Back to the Future

2020 : Location :

Team :

Enabel - Belgian Development Agency

Kigoma, Tanzania

5 National engineers

1 International engineer

1 National logistician

To reduce the transport cost and improve reliable access to markets, schools, hospitals and jobs, we built 100+ bridges in the Kigoma Region in Tanzania. The bridges were built using the centuryold stone arch technique, which we reintroduced in the country and which allows us to cut costs and embedded carbon by 75% each.

My role was to coordinate the infrastructure team and drive the scaling from the 3 pilot bridges to the 100+ bridges built by the end of the 4-year project period. I developed tools for surveying, design, supervision and administration that allowed the rather small team of 7 infrastructure colleagues to complete this task successfully.

The project sparked the interest of the national roads authority (TARURA) which picked up the technology and is currently rolling it out nation-wide with punctual technical support from our team.

Apart from the bridges, our team also succesfully completed 7 warehouses (200 m2 each) and 1 commodity market (3000 m2) in the same project period.