Transaqua: An Idea For The Sahel

It is a tragic irony, that the Great Lakes region of Africa, which has been the theater of the most brutal genocide in modern history, could be the center of the greatest economic prosperity on the continent. A magnificent proposal exists, which could provide the basic energy and transportation infrastructure to transform one-fourth of the continent, into a flourishing economy, and lay the basis for integrating the entire continental economy for the first time in history. EIR, which has recently become acquainted with the proposal, is appending it to a forthcoming Special Report on the proceedings of the seminar on ``Peace through Development in Africa's Great Lakes Region,'' held in Walluf, Germany on April 26-27, which we hope to circulate among key institutions in Africa, as well as elsewhere. EIR's intent, is to generate political support for the proposal, that, as action be mobilized to stop the genocidal onslaught of Laurent Desiré Kabila, Paul Kagame, Yoweri Museveni, and their British Commonwealth controllers, an alternative perspective for reconstruction and development, may be implemented.

The proposal is known by its Italian name, Transaqua, which means, literally, ``trans-water.'' It is presented as the ``Water Highway of Africa.'' The problem which the proposal seeks to solve, is the desertification process, which involves an area of 2,500 million acres. The Sahel belt represents 34% of this area, or about 1 billion acres, stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The Transaqua report notes, that attempts made to stave off this or that immediate catastrophe in any one part of the threatened area, have led to piecemeal projects which, however laudable, can come nowhere near solving the problems. These problems include the relationship of water to agriculture and livestock; the relationship of transportation to marketing of goods; and energy transformation. Thus, a conceptual approach is required, which will provide ``solid, long-lasting and commercial infrastructures'' either before or at the same time as ``individual hydro-agricultural projects'' are launched. The report defines actual development in terms of the following process:

``Creating opportunities to offset hunger and thirst, but at the same time to construct those large-scale support infrastructures which will guarantee supplies of raw materials and the marketing of the finished products, providing incentives for regional trade, means laying the foundations necessary not only for the single projects to take off, but also for each one of them to bring forth an induced effect of multiplying initiatives and generating collateral activities; which complex process, with a simultaneous inner growth, can really be called development, that will be the more secure over the long term, the more opportunities it generates.''

New Sources Of Water Must Be Created

The basic concept of Transaqua is ``to `transfer' approximately 100,000 million cubic meters/year of fresh water from the basins of the River Zaire to the Sahelian area in Chad and Niger.'' This is based on the geographic reality of the area, ``in which the Zaire-Chad watershed is a natural barrier separating two great catchment areas,'' the one in the north hit by drought, and the one in the south, often visited by too much water. The idea is to curtail by 5% the amount of water flowing from the River Zaire, which would provide 100,000 million cubic meters annually. The resulting discharge of 3,200 cubic meters per second, would be almost as great as the discharge of the Nile, downstream from the Aswan Dam.

The Transaqua project envisions the construction of a ``broad navigable canal which, running along the eastern and northern crest of the Zaire catchment, could intercept the waters of the extreme northeastern edges of the basin and, after a course of about 2,400|km ... would reach the Zaire-Chad watershed in Central African territory and discharge its entire flow at the head of the River Chari, a tributary of Lake Chad.'' From Chad, the water would be conveyed to the areas to the north which are in the process of being desertified. The Transaqua project estimates that ``between 12 and 17 million acres could be brought under intensive- and semi-intensive-type irrigation development.''

In addition, the 100,000 million cubic meters per year could be used for production of energy, through hydroelectric stations. Here, it is estimated that 30-35,000 million kwh, could be produced--which is equivalent to 15% of Italy's entire energy production.

But even this is not all that the marvellous project contemplates: In addition to water for agriculture and energy to generate economic activity, the link to transport infrastructure is also provided. The report foresees:

``the planned Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Highway which will run for over 6,000|km and connect the Indian Ocean with the Atlantic, and the Lagos-Algiers Trans-Sahara Highway, practically already in operation and which, once it has been completed for its full length, will permit fast links between the Gulf of Guinea and the Mediterranean. It is also and above all in this context of big African international lines of communication that the Transaqua project should be considered: a huge `river-way' able to connect up the markets of vast Central African `enclaves' such as Rwanda, Burundi, the Kivu region, the whole extreme northeastern part of Zaire and of the other Central African Republic, with consumer centers of other Central African countries (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Kenya, and Uganda) and with the two ocean ports of Lagos and Mombasa for trade flows outside of Africa.''

