of independent countries removed the colonial rationale for the project and increased the project's difficulty, effectively ending the project. Operating segments Currently operational length is out of total . The operational status of sections of the railway is as follows: South-western section: starting from Cape Town, passing through Kimberley and Mahikeng in South Africa, Gaborone and Francistown in Botswana, to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. South-eastern section: from Port Elizabeth, passing through Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Musina in South Africa, to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. South-central section: Bulawayo league to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, to Livingstone, Lusaka and Ndola in Zambia, to Sakania, Lubumbashi, Tenke, Bukama, Kamina, Kabalo and Kindu in the Congo-Kinshasa. Incomplete stretch from Kindu to Uvira in Congo-Kinshasa, Bujumbura and Kayanza in Burundi, Butare and Kigali in Rwanda, to Kampala in Uganda. Central stretch: connects Kampala to Njeru, Busembatia, Tororo and Gulu in Uganda. Incomplete stretch from Gulu in Uganda to Juba and Wau in South Sudan. Dead end of Wau in South Sudan to Babanusa in Sudan, due to local wars (see: Babanusa-Wau Railway). North-upper Nile stretch: connects Babanusa to Sennar, Khartoum and Wadi Halfa in Sudan. Incomplete stretch of Wadi Halfa in Sudan to Aswan in Egypt. North-lower Nile stretch: connects Aswan to Luxor, Asyut, Cairo and Benha in Egypt. North-western section: connects Benha to Alexandria in Egypt. North-central stretch: connects Benha to Damietta in Egypt. North-eastern section: connects Benha to Port Said in Egypt. Connection with other railway systems Uganda railway East Africa has a network of narrow gauge railways that historically grew from ports on the Indian Ocean and went westward, built in parallel under British and German colonial rule. The furthest string north was the Uganda Railway. Eventually these networks were linked, so that today there is a continuous rail connection between Kampala, Uganda, on Lake Victoria to the coastal cities of Mombasa in Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Up to the break-up of the East African Community in 1977, these companies operated as East African Railways, but operate today as different national companies. TAZARA link From Dar es Salaam, a 1,860 km rail link to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia was built from 1970 to 1975 as a turnkey project financed and supported by China. This Tanzania-Zambia-Railway (TAZARA) was built to connect landlocked Zambia and its mineral wealth to a port on the Indian Ocean, independent from port connections in South Africa