Great West Road, Zambia

The Great West Road of Zambia runs 610 km from the capital, Lusaka, to Mongu, capital of the Western Province. It connects that province to the rest of the country, as well as being one of two routes to the south-west extremity of North-Western Province. It also serves as the main highway of the western half of Central Province.

In the Copperbelt, however, the road going west to Solwezi also used to be known as the Great West Road. At that time Copperbelt Province was, despite its central location, known as Western Province.

Road development was slower to start in the west of the country than in other parts. A dirt road was built from the Great North Road at Landless Corner to Mumbwa in the early 1930s, but was not extended to Kaoma and Mongu until 1937, about ten years after road transport started in other provinces. The Great West Road did not have the same recognition and maintenance as the better-known Great North Road and Great East Road, and was also for a time only the third most used route to the west. A route by ox wagon and boat up the Zambezi from Livingstone was the most used in the first decades of the 20th century. A road was made from Mululwe, the end of the Mulobezi Railway, along the banks of the Luampa River and then across the sandy plain to Mongu about the same time as the Great West Road was built and, thanks to the railway, was used more, until the 1950s.

The first Great West Road was a dirt road with pontoon ferries across rivers such as the Kafue. It passed through only two towns: Mumbwa and Kaoma. The first 100 km passed through farmland and bush north of the Kafue Flats and like the middle section crossing the Kafue National Park, was constructed with laterite gravel. Most of the last third passes through virtually uninhabited bush with no streams or rivers. It is completely dry except after rain in the wet season and is very sandy, which took its toll on trucks and their drivers, as vehicles could get bogged in sand in the dry season, in addition to the usual rainy season hazards of floods and washed-out sections.

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