The boom in Mozambique’s coal mining industry was driving infrastructure development in the country, with the transport, energy and power infrastructure sectors set to experience the greatest growth over the next decade, new analysis by Frost & Sullivan showed last week.

The ‘African Infrastructure Tracker: Mozambique’s Infrastructure Sectors’ report said nearly 60 multimillion-dollar ongoing infrastructure projects – of which ten were multibillion-dollar projects – would see investment of some $34-billion into the transport, energy and power, telecommunications, water and social infrastructure sectors.

Frost & Sullivan environmental and building technologies industry analyst Sarah O’Carroll cautioned that government’s reliance on donor funding was the single most significant challenge restraining infrastructure development in the country.

“However, the private sector is currently supporting 65.6% of all infrastructure projects in the country, thus stimulating infrastructure development.”

Mining companies, in particular, contributed 17.1% of all infrastructure investments, primarily to ensure that infrastructure was adequate to support coal exports.

“Several coal mines are being developed in the Tete province of Mozambique and improved logistics infrastructure for raw material exportation will be necessary to make these mines successful and competitive,” she noted.

The mining industry was also energy intensive and, while mines were currently expected to meet their own energy demands through the use of diesel generators, government was already engaged in several capa- city-building projects in the energy and power sector to meet projected increases in demand.

The transport sector would also benefit from some $22.41-billion in investment in the next decade, while investments in the roads sector would see the reconstruction of a number of trunk roads that were destroyed during the civil war, as well as the development of several city corridors, said the report.

Investments in the rail sector would be used to expand the rail network – cur- rently a single railway corridor – to facilitate exports from Tete.

Several ports were also undergoing significant expansion to increase the country’s export capacity fivefold.