEATURES OF ZAMBIA

CULTURAL FEATURES OF ZAMBIA

• Cultural features are man made features and they include roads, railway lines, bridges, buildings, dams and some lakes.
Zambia’s road, railway network, and bridges
• Zambia is criss-crossed by a network of roads and railway lines, with bridges across rivers and valleys on the major road routes and railway lines.

Road network and bridges

• Zambia has more than 90 000 km of roads, of which only around 20 000 are paved. Only about 7 000 km of the roads are trunk or main routes.
• Many of the untarred roads in Zambia become impassable during the rainy season.
• In the 1970s, Zambia used to have one of the best highway networks in Africa, but the high cost of maintaining these roads led to many becoming badly neglected, the government is however working on improving the road network through the introduction of a road fund levy on fuel and with international aid.
• Bridges are expensive to build and maintain. Therefore, on smaller roads, pontoons and ferries are still used as an alternative ways of crossing rivers as part of the road network in the country.
The main tarred road routes in Zambia include the following (main bridges also indicated): Lusaka-Copperbelt road:

The most used highway between provinces.

Ndola-Kitwe Road:

• (Four lane divided highway) the most used inter-city highway.

Great North Road:

• In the north this road links Zambia with Tanzania (Chirundu Bridge over the Zambezi; Kafue Bridge). The most northern part is known as the TANZAM highway. In the south, this road links Zambia with Zimbabwe.

Great East Road:

• Lusaka-Chipata-Malawi-Mozambique (Luangwa Bridge)

Great West Road:

• Lusaka-Mongu (Kafue Hook Bridge); extension to Kalabo and Angola via the Barotse floodplain causeway is being considered.
Copperbelt-Solwezi-Mwinilunga-ANGOLA Road

Livingstone Road:

• Kafue Bridge-Mazabuka-Choma-Livingstone-Zimbabwe (Kafue Bridge, Victoria Falls Bridge over Zambezi)

Livingstone-Sesheke Road:

• Linking Zambia with Botswana (Kazungula ferry over to Botswana, planned to be replaced by a bridge) and Namibia (katima Mulilo Bridge over Zambezi under construction to replace ferry).

Railway network and bridges

• The rail system connects landlocked Zambia with harbors in various neighboring countries.
• This ensures various routes for exports such as mining and farming products. Passenger transport is also available on some of the routes.

Zambia Railways:

The national railway of Zambia operates most of the railway routes in Zambia.
• The Victoria Falls bridge connects the Zambian rail network to the Zimbabwe rail network, and then to ports in Mozambique (Beira and Maputo) and Durban in South Africa.
• The Copperbelt railway line links up with Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo via Ndola and Sakania. A line connected to the Benguela railway through Angola has not operated since the 1970s.
• A rail link between Malawi and Zambia to allow access to the port of nacala via Chipata is not used much because there are few facilities available at Chipata.

TAZARA

• (The Tazara railway) is a separate railway system linking Zambia and Tanzania.
• It links up with Zambia Railways at Kapiri-Mposhi just north of Lusaka, and provides a link to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam.
• It was completed in 1976 by Chinese construction crews to give Zambia an alternative export route for copper that did not depend on South Africa during the apartheid.