After Ethiopia’s first LRT project, CASCO’s signaling technology continues its journey to the West by providing advanced signaling system for Nigeria’s Abuja-Kaduna Railway. It’s a new breakthrough of CASCO’s technology export with the Belt and Road construction and intelligent manufacturing in China strategy.

Abuja-Kaduna Railway is the first modern railway using Chinese standard in Africa and went into operation at 11 o’clock on July 26^th. Nearly a thousand people attended the opening ceremony, including Nigeria’s president Buhari, the House and Senate Speaker, Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Transport Minister, Environment Minister, Foreign Minister, local traditional leaders and representatives from Nigeria Railway Corporation, Chinese Embassy in Nigeria and China Civil Engineering Construction Nigeria Corporation.

Abuja-Kaduna Railway Opening Ceremony

Abuja-Kaduna Railway is the first segment of Nigeria’s modern railway project. It is 186.5 kilometers long and has 9 stations with max speed of 150km/h. As the signaling system provider, CASCO and its frontline team overcame bad living and communication environment and built VPI computer interlocking system for all the stations.

CASCO’s engineer explaining VPI system to local workers

With the opening of this railway, the traveling time from Abuja to Kaduna was cut from 3 hours to 1, which greatly helped the exchange of local people and commodity, promoted Nigeria’s national economy and Chinese railway product export, thus boosting bilateral economic cooperation. In the opening ceremony, President Buhari said that Abuja-Kaduna Railway will be an indispensable transport link between Federal Capital Territory and Kaduna State, as well as an economic corridor full of industrial, agricultural and manpower potential.

Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, yet its railway mileage is far behind. Before Abuja-Kaduna Railway, the railway is only 3500 kilometers and most is narrow gauge single-track railway built in colonial period. In the future, Nigerian and Chinese team will build a 1315 km long modern railway stretching across Nigeria from north to south, which will bring a more convenient transport network and robust economic development environment to costal countries in West Africa.