The bridge over troubled waters

The waters over which the proposed Djibouti-Yemen bridge will cross are so troubled that they should book Simon and Garfunkel for the opening party - assuming the duo are still alive and in good song, if or when it is ever finished.

The $25bn ‘Bridge of the Century' aims to link the southern tip of Yemen with the Horn of Africa, part of a project amounting to some $200bn in total investment over a fifteen year period.

One of the main questions begged of this massive project must be ‘Why?' The plan comes as the UN is struggling to raise a mere $18m in food aid for Djibouti to fend off a crisis affecting a third of its population. At the same time Yemen, the Gulf's poorest state, is depleting its own scarce water resources to feed its addiction to the khat leaf.

The project envisages a six-lane motorway as well as a four-track railway capable of transporting 100,000 cars and 50,000 train passengers a day.

The economic benefits to be derived from investing such a colossal sum in building a bridge between these two countries must at best be questionable.

Will linking one centre of extreme poverty with another centre of extreme poverty by road and rail, bring any obvious benefits to either?

The sponsors of the project would have us believe the answer to that is ‘yes'.

Of course the plan is less about connecting the two countries and more about joining their hinterlands and the immense possibilities for improved trade between Africa and the Middle East that such a project would initiate.

Yet the economic rationale of the bridge must be suspect while the engineering challenges of piling through the basalt encrusted waters off Djibouti are likely to be no less demanding.

The Red Sea is well known as a seismic hotspot. As recently as 1978 a tectonic plate movement triggered the eruption of Djibouti's Ardoukba volcano and an earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale, and the resultant lava flows have dramatically reshaped the seabed - creating even more challenges for our would-be bridge builders.

With oil surpluses accumulating across the region and petrodollars in such plentiful supply, we are likely to see more projects like this one appear from architectural drawing boards across the Middle East.

Investors might note the 18-mile strait between the two countries is known to the mariners brave enough to navigate its pirate-infested waters, as the ‘Gate of Tears'. Hopefully the bridge does not become known by a similarly worrisome epithet.

Sean Cronin is the editor-in-chief of Arabian Business English.

RELATED LINKS: A bridge too far?

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