BEIJING: The China State Construction Engineering Corp, the largest Chinese builder, has announced completion of an infrastructure project in Algeria, an economy participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.
“This marks the construction giant’s efforts to boost regional cooperation amid the COVID-19 pandemic,” China Daily reported.
Indeed, CSCEC has helped build an expressway linking Chiffa and Berrouaghia. It is part of the Algeria South-North Expressway project undertaken by CSCEC.
The expressway opened to traffic last weekend, passing across the Atlas Mountains and through the Sahara Desert. With a total length of 53 kilometers, the expressway goes through the Atlas Mountains, which was the “bottleneck” part of the Algeria South-North Expressway, for its extremely high construction difficulties.
In the future, the expressway will also extend further southward to connect Mali, Niger and other countries in Sahil Area.
Proposed in 2013, the BRI comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st century Maritime Silk Road, which aim at building trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road.
The government would continue to encourage SOEs (state-owned enterprises) to build more key infrastructure and manufacturing projects in the country and BRI partner economies over the next five years, said Peng Huagang, secretary-general of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
The completion of this strategic section in the Chiffa Gorge gives a decisive boost to the project – born more than fifty years ago – of a road linking Algiers and Lagos.
If this small seven kilometers section is attracting so much attention, it is because it is the last of the Chiffa-Berrouaghia section (53 km), the most strategic of the expressway being built between Algiers and El Menia, over more than 800 km, essentially doubling the length of Algeria’s National Road 1.
This closes a major project on the Trans-Saharan, which will one day link Algiers to Lagos, thanks to a 4,500 km motorway, of which 2,500 km will be in Algeria.
Crossing this mountainous region, where the winding roads of the Chiffa Gorge have always been a bottleneck between the Algerian and the south of the country, was a great technical challenge.
To achieve it, 5 km of tunnels and 14 km of bridges and viaducts, the highest piers of which reach 70 m, have been built since April 2013 by China State Construction Engineering Corporation, in particular in association with the Algerian public groups Sapta and Engoa.
A regular in Algeria, the Chinese construction giant has designed tens of thousands of housing units, dams, sections of motorway, the great mosque of Algiers and the extension of the capital’s airport since 1982.
The completion of the project is good news for Algeria, especially for motorists in the Chiffa Valley – about 20,000 a day – who will gain almost an hour.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), known in Chinese and formerly in English as One Belt One Road or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organizations. It is considered a centerpiece of China economic and foreign policy, This initiative was originally announced as the “Silk Road Economic Belt” in 2013
