Build-Operate-Transfer Model and Its Role in Developing Railways Transport Section in Sudan
Authors:   Sudan University of Science and Technology.
Published: October 2020

This paper focuses on a solution to the finance restrictions that obstacle the development of railways section in Sudan. Sudan is a big country with an area estimated at more than 1,800,000 km2. It owns variety of natural and other resources. The transportation system in Sudan specially railways suffers a lot of restrictions that affect its contribution to the national economy. Sudan railways is one of the longest railways in Africa with about 5,000 km. Railways were the earliest mechanical means of transport to be introduced in Sudan. The construction of the first railway line started in the last decade of the Nineteen century. Railways have been playing a significant role in transportation for long time. However, railways in Sudan lack passengers’ trains recently. Moreover, the capacity of freight trains is enough to meet just 10% of needed capacity. Also, most of the rails are very old and exceeded their expire date; and as the result a lot of derailments had been occurred. Also, most of the rail on the western lines are not suited to all of the diesels. Moreover, most sleepers are creosoted wood which differ from that used in the neighboring countries that use steel or concrete. And to overcome all these issues, there is a huge need of finance. However, lacking of finance is one of the main restrictions that face the development of railways section in Sudan. And, in spite of that, the Build Operate-Transport (BOT) approach could be the best option to deal with the current situation that faces railways section in Sudan. Build-Operate-Transport Approach (BOT) is a well-known method of initiating, financing and managing public capital projects by private section for specific period of time and then transfer them to the public owners. The idea of the approach is to give the private and nongovernmental section the opportunity to invest in public capital projects like infrastructure, telecommunication, and other projects which had been used to construct by the public section and classified as a part of ‘Country’s Sovereign’ for many countries. And these projects require huge amount of finance that may not be available for a lot of countries. At the same time, achieving these projects is very vital for the development of any country. BOT system helped a lot of country to get the advanced technology and improve management skills. In addition, BOT system increased the efficiency and productivity. And support many countries to avoid the risk of getting loans in order to finance the capital projects and therefore creating economic growth. Using BOT approach to finance railways project was experienced in Turkey since 1984. And starting from 1980’s until 1992, the BOT system become familiar and more than 190 billion USD projects had been financed by this approach in 47 countries. This study finds out that BOT approach could be the proper way to generate the requested finance and management to overcome the existence problems that restrict the development of railways section in Sudan.