Interview: We are building the best highway in Angola: CRBC manager

China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) has been trying to build the best highways in Angola in the post-war reconstruction process of the African country, Zhang Weimin, one of CRBC's senior managers for Angolan projects said here on Monday.

CRBC has built or rehabilitated over 1,500 kilometers of highways in Angola since 2006 when it first joined the rebuilding process which began in earnest after decades of wars ended in 2002, including the recently-finished rehabilitation of a 200-kilometer highway linking the northern coastal cities of Caxito and N'zeto.

The highway between Caxito and N'zeto, built by Portuguese colonialists early last century, was badly damaged like other basic infrastructures during decades of wars in the African country, and it normally took more than 12 hours to drive through the 200-kilometer road due to its poor conditions.

The CRBC started to rebuild the highway since the year 2007 with an investment of over 500 million U.S. dollars from the Angolan government, and the new road was opened to the public at the end of 2014 when Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos personally attended the inauguration ceremony as the new highway is of strategic importance to the economic development of the country.

The highway links the capital city of Luanda and the northern part of the country which is rich in oil and natural gas resources.

"Now it only takes less than three hours to drive through the Caxito and N'zeto highway after the rehabilitation, and the driver will not feel uncomfortable when driving at a speed of 120 kilometer an hour or the maximum speed limit of the country, " Zhang Weimin said.

"We are trying to build the best highway and express way in Angola as "wanna get rich, build roads first" has become a conventional wisdom in most developing countries and roads play a key role in the movement of people and goods and economic development", Zhang Weimin said.

The new Caxito-N'zeto highway drew wide-spread compliments from local residents and government officials, who believed it would serve as a runway for an economic take-off for the northern part of the country.

Apart from roads and bridges, CRBC also maneuvered into other fields of the post-war reconstruction process of Angola, building a new three-storey provincial hospital in the northern Zaire province with an investment of 150 million dollars from the Angolan government.

"Quality and speed are the lifeline of a civil engineering company and we are building the new hospital like we build highways in Angola," Zhang Weimin said. Endi