China wins $6.7bn Lagos-Kano railway contract

Nigeria has awarded a $6.68bn contract to the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) to build a major segment of a railway from Lagos, in the southwest, to Kano in the north.

“The signing of the … segment contract agreement today (15 May) concludes all outstanding segments of the Lagos-Kano rail line,” the Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted Nigeria’s transport ministry as saying. The work is expected to take two or three years.

CCECC, a subsidiary of Chinese state rail builder China Railway Construction Corporation, has been involved in other parts of the Lagos-Kano rail project, which started in 2006 and was broken into segments for implementation.

In 2016, Nigeria awarded it work on a segment between the northern states of Kano and Kaduna with a contract sum of $1.685bn.The railway line is also receiving funding from China. In April, China Exim bank approved a $1.231bn loan for the network’s modernisation programme, Reuters reports.