The Transaqua project aims to trigger ``a practical start of the post-colonial dream of economic integration.'' Immediately irrigated by the great waterway, would be about 50-70,000 square kilometers in the Sahel, on the territories of eight countries: Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, and Chad. Ten countries would be beneficiaries of the transport system: Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya, which account for one-fourth of the land mass of the entire continent. Detailed plans have been elaborated by Transaqua, to show how the project will revolutionize the economies of Zaire and the Central Africa Republic.

The Transaqua project is unlike any commercial proposal made for infrastructure development of any part of Africa, for the simple reason, that the motivation behind the project is not monetary profit, but actual development. As the report notes, in reference to the financial dimensions of the investment, ``The units of measurement of the investment costs are not only millions of dollars, but the absence of wars, millions of human beings saved from starvation, social peace and an international conscience.''

It should come as no surprise that the inspiration for the project comes from Christian quarters. In fact, the industrial group involved in the project worked under the inspiration of the Vatican. It was Pope Paul VI, in the 1960s, who launched a drive for providing the means for the industrialization of the developing sector. Paul VI, author of the groundbreaking encyclical Populorum Progressio, spoke of his policy outlook, saying, ``the new name for peace is development.''

The Bonifica group was sold to the Italian Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), the industrial holding for state industries, which was the vehicle for post-war reconstruction in Italy. The actual concept of Transaqua was the brainchild of Antonio Lessina, formerly a functionary of the European Community, and then a consultant for the Società Bonifica, after it had become part of the IRI-Italstat group, for the promotion of initiatives related to Africa. The idea was conceived, to be presented to the Foreign Ministry Department for Cooperation, and had received the approval both of Zaire's then-President Mobutu Sese Seko and Chad's President Hissan Habbre. In 1993, in an interview with the Italian press agency ANSA, the new Chadian President, Idriss Deby, reiterated his interest in the project.

A Highly Political Question

In Africa itself, the period in which the Transaqua project was circulated and published (1991-92), coincides with the period in which the convulsions began, leading to the Museveni-led drive to take over Zaire. The hypothesis this raises is obvious: That the British, who orchestrated the genocidal sweep through the Great Lakes region, in order to seize control over raw materials, were fully cognizant of the potential and promise embedded in the Transaqua project.

Italian parliamentarian Publio Fiori called for the project to be relaunched, in the context of an inquiry he presented to Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, in June 1997. Fiori, who is the deputy secretary of the National Alliance party and former minister of transportation under the Berlusconi government, demanded that the Italian government investigate the massacres in the Great Lakes region, and the political operation aimed at taking over raw materials. Fiori urged the Italian government to intervene, to stop the genocidal rampage of Kabila et al., and to initiate instead, a new era of development, with the Transaqua project.

Documentation:
The Transaqua Project

The following is reprinted from the 1992 report, ``Transaqua: An Idea for the Sahel,'' published in Italy by Bonifica, Iritecna, Gruppo IRI, in Rome; and from two 1991 reports, called ``Transaqua,'' published in 1991, also by Bonifica, Italstat, Gruppo IRI, in Rome. Subheads and emphasis are in the original. Not all the figures appear in this version, but will be printed in full in our Special Report ``Peace through Development in Africa's Great Lakes Region.''

The Sahel Belt: An Impending Tragedy

Of the area of approximately 2,500 million acres, which--according to United Nations estimates--presents a desertification risk throughout the African continent (about 34% of the overall area), about 1,000 million acres lie along a continuous belt 6,000|km in length, situated between 10° and 20° North, stretching all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

A thousand million acres which represent a challenge to the technological capacity of our day and age, and where an immense ecological catastrophe is taking place. These are the countries of the Sahel region. The figures of this tragedy are by now known: tens of millions of persons with a per capita income of under $200 a year, hundreds of thousands of head of livestock dying of thirst or starving, several thousand million dollars spent on generous, albeit complex, operations to save millions of human beings who every year risk starvation.

Prospects Of Recovery

Rangeland wells, irrigation districts, storage facilities for strategic foodstuffs, reforestation programs, agroindustrial projects--all measures suggested by a tragic situation capable of proposing above all immediate operations of quick effect and rapid impact on the local context, able in some way or other to exorcise scenarios of hunger and desolation that is repudiated by international civil consciences.

