All systems go for Africa's highest bridge

The South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited (Sanral) will now commence with its $212m Mtentu Bridge construction in the Eastern Cape after years of delays. City Press reports that the bridge was initially priced at $84.8m when construction came to a halt in 2018 because of violent protests by the community. Strabag, a European construction company and joint venture partners Aveng, walked out of the contract in 2019 on the back of the protests, a matter that ended up at the courts. Sanral southern regional manager, Mbulelo Peterson, said the scope of the new tender was expanded from the original terminated contract ‘to include the upgrading of 18km of a provincial road, linking the future Mkhambati interchange to the Flagstaff-Holy Cross road, and providing a direct link from the future N2 to the town of Flagstaff, as well as the construction of three nearby community access roads’. The 260m cantilevered bridge is set to be the highest bridge on the continent with a height of around 223m and one of the longest bridges of its kind in the world. It will be 1 132m long in total and forms part of Sanral’s N2 Wild Coast Road programme, which entails a 410km stretch of road from East London to the Mtamvuna River on the border of the Eastern Cape and KZN provinces. Construction is expected to take more than four years with an expected conclusion date of end 2027 and will create approximately 1 800 full-time jobs.