Empty Tracks, Big Promises
At last, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) has begun hauling cargo. In late June 2025, a freight train carrying 700 tonnes of cargo departed Dar es Salaam for Dodoma, marking what many consider a turning point in Tanzania’s transport evolution. With the arrival of 264 new wagons and plans to scale to 2,000-tonne daily operations, there’s no denying the ambition is real and the track, quite literally, is laid.
But one question overshadows this milestone: Who will fill these wagons consistently and profitably?
SGR was never just about speed or steel. It was about transforming Tanzania into a logistics powerhouse, shifting cargo off trucks, decongesting roads, and slicing supply chain costs. Yet, beneath the celebratory press releases lies a quieter truth: the cargo base may not be strong enough to match the infrastructure built. A railway without predictable volumes becomes a stranded asset, and that risk looms unless hard questions are addressed now.
The Cargo Conundrum: Designed Capacity vs. Actual Use
Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) has projected high-volume freight corridors anchored around the Kwala Dry Port, Dodoma inland node, and onward extensions toward Mwanza and Kigoma. The system was designed for 10,000 tonnes of daily throughput in some stretches, a scale that would truly rewire the country’s logistics DNA.
Yet today, after the first month of commercial SGR cargo operations, the average haul remains below 1,000 tonnes per trip. While this is expected in early rollout phases, the gap between potential and reality raises structural concerns. Warehousing capacities at hubs like Dodoma are still limited. Feeder road connectivity remains underdeveloped. Inland producers, especially in agriculture, often lack the volume, coordination, or cold-chain infrastructure to shift from truck to train.
This is not a technology problem. It is a demand mismatch. And without sufficient volume, even the most modern rail system will struggle to achieve economic viability.
Why Cargo Isn’t Coming: Price, Predictability, and Policy
Three interlinked constraints continue to choke the rail corridor’s potential:
Price
Despite bold investments, SGR freight rates aren’t yet significantly lower than trucking, especially for short hauls like Dar to Morogoro or Dar to Dodoma. For many small- and medium-scale shippers, the choice is clear: trucks are flexible, familiar, and price-comparable. Unless rail can guarantee real savings through bulk discounts, backhaul deals, or subsidy schemes, uptake will lag.
Predictability
SGR’s operational rhythm is still maturing. Even as trains now run daily, downstream linkages with Kwala Dry Port, customs clearance, and offloading timelines remain partially fragmented. For exporters and manufacturers, time reliability matters as much as cost. A single-day delay at the dry port or inconsistent scheduling at the port-rail interface can erase rail’s cost advantage.
Policy
There’s still no cohesive national cargo policy that tilts incentives toward rail use. Public procurement, including government purchases of grains, fertilizers, and medical supplies, still leans heavily on road logistics. No significant tax incentives exist to promote rail bundling. And private sector actors lack a centralized cargo-booking platform that would streamline aggregation.
The result? Most cargo operators wait and watch. Infrastructure is ready. Policy isn’t.
Dependence on Neighbors: Echoes of Kenya’s SGR Overreliance
Tanzania’s freight strategy, much like Kenya’s early SGR rollout, leans heavily on the promise of regional transit cargo from Rwanda, Burundi, eastern DRC, and even Uganda. The idea is compelling: build a modern railway that shortens East Africa’s supply chain, and transit goods will naturally follow.
But the Kenyan example offers a cautionary tale. When Kenya attempted to mandate SGR usage from Mombasa to Nairobi, it faced resistance from truckers, clearing agents, and regional clients. Despite world-class rail infrastructure, usage fell short, and revenue projections were quietly revised downward.
Tanzania risks a similar outcome. While partnerships with Rwanda and the DRC are progressing diplomatically, actual freight commitments remain loose. Transit countries will only shift if Tanzania offers clear advantages: competitive pricing, seamless port clearance at Dar, and predictable turnaround. Infrastructure alone doesn’t build trust; performance does.
Worse, overreliance on external clients without a strong domestic cargo base creates exposure. If Rwanda opts for the Central Corridor via Uganda or Burundi doubles down on lake freight, Tanzania’s wagons could sit idle, again.
Missed Industrial Linkages: Where Are the Feeders?
The SGR blueprint envisioned vibrant economic nodes developing around rail stops, with Dodoma becoming a grain logistics hub, Tabora serving agro-processing clusters, and Mwanza handling minerals, fish, and industrial goods. But in reality, most of these nodes lack the surrounding economic ecosystem to feed cargo into the rail.
There are three key bottlenecks:
- Sparse processing infrastructure: Few industrial parks, cold chains, or aggregation centers are fully functional near SGR stations.
- Weak local supply chains: Smallholder farmers and regional traders lack the scale and coordination to use rail, especially when trucks offer doorstep pickup.
- Disconnected planning: Ministries of Industry, Agriculture, and Transport operate in silos. Industrial policy hasn’t been aligned with logistics infrastructure.
The result is a corridor without anchors. Trains can’t run on empty promises, they need bulk volumes, consistent flows, and spatially concentrated economic activity. Without deliberate industrial planning around stations, the SGR risks becoming a corridor to nowhere.
Fixes — Nudges That Could Greenlight Cargo Growth
Tanzania’s cargo challenge isn’t insurmountable. But solving it requires bold, targeted interventions that move beyond infrastructure pride and into demand creation:
1. Government Cargo Guarantee Scheme
Public procurement agencies, such as NFRA (National Food Reserve Agency), Medical Stores Department, and TANESCO, should be mandated to use SGR for bulk logistics. This creates a guaranteed base volume.
2. Digital Cargo Matching Platform
Launch a real-time freight booking portal where exporters, logistics companies, and warehouse operators can aggregate and bid for train space. This would reduce fragmentation and idle capacity.
3. Targeted Incentives
Tax credits, discounted warehousing, or customs fast-tracking for businesses using rail, especially for first adopters, can tilt market behavior. Initial losses would be strategic.
4. Private-Sector Rail Consortium
Encourage large private exporters (e.g., cement, sugar, cashew, sunflower oil) to co-develop rail service models with TRC. Joint scheduling and shared risk would increase confidence.
Without these nudges, SGR’s growth will depend on hope, and in logistics, hope doesn’t haul freight.
Conclusion – Wagons Are Ready. Now Comes the Real Work.
Tanzania has done the hard part: laying down a modern rail system across the backbone of the country. The SGR is no longer a blueprint or a promise, it’s real, it’s moving, and it’s capable. But building infrastructure was always the opening act. The real test lies in turning it into a working logistics system, one that moves not just steel, but the economy.
As freight operations begin to scale, the stakes rise. Every empty wagon represents not just a missed commercial opportunity but a policy failure, a failure to coordinate industry with infrastructure, pricing with politics, and promise with performance.
To fill these wagons, Tanzania must engineer demand. That means targeting domestic cargo first, integrating last-mile coordination, incentivizing modal shifts, and linking industrial development zones to the rail spine. It means making the railway not just the fastest or newest, but the easiest, cheapest, and most trusted option.
The track is laid. The locomotives are here. But unless we fix the software of freight, the institutions, the incentives, the trust, the hardware will remain underused.
This is no longer about building trains. It’s about making them worth using.
Read more articles by Dr. Wilson Pesabelele