Uganda Infrastructure | The New Source of the Nile Bridge Commissioned in Jinja

The New Jinja Bridge, whose official name will be the Source of The Nile Bridge, was commissioned on 17 October 2018, by the President of Uganda and is the first cable-stayed bridge in the region that runs across the Victoria Nile in Uganda. It will complement the existing 1954-built Nalubaale Bridge, located 750m downstream and whose lifespan is said to have expired.

The new 525m-long bridge is comprised of a dual carriageway, two-way, single-plane cable-stay bridge. It has a central span of 290m and end spans of 135m and 100m on the east and west banks respectively. The bridge’s foundation of 2m or larger diameter, embedded approximately 15-30m deep through weathered to hard road. The pylon inverts into a Y-shape approximately 70-80m high.

UK structural engineering company Arup UK carried out independent design checks concurrently with the release of the final design which confirmed the bridge complies with “the highest standards of the design and that in addition to local design standards, Japanese standards, British standards and Eurocode traffic load models were employed.”

The Japan International Cooperation Agency – JICA provided approximately 9.2 billion Japanese yen (USD114.44 million) in funding for the construction of a bridge and access roads in Uganda.

The Northern Corridor is Uganda’s most important highway as it forms nearly 7% of the country’s road network and conveys close to 32% of its traffic. Statistics indicate the corridor’s transit/trans-shipment traffic is over 2.2 million tonnes/day, volumes which grow at the rate of 20% annually.

Uganda relies on the port of Mombasa in neighboring Kenya for up to 80% of its exports and imports, and 95% of these pass through the Northern Corridor.

Source — Agency news reports