Such specific but piecemeal projects have their precise role and a clear political and social rationale, as they are able, through their localized short-term--and sometimes very short-term--effects, to involve the local rural populations, in this way amplifying the effect of the aid, and curtailing, at least in part, the dramatic social decline of the Sahelian region.

But no one can reasonably delude himself that these initiatives, praiseworthy and highly useful as they may be, can truly achieve any real and effective long-term solution, scattered as they are over such a vast area.

It cannot reasonably be conceived that, even if scores and scores of these projects were really implemented within a short period, they could radically change a ``year 2000 scenario'' which in any case would lose very little of its dramatic character, but would only perhaps be slightly mitigated in its aspects linked with mere survival. Even if these modest enough effects are not negligible, the chasm between the results achieved and the sheer mass of the problems to be faced would still be infinitely great.

Problems which are those since forever, proclaimed at every international conference on the emergent countries, and allotted top priority by every financing agency; problems which in the Sahelian context inordinately magnify the consequences of the failure to solve them:

• the water-agriculture-livestock combination

• the transport-marketing binomial

• the energy-transformation binomial.

Conceiving the creation of such transport facilities and such regional and interregional trading facilities of a permanent, efficient type, either preparatory to or contemporaneous with the individual hydro-agricultural projects, appears to be a more adequate approach to the complexity not only of existing problems, but also and above all of those which arise immediately after the single projects and the concomitant management operations.

Creating opportunities to offset hunger and thirst, but at the same time to construct those large-scale support infrastructures which will guarantee supplies of raw materials and the marketing of the finished products, providing incentives for regional trade, means laying the foundations necessary not only for the single projects to take off, but also for each one of them to bring forth an induced effect of multiplying initiatives and generating collateral activities; which complex process, with a simultaneous inner growth, can really be called development, that will be the more secure over the long term, the more opportunities it generates.

The Presuppositions Of The Project Idea

• the underlying cause unleashing the ecological imbalance of the Sahel is the lack of water due to several years of drought and near-drought and to abnormal weather. It is therefore necessary to identify and to create new sources of water supply to substitute rainfall:

• the rebalancing by man of the upset rural activities of the populations can come about over the medium and long term only, in substance, through irrigated cultivation, lacking a natural return to more favorable climatic conditions;

• the recovery of the Sahel, therefore, must pass by way of new types of balance, deriving from the partial abandonment of extensive agriculture (based on well-spread and above all constant seasonal rainfall, even though of modest quantity) in favor of the gradual development of intensive agriculture (based on ``concentrated'' water availability not dependent upon the seasons);

• a new balance to be achieved, at least in part, on the basis of intensive agriculture, cannot leave out of account adequate transport and marketing facilities which are regarded as indispensable supports for any serious hope of success;

• the necessary initial transfer of inputs and technology must have as its objective the development of autochthonous African resources, the verticalizing of production processes through local value added, and the utmost amount of trading among African consumer markets, in such a way that the objectives to be accomplished can guarantee the maximum amount of operational and economic-financial autonomy, the sole condition that will assure irreversibility, and the only one capable of interrupting the massive flow of international capital necessarily needed for many years yet to come for purposes of subsistence pending the take off of autonomous developments.

The support for this project idea is represented by the Central African geographical reality, in which the Zaire-Chad watershed is a natural barrier separating two great catchment areas; one to the north, where drought reaps victims because of the lack of water resources, and the other one to the south, where rainfall is so abundant that it creates extraordinarily lush environments that often experience--due to forest encroachment--the opposite sort of problems for the rational development of modern agricultural activities.

The mass of water of the River Zaire--the most important river in Africa, the second one of the planet, after the Amazon, in size of catchment area--calculated at its mouth to be around 1.9 million cubic meters flowing out into the Atlantic every year, would be ``curtailed'' by barely about 5% of its discharge as a result of taking off the approximately 100,000 million cubic meters a year, to change the face of the desert a few hundred kilometers further north.

This ``modest'' off-take would represent a constant discharge of about 3,200 cubic meters a second, equal to almost double the discharge of the Nile downstream of Aswan.

