The regional transport body, the Northern Corridor Transit Transport Coordination Authority (NC-TTCA), has elected Rwanda’s Minister of Infrastructure to head the body’s Council of Ministers.

The ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Marie Claire Mukasine, takes over as the chairperson of Executive Board.

The decision to replace Kenya with Rwanda was taken yesterday during the body’s 32nd meeting that converged to review the progress on the implementation of several programs.

The two-years, mandate will see Vincent Karega, heading the Council of Ministers while his Permanent Secretary Marie Claire Mukasine, chairs the Executive Board.

The same meeting also elected Uganda as the vice chair, Burundi took over the Secretariat while Kenya takes the Assistant Secretariat of both the Council of Ministers and the Executive Board.

Northern Corridor Transit Transport route connects the five countries of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the officially opening of the meeting yesterday, Mukasine, thanked the out going leadership (Kenya) and promised to deliver the best for the body during Rwanda’s leadership.

Speaking to The New Times, Mukasine stressed that during the Rwanda’s tenure, the authority will embark on efficiently maintaining and rehabilitating the roads and rail networks within the corridor.

She also highlighted that Rwanda will work towards eliminating the bottlenecks that affected doing business on the route. 

"By doing this we shall be addressing the problem of poor roads on several sections, poor performance of the railway system, a lot of unnecessary non-tariff barriers, that have been hindering the corridor’s development,”.

"We should go beyond and make sure that our corridor is really contributing to the socio-economic development of the member states and the region, and offering competitive transit transport services,”

The outgoing board chairperson, Cyrus Njiru highlighted some of the achievements that the body has so far registered.

"We have witnessed with satisfaction, implementation of the regional infrastructure development master plan funded by the Africa Development Bank, the project’s work commenced successfully in September and is expected to be completed by the same month next year,”

The long waited is adoption of the regional 20 year Transport Infrastructure Plan by Member states in which more projects are to be realized.

According to the officials, the TTCA Executive Board is an organ mandated to formulate the strategies for transport and trade facilitation, infrastructure development, harmonization of national and regional policies.

Ends