Kazungula Bridge boosts Bots tourism

 Harare - The opening of Kazungula Bridge will boost tourist arrivals into Botswana’s tourism mecca of Kasane, the country’s Tourism Minister Philda Kereng has said.

The bridge straddles the Zambezi River at Kazungula Crossing where Botswana and Zambia share a border, and also stretches over the confluence of the Zambezi and Chobe rivers where Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe meet.

The 923m and US$259 million bridge is part of a broader infrastructure initiative that will ultimately connect the Port of Durban in South Africa to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Botswana’s Environment, Natural Resources, Conservation and Tourism Minister Kereng said the bridge is expected to open to traffic this year.

The gateway to Chobe National Park, Kasane spreads out along the banks of the Chobe River where an array of hotels, guest houses and campsites can accommodate all the visitors to the world-renowned facility.

“This bridge has recently been handed over by the contractors, it is complete. It is a bridge that is quite a milestone for the economy of Botswana and for the tourism industry,” Minister Kereng said after touring the bridge last week.

“We appreciate this bridge very much especially at this point where we are diversifying tourism, Kasane becomes a much more diversified location or tourist destination. Also for tourists, when you go to London (England) for instance, you have the London Bridge and all these big rivers with nice bridges they are tourist attractions on their own so we are looking at this beautiful bridge and saying it is going to interest our tourists after seeing the animals there is also something else they can see. It will be able to enhance the face of Kasane.”

Minister Kereng went on: “We are also informed that this bridge is well blended into the ecosystem, the environment of Chobe. There is a railway line that has been incorporated into the bridge, and the interesting part is that this bridge has incorporated features that are friendly to the environment, we hear that there is a breeding place for hippos near the bridge and the rubber that has been used around the railway is going to absorb all the sound that would otherwise disturb the animals.”

Botswana recently allowed the resumption of chartered flights into the country's prime tourist destinations, in an attempt to boost the tourism sector which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chartered flights are being allowed to land at two airports in Maun and Kasane, both in the vicinity of the vast Okavango Delta, one of the world’s largest wetlands.

Tourism contributes around 13 percent to the So/uthern African country’s GDP./

Source: Kazungula Bridge boosts Bots tourism (28/11/20)