The basin of this largest African river forms a vast natural amphitheater, consisting of a central area--at an elevation of under 500 meters above sea level--corresponding to the main course of the river and of its chief tributaries, surrounded to the south, east, and north by a plateau (situated between about 600 and 1,000 meters above sea level) which is shaped almost like a semicircular crown. The project idea could be a technically feasible proposition with the construction of a broad navigable canal, which, running along the eastern and northern crest of the Zaire catchment, could intercept the waters of the extreme northeastern edges of the basin and, after a course of about 2,400|km [see Figure 2], would reach the Zaire-Chad watershed in Central African Republic territory and discharge its entire flow at the head of the River Chari, a tributary of Lake Chad.

In Chad, probably using in part the bed of the Chari itself, the waters could be conveyed to the areas of Chad and Niger north of Lake Chad which are in the process of becoming desertified. In these regions of the Sahel, it can be reckoned that between 12 and 17 million acres could be brought under intensive and semi-intensive type irrigation development (for purposes of comparison, it is pointed out that 40 million Egyptians live in an irrigated area of under 7 million acres, although cultivated very intensively).

The sector of the Zaire catchment area intercepted by the approximately 2,400|km of artificial canals would be located between about 2°S and 8°N, while the waters collected therefrom would be utilized right in the midst of the Sahel area, between 12° and 16°N.

In its drop down to Chad, this mass of 100,000 million cubic meters per year of water could, via a series of hydroelectric stations, produce energy to the extent of some 30-35,000 million kwh, equal to about 70% of Italy's hydroelectric production and to about 15% of its entire production of energy (hydro, thermal, and nuclear). Such a quantity of energy could radically change the face of the present rural settlements and provide a strong boost for future agricultural developments, both in the foreseen area north of Lake Chad, and in the new development area along the navigable canal, by means of two high-tension electricity lines; one of them, distributing energy to Chad, about 1,300|km long, and the other, distributing energy along the navigable canal, about 2,400|km long.

The Project Idea

5. But the idea of a ``transfer of water'' as an end in itself, even of a mass of water greater than the discharge of the Nile, however appealing against the grim background of the arid Sahel, would still only be partial and insufficient unless framed in the vaster African international transport system: the planned Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Highway, which will run for over 6,000|km and connect the Indian Ocean with the Atlantic, and the Lagos-Algiers Trans-Sahara Highway, practically already in operation and which, once it has been completed for its full length, will permit fast links between the Gulf of Guinea and the Mediterranean. It is also and above all in this context of big African international lines of communication that the Transaqua Project should be considered: a huge ``riverway'' able to connect up the markets of vast Central African ``enclaves'' such as Rwanda, Burundi, the Kivu region, the whole extreme northeastern part of Zaire and of the Central African Republic, with consumer centers of other Central African countries (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Kenya, and Uganda) and with the two ocean ports of Lagos and Mombasa for trade flows outside of Africa.

This international traffic link-up could take place at the crossing with the planned Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Highway, where one can conceive the construction of a river container port with an adjoining industrial ``free trade zone.''

If this node or ``marshalling yard'' for river- and road-borne goods were to be planned at or near the pass where the navigable canal crosses the Zaire-Chad watershed, there is no doubt that it could benefit from an enormous quantity of hydroelectric energy that could be produced on the spot, after the construction of a hydropower station at the head of the Chari catchment, which would be the first, from a topographical standpoint, of a series of such stations almost as far as N'Djamena. In this way a polyfunctional free trade zone could be established in Central African territory [see Figure 3] which, as well as functions of marshalling container-borne goods, could cater for the important economic and commercial task of product processing, by means of a series of agricultural and food plants, textile mills, and woodworking units, based on African agricultural, livestock, and forestry products from newly developed areas which would become available for productive agricultural activities precisely thanks to the new riverway and to the future Lagos-Mombasa Highway. In particular, the economic means of river transport represented by the 2,400|km of canal through Zaire and Central African territory would act as an agricultural produce marketing facility which, equipped with a series of small ``moorings'' or ``berths,'' would provide a stimulus for the agricultural development of a large number of river valleys upstream of the waterway and throughout its course.

Many areas of the Sahel could, in the long term, be supplied not only with water and electricity, but also with cereals, meat, milk, etc., produced on African soil instead of having constantly to depend on costly and precarious imports from other continents.

