Mukololo Chanda still recalls the glory days of Africa’s “freedom railway”. Almost four decades ago, fresh from high school in Zambia, she began working as a switchboard operator on the railway built by Mao Zedong’s China that she believed would steer her newly independent country to prosperity.
“It was the only reliable way to travel to many places — everyone was using it,” said Chanda, a bubbly 55-year-old who is now the station master in Kapiri Mposhi, from where the Tazara railway links copper-rich, landlocked Zambia to Tanzania on Africa’s east coast.
But decades of underfunding and mismanagement have today left its decaying wagons and tracks operating at a fraction of capacity. “I was working alongside Chinese [colleagues], everything was running smoothly and we were always paid on time,” Chanda recalled. “I’d like the Chinese to come back.”