The Cairo–Cape Town Highway, designated as Trans-African Highway 4, is a monumental road project promoted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and the African Union. It spans a distance of 10,228 km and connects Cairo, Egypt, to Cape Town, South Africa.

Historically, the British Empire had envisioned a road that would traverse from Cape to Cairo through a series of British colonies, commonly referred to as the Cape to Cairo Road, Pan-African Highway, or within sub-Saharan Africa, the Great North Road. However, unlike the Cape to Cairo Railway, the road was not completed under British colonial dominion.

The initial idea for this North-South Red Line route dates back to 1874, proposed by Edwin Arnold, the then editor of The Daily Telegraph. He imagined a combination of railway and river ways from Elizabethville (present-day Lubumbashi) in the Belgian Congo to Sennar in Sudan, rather than an exclusively railway route.

There are several distinctions between the originally proposed Cape to Cairo Road and the contemporary Cairo–Cape Town Highway. The latter includes a detour through Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, while the former was supposed to directly link Kenya to South Sudan. In Tanzania, the modern highway opts for a shorter route through Dodoma and Babati, as opposed to the longer route via Chalinze. Additionally, the Cairo–Cape Town Highway travels through Livingstone (near Victoria Falls), Bulawayo, Francistown, and Gaborone, bypassing cities like Harare, Pretoria, and Johannesburg.

Discover more from Magari Poa

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.