Plausible Prospects

6. The Transaqua Project, viewed from the sole standpoint of transferring water resources to the semi-desert areas in the Chad-Niger border region, would lead to the creation of a series of irrigation areas in a region of some 50-70,000|km² (about the same size as southern Italy) in the heart of what is considered the ``traditional Sahel, formed by eight countries (Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger, and Chad). The Transaqua Project is, from the water and energy point of view, aimed at the final and lasting solution, albeit over the long term, of the problems of hunger of over 50% of the Sahelian area, since the two countries that are the direct beneficiaries thereof account for about one-half of the total Sahel area and for about 30% of its entire population.

The Transaqua Project, viewed in the context of the ten Central African countries more or less directly concerned by the planned network of international river and overland transport (Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya [Figure 1], representing in terms of land area approximately one-quarter of all Africa), is undoubtedly a decisively propulsive element for the practical start-up, perhaps within the span of one generation, of the African post-colonial dream of the international economic and productive integration of the continent, an indispensable condition for true economic autonomy and political independence.

The time is ripe for a Transaqua Project.

Russia has started work on the transfer of 60,000 million cubic meters per year of water which the continent's relief today causes to flow into the Arctic Ocean, the final aim being to divert this flow to the dry regions of Kazakhstan and of Uzbekistan by means of a 2,200|km navigable canal (the envisaged cost of the hydraulic works alone is about $18,000 million), which should transform these semi-desert areas into some of the most fertile lands of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States].

The direct and indirect benefits of the Transaqua Project deriving from the agricultural outputs obtainable, their processing and marketing, from the transport economy and energy production, enable us to foresee, despite the obvious present uncertainties regarding investment costs, a return on the operation that is interesting even from the economic and financial standpoint.

It is plain that, in view of the mass of investments required and the size and quantity of the foreseeable works along a stretch of 2,400|km, the project should be carried out in successive stages, each of them to be economically and socially justifiable. Such should undoubtedly be feasible assuming a start be made on constructing the canal at its downstream and, gradually extending it in an upstream direction to its point of origin. The technical means to construct such works do not constitute an insurmountable obstacle.

The units of measurement of the investment costs are not only millions of dollars, but the absence of wars, millions of human beings saved from starvation, social peace, and an international conscience.

Central African `Transaqua': The `Pivot' Role Of The Central African Republic

It is in the Central African Republic, in fact, that the project's most demanding technical engineering problems have to be resolved, considering that in this stretch the waterway will have to cross the divide between the Zaire-Lake Chad catchment areas, will have to feed an artificial lake which will be the basic infrastructure for a river port for containers, and lastly, will have to link up with the country's major road: the Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Highway.

From the functional aspect, the Central African Republic area will host the vital center of the Transaqua Project and the system's operational nucleus.

In point of fact, the complex of works made up of the incoming canal, the balancing basin, the dam with its hydroelectric station, and the link roads with the Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Highway, will constitute the Inter-African Polyfunctional Trading Area (IPTA), provided with an industrial free port area and a container port.

The geographical position of the Central African Republic, penalized by the lack of ocean outlets, is instead--in the context of this Transaqua Project--privileged by its location straddling the Oubangui-Chad divide, enabling it to assume the highly important role of pivot between these two catchment areas.

Some Technical Considerations

The canal alignment will then make a westward turn until it crosses the divide with the Chari catchment basin at the most favorable point, the canal then discharging into said basin.

In Central African territory the canal will intercept the upper Oubangui basin in the area of the highest catchments of its right-bank tributaries as well as the right-bank tributaries of the River Mbomou, in its turn the major tributary of the Oubangui and marking the northeastern border with the Republic of Zaire.

In its course the canal will drain an area of about 80,000|km² which will contribute some 20 billion cubic meters of water a year to the Transaqua canal, i.e., about 10% of its total discharge.

This off-take from the right-hand part of the upper basin of the Oubangui, together with the water diverted from the left-hand part of its upper basin in Zairean territory, estimated as a further 25 billion cubic meters a year, will mean a decrease of approximately 18% in the total discharge of the river at its confluence with the Zaire, currently 6,000 m³@ndsecond. About 60% of this total off-take will concern the Central African Republic, and some 40% Zaire. The off-takes resulting from the canal drainage through the Central African Republic will be concentrated during the months of heaviest rainfall, in this way contributing towards regularizing river flows and controlling floods, by means of a series of balancing basins constructed along the canal.

