The Tadjourah-Balho-Mekele road international highway finally inaugurated

Tigrai Online Nov. 13, 2019

The Tadjourah-Balho-Mekele road a new highway connecting Tadjourah port of Djibouti and Mekelle city in Tigrai was inaugurated very quietly this week. The Neftinga dream of chocking Tigrai prmenantly dashed.

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The Tadjourah-Balho-Mekele road, a new highway connecting the new Tadjourah port of Djibouti to the small town of Balho was inaugurated very quietly without too much funfair on Wednesday, November 6, 2019. The 120 km long highway will connect the brand new Tadjourah port of Djibouti to the city of Mekelle the capital city of Tigrai.

According to FluxAfrica a French website, the cost of finishing the project was around $156 million dollars. The construction of the Tadjourah-Balho-Mekele road was financed by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KDEF). The inauguration of Tadjourah-Balho-Mekele road ceremony was attended by Djibouti president, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, Ethiopian minister of transport and other dignitaries.

The project of the new port in northern Djibouti started around 2009 and the highway construction started a few years. The late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was a driving force for these projects.

The highway which was inaugurated this week will connect Afar and Tigrai regional states to the Tadjourah port of Djibouti through what is dubbed a third corridor. The new highway will go through the Djiboutian border town of Balho intercepting the road to the port of Assab in Eritrea which used to connect Ethiopia to the sea and will go through Afar to city of Mikelle the capital city of Tigrai.

The construction of the highway will help relieve the congestion of commercial traffic between the port of Djibouti and Ethiopia. The new road will also cut down the travel time for trucks going from Djibouti to Afar and Tigrai states substantially. Since the new road doesn’t go through the Amhara regional state the difficulty, robbery, road blockage, and other illegal activities against any transportation systems will be eliminated.

The brand new Tadjoura Port is built to mainly focus on general cargo, for example livestock, sesame, frankincense, fertilizers and grain.

Tigrai Online has received relevant information that the extremist Amhara groups were actively working with the help of the Egyptian government to undermine the completion of the Tadjourah-Balho-Mekele road. The enemies of Tigrai desperately tried to sabotage the construction of the new highway to cut off Tigrai from the sea and limit it to be only through Addis Ababa-Woldiya-Mekelle and then they turned around and closed the federal highway connecting Addis Ababa – Mekelle.

ETV, Fana broadcasting, and other media outlets supposedly to be owned by the federal government didn’t report this news because it doesn’t fit with Neftenga agenda and will demoralize their base.