The bridge has an unusual curve. (Image: Getty)
A stunning curved bridge linking two countries is helping to transform the region’s economy.
The US$260 million (£208m) construction is helping to facilitate and speed up the delivery of essential goods travelling along a major transport and trade corridor.
The corridor, known as SADC, stretches from Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Durban, .
Every day, trucks loaded with copper from DRC, Zambia, and Tanzania travel south to commercial ports, from where the in-demand commodity is shipped to .
Food from South Africa then travels north, while mining equipment from Tanzania heads to DRC and Zambia.
The Kazungula Bridge was ten years in the making (Image: Getty)
All the goods have to be transported across the , a process that, until recently, could take 15 days.
In the not-too-distant past, trucks were ferried across the river on pontoons.
The pontoons could hold two trucks at a time, and the crossing is supposed to take 10 to 15 minutes.
However, the pontoons could only make the journey if the river currents were not too strong and the rains were not too heavy.
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Quite often truckers could spend up to 15 days waiting to transport their goods across the river, while waiting for favourable conditions.
However, since May 2021, the pontoons have been thankfully decommissioned and replaced by a new bridge.
The Kazungula Bridge was ten years in the making and links the countries of Zambia and .
The 923-metre-long by 18.5-metre-wide bridge has a longest span of 129 metres, taking advantage of the short border (135 metres) that the two countries share at the river.
It features a single-line railway track between two traffic lanes and walkways for pedestrians.
The bridge makes a gentle but curious curve for geopolitical reasons rather than structural ones.
This is to avoid touching two other countries – Namibia and Zimbabwe – on either side of the bridge.