The Transport Directorate of the ECOWAS Commission is hosting a three-day technical validation workshop for the Detailed Design Study (DDS) of the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway in Lagos, Nigeria, from Wednesday, September 11 to Friday, September 13, 2024.
The Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway Development Project (ALCHDP) aims to construct a six-lane dual carriage highway from Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire through Ghana, Togo, Benin to Lagos in Nigeria. The five corridor countries have entrusted the ECOWAS Commission as the interim implementing agency to design, procure, mobilize financing and construct the highway. In the long term, a supra-national Corridor Authority known as the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Management Authority (ALCOMA) will be operationalized to take over the project on behalf of the corridor countries.
The first phase of this project involves alignment definition and feasibility and preliminary design studies for the 1,028 km road. These were completed by three engineering design consultants and validated by the corridor member states in November 2022 after substantial delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These firms then developed the detailed design of the highway.
Project directors and engineers from the five corridor member countries accompanied engineers from ECOWAS including its Project Unit and Technical Assistants to hold initial technical reviews of the detailed design reports and drawings within broader corridor objectives and specific country peculiarities. These reviews were conducted through national-level pre-validation workshops across Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire from June 18 to 24, 2024.
Reports and recommendations from these national pre-validation workshops have been collated with comments from ECOWAS’s Technical Assistance team. This consolidated feedback will form the basis for validating the detailed design of the entire Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway.
This final technical validation workshop marks a crucial phase in concluding technical studies for project development. It will involve an extensive session where project directors and engineers from all five participating corridor member countries will review and grant their final approval to DDS and technical specifications essential for advancing development stages.
Attendees at this workshop include engineers from ALCHDP’s Project Implementation Unit (PIU), directorates of transport and environment within ECOWAS Commission, ECOWAS Project Preparation and Development Unit (PPDU), representatives of ministries responsible for infrastructure, project focal points, directors and CMC engineers who are PIU members of CMCs. Development partners such as African Development Bank and European Union along with stakeholders will also be present.
Additionally attending are project engineering consultants comprising SETEC International, PEARL Consultants SCET Tunisie SOFRECO as well as media representatives.
