IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast strikes a deal with financiers and France's Bouygue to build a third bridge over Abidjan's main lagoon costing 227 million euros ($325 million)

Record ID: 181741

  • Title: IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast strikes a deal with financiers and France's Bouygue to build a third bridge over Abidjan's main lagoon costing 227 million euros ($325 million)
  • Date: 29th July 2011
  • Summary: ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST (JULY 26, 2011) (REUTERS) YOUNG GIRL AND WOMAN WALKING ALONG ROAD NEXT TO TRAFFIC CONES
  • Embargoed: 13th August 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Cote d'Ivoire
  • Country: Ivory Coast
  • Topics: Industry,Transport
  • Reuters ID: LVAC2327E65N23I23G51YJVMYDRI
  • Story Text: Ivory Coast struck a deal with financers and France's Bouygues on Monday to build a third bridge over Abidjan's main lagoon costing 227 million euros (325 million US dollars) to ease congestion, 15 years after the project was first mooted.
    The Ivorian commercial capital is home to five million people sprawled over a lagoon on the coast, but traffic is choked because only two bridges cross it.
    Both lead south towards the airport and have become the city's main bottlenecks.
    "It's the extension of the third bridge. At this point there is a lot of traffic so we're working to widen the pass so cars can cross much faster," said Youssouf Amadou Ouattra, one of the topographers already mapping areas ahead of construction for the new bridge.
    The decision was announced Tuesday (July 26) by Prime Minister Guillame Soro.
    "In regards to the State, financing is set. The state can now tell Ivoirians that it is no longer a figment of the imagination, the third bridge will be built. Work will begin very soon," he said.
    He made the statement at a joint press conference between the government and Bouygues, the French company contracted to build the extension.
    "The bridge will stretch for 1,500 metres over the lagoon, but we are constructing 6km (3.5 miles) of access roads. In total, it's a north-south connection of 8km," said Bouygues' Olivier Bonnin.
    He added that work would start in September and was scheduled to take six months.
    Finance minister Charles Koffi Diby said the Ivorian government would put 76 million euros (108 million US dollars) of financing up front, four fifths of which it had already mobilised. He added that work would start as soon as the mobilised cash was disbursed.
    The project will be financed by the African Development Bank and other lending institutions.
    President Alassane Ouattara is keen to kick start the economy of the once prosperous West African nation and reopen badly needed infrastructure projects held back by over a decade of crisis and instability.
    An election dispute with former President Laurent Gbagbo tipped Ivory Coast back into civil war, wrecking an economy already tainted by years of troubles, including a coup, poll violence and a failed 2002 rebellion that split it in two.
    Despite years of political paralysis, Ivory Coast still has some of the best infrastructure in Africa, with better roads and fewer power cuts than any of its neighbours. Most of it was installed in the 1960s and 70s and has started to crumble.
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