Everything about The Great East Road totally explained
The
Great East Road is a major road in
Zambia and the only highway linking its
Eastern Province with the rest of the country. It is also the major link between Zambia and
Malawi and between Zambia and northern
Mozambique. However, the route doesn't carry as much traffic as many of the other regional arterial roads and between the main cities it serves,
Lusaka and
Chipata, it passes through rural and wilderness areas. In Lusaka the road forms the main arterial road for the eastern suburbs.
History
Chipata, the capital of the Eastern Province was an early outpost of the
British colonial administration as Fort Jameson when Zambia was
Northern Rhodesia. Like most of the Eastern Province, it had much easier access to Malawi, then the British
protectorate of
Nyasaland, and to the Mozambique ports of
Quelimane and
Beira than to the rest of Northern Rhodesia, and so most trade and communication in early colonial days was eastwards. Until the mid 1920s mail, goods and passengers went between the capital of the territory at
Livingstone and
Fort Jameson by train through neighbouring countries — via
Bulawayo and
Beira to
Blantyre and then by road.
Before the Great East Road, the first direct vehicle access to the east of any kind was a track made in 1929 by transport companies following a more northerly route than the present road, and which crossed both the
Lunsemfwa River and the Luangwa by pontoons made from dugout canoes roped together.
Eventually the Northern Rhodesian authorities needed a better road to assert their control over the Eastern Province, and the
first Great East Road was built in 1932 from the
Great North Road at the small railway town of
Lusaka (Livingstone was still the capital, and this junction of the 'Great Roads' together with the main north-south railway contributed to the decision to site the capital in Lusaka in 1935).
Route geography
The
Eastern Province is a narrow slice of land sandwiched between Mozambique and Malawi to its south and east, and the
Luangwa Valley, world-famous for
its wildlife, to the north-west, which no highways cross. Apart from a bush track over the highlands in the far north of the province, a narrow neck of land in the west became the only way in from or out to the rest of Zambia, and as the only highway to cross it, the Great East road is strategically vulnerable.
This neck is cut by the lower Luangwa River making a turn due south to the
Zambezi, in a narrow and deep valley with steep slopes and thick vegetation, amounting in some sections to a gorge. The river is 250 to 400 m wide in this area, and flows quite fast, with a huge variation according to season.
The route and its branches
Crossing the steep terrain of the lower Luangwa valley was a major challenge. The 1929 track was usually closed in the rainy season, and so the first
Luangwa Bridge was built in 1932 with funding from the
Beit Trust. On the eastern side, once the road had climbed up the difficult terrain onto the Luangwa-Zambezi
watershed at
Nyimba,
Petauke, and
Katete, the going is easier.
is reached 605 km from Lusaka and the road goes on to the
Malawian border 20 km further on, where it connects via
Mchinji to the Malawian capital of
Lilongwe, just 90 km from Chipata.
In addition to its east-west Lusaka-Malawi axis, the the Great East Road links north to
Lundazi, north-west to the
South Luangwa National Park, south-east to Mozambique, and, in
Lusaka Province, south to the
Lower Zambezi National Park and the town of
Luangwa at the Luangwa-Zambezi river confluence. In the 1960s the Great East road was paved, opening up the Luangwa Valley (and to some extent,
Lake Malawi) to tourism.
At times the surface has deteriorated considerably. The section between Katete and the Luangwa Bridge was repaired and reconstructed around 2002/3.
Strategic significance
As well as being strategically vulnerable as described above, the Great East Road is within a few kilometres of Mozambique and a few tens of kilometres of Zimbabwe, where there were
wars of independence in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result of Zambia's political support for the
anti-apartheid and
independence sides in these conflicts, armed incursions cut the road at the
Luangwa Bridge — see that topic for further details.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Great East Road'.
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