The canal runs from south to north, as follows:

• The southernmost stretch of the canal enters the Central Africa Republic at 27°E and approximately 5°N, intercepting the River Mbomou--which forms the border with Zaire--in an area between Obo and Bambouti. Then, running through the Upper Mbomou region at elevations of around 700|m above sea level, it receives the waters of the upper stretches of the Rivers Ouarra, Ngoangoa, Vovodo, and Chinko, in their turn all right-bank tributaries of the Mbomou.

  The basins of these rivers receive a mean rainfall generally in excess of 1,500|mm a year, and their runoff coefficients appear to be between 20 and 30%. The contributions of these four basins are concentrated from the months of May-June to September-October, in which periods more than two-thirds of the annual rainfall occurs.

• The northern stretch of the canal continues with a broad sweep westwards through the entire region of the Upper Kotto at elevations of under 700|m above sea level until it reaches the southern slope of the Bongo Massif north of Yangalia where the mountain chain separating the two basins is at its lowest point (about 600|m above sea level). In this last stretch, the canal intercepts the Kotto and its tributary the Bongou, the Kotto being in its turn a direct tributary of the Oubangui. The features of the drainage system of this region are not very dissimilar to those of the Upper Mbomou, although flows are smaller because of the lower rainfall (generally under 1,000|mm/year) and the longer dry period.

• The stretch of the canal affecting the Central African part of the Chad basin will start in a crossing area to be identified between the upper Bamingui basin and the upper basin of its tributary, the Koukourou, both of these rivers being tributaries of the Chari. Their river beds, duly conditioned, could receive Transaqua's flow of over 3,000 m³@ndsecond in addition to their own natural discharges. The flows of what will be in actual practice a new river will be conveyed along the whole western border of the Bamingui-Bangoran National Park, entering Chad at the northern boundary of the park. From the divide to the border with Chad, the Bamingui drops from about 600 to 300|m above sea level, meeting the Chari at the frontier between the Central African Republic and Chad.

Foreseeable Environmental Impact

In fact, the drainage basins intercepted by the canal are generally characterized by a hydrological behavior differing through the course of the year; the southern basins have more than 1,500|mm of rain a year distributed over about six months; the northern basins instead have more modest rainfall (800-1,000|mm/year) concentrated in three to four rainy months alternating with eight to nine dry months.

In Central Africa, the canal crosses, in fact, a belt of wet tropical climate, in its southern stretch, and a zone of sub-Sahelian type climate, with a long dry season, in its northern part.

The immediate effect of the canal will therefore be to control the floods and to convey the waters of the rivers intercepted in the south to the watercourses intercepted in the more northerly stretch, either by means of direct flow into the rivers or by creating special storage and balancing basins. This water compensation system will be able to guarantee longer annual periods of water use of even secondary rivers normally dry for several months.

From the climatological standpoint there can be no consequences of any sort, since the canal does not form a concentrated water surface, as instead is the case when large artificial reservoirs are constructed.

The ecological effects on the natural environment, finally, will be comparable with those caused by making a large thoroughfare through a more or less virgin area. In view of the great abundance of ecological themes and the huge area concerned, the canal will produce only negligible consequences from this point of view.

"Central Africa 2000": Political And Economic Prospects

Being situated at the very economic center of the Transaqua system, indeed the country can expect the advantages deriving from the establishment of the Inter-African Polyfunctional Trading Area (IPTA) which will be located in the Upper Bamingui Valley in an area between said river and its tributary, the Koukourou. These advantages can be summed up as follows:

• powerful development of commercial traffic due to the new waterway which could be connected, by means of two simple road links, with the Lagos-Mombasa Highway, and also with the river port of Bangui and, via this, by river, with Brazzaville and Kinshasa;

• the creation, for the first time in the heart of continental Africa, of a large river port equipped to handle containers, linked with the ocean ports of Lagos and Mombasa;

• the production of a very great amount of hydroelectric energy with the construction of a series of dams along the modified course of the Bamingui, the first and most important of which will be situated at the IPTA (the hydroelectric potential of the Transaqua in its drop to the Chad is estimated as some 30-35 billion kwh/year, two-thirds of it producible in the Central African Republic and one-third in Chad;

