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Before & After
After 30 years, Mozambique's national highway is one step closer to completion.
Paving the Road to Economic Growth
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Photo: Africon
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BEFORE - There has never been a highway between the towns of Gorongosa and Caia, 150 miles apart and part of Mozambique's heartland. In some places, the road was only a dirt track cut through the countryside. Other parts were a mix of overgrown gravel and paved sections that had not been maintained in decades and ran through areas littered with landmines. Traveling by road between Gorongosa and Caia was impossible during the rainy season and took three days in good weather.
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Photo: Africon
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AFTER -The EN1 is now a paved, all-weather highway with modern signposting and 27 newly built or rehabilitated bridges. A car can cover the 150-mile section between Gorongosa and Caia in hours - not days - at any time of the year. The road has brought new life and economic activity to a previously desolate area. Access to schools and health posts has improved. Small businesses and even new villages have sprung up along the route due to the increased flow of goods and people.
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Mozambique stretches 1,550 miles from its southern border with South Africa to its northern border with Tanzania - a distance roughly equal to the United States' east coast. But it has always lacked a dependable highway to link its northern farmland to its southern cities. Three decades ago, the government began construction on the EN1, a national highway, but had to abandon the effort in 1980 due to civil war. In 1999, USAID began supporting a $50-million project to complete the EN1. Completed three and a half years later, the project constructed and rehabilitated 150 miles of road through a remote area of Sofala Province in central Mozambique.
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