• the establishment, in the IPTA area, of a vast industrial zone specialized in the agro-food sector, capable of ensuring, with the setting up of agroindustries of adequate size, the processing of the agricultural and animal products from the newly developed agricultural areas. These areas will be created, both in the Central Africa Republic and in Zaire, along the alluvial valleys intercepted by the canal, and will be served by river landing stages;

• the upgrading and development of the mining region traversed by the canal, including Bakouma, Bria, Mouaka, and Ouadda;

• the recovery for production purposes of a region of about 100,000|km² today completely without any road network and which will be able to use the waterway link to the IPTA and, through this, to ensure the movement of agricultural and animal products to be processed and the supply of production inputs, in their turn indispensable for the development of the new agricultural areas;

• a massive and unprecedented influx of capital and of international undertakings into the country, guaranteeing permanent employment for at least twenty years for the Central African populations.

Since the design logic foresees the start-up of canal construction at the northern end, then proceeding gradually with construction in successive stretches southwards, the Central African Republic will be the country that will ``lay the foundation stone'' of the Transaqua Project, the first worksite being opened along the Oubangui-Chad artery in the vicinity of a mountain ``crossing'' from which it will be possible to dominate, in a southerly direction, the equatorial water-donating areas and, northwards, the arid, desolate regions of the Sahel, the final recipients of said water. At this ``crossing,'' Africa will be able to show that the most viable North-South dialogue is one that can take place within the continent itself.

`Transaqua': Zaire's Priority And Essential Role

Zaire, indeed, would supply the project about 90% of the water intended to feed the Sahel regions, while the remaining part would be taken from the navigable canal in Central African Republic territory.

It is foreseen that the water will be obtained by off-takes from the water courses in the extreme eastern belt of the Haut-Zaëre and Kivu regions, in climatic areas where the average annual rainfall is around 1,800-2,000|mm and where the surface runoff feeds the four hydrographic systems of the Oubangui, the Aruwimi, the Lindi, and the Lowa, which in their turn are tributaries of the Zaire.

The numerous tributaries of the four abovementioned catchment areas could be intercepted in their upper basins by means of barrages which--guaranteeing continuity to the big navigable canal--would at the same time create large artificial reservoirs which would deliver part of their waters to the courses of the dammed rivers, thereby regulating their flow regime downstream of the barrages, especially during the peak flood periods.

Numerous alluvial valleys will become available along the courses of the rivers intercepted, upstream of the individual dams, and the reservoirs created by these structures could form lake areas ideal to accommodate a whole series of river ports, regular commercial ``terminals'' serving the new development areas for the export of agricultural products, and for the supply of the necessary means of production, with the low costs of transport characteristic of river routes.

At least 10 areas seem suitable for integrated agricultural and stockraising development already from this first ``project idea'': those corresponding to the flood valleys of the rivers Dungu, Nzoro, Ituri, and Epulu, and the upper basins of the rivers Uere, Bomokandi, Nepoko, Lindi, Oso, and Lowa. Surface off-takes from these upper catchment areas would have no appreciable practical consequences in terms of discharges at the level of the four hydrographic systems mentioned; on the contrary, there would be certain advantages deriving from their partial control.

Some Technical Considerations

It will drain the upper basins of the right-bank tributaries of the Lualaba and the Oubangui for a total surface area of about 220,000|km², about 140,000|km² of which is in Zaire.

Proceeding from south to north:

the southernmost stretch of the canal (running from the Kivu region towards Haut-Zaëre) will be fed by the upper basins of the Lowa and the Lindi.

Both of these basins are situated in areas with rainfall of over 1,800|mm/year and a large part of them have rainfall of more than 2,200|mm/year. The runoff coefficients are always high, greater than 40% taking almost the whole of the upland contributions from the middle and lower courses of these rivers will not lead to any negative effects, considering that the availability in these areas is overabundant, and that the rainfall/evapotranspiration balance is amply positive in every month of the year.

On the contrary, abstracting the contributions of the upper mountain basins by means of the canal will have a regulating action on the flood flows of the individual tributaries of the Lowa and of the Lindi.

The upper catchments of these two important right-bank tributaries of the middle course of the Zaire will, according to calculations, supply some 30 billion cubic meters a year, equal to an aggregate discharge of about 950|m³@ndsecond. At Kisangani therefore the average discharge of the Zaire River will be less than about 12.5% of the 7,500\m³@ndsecond that is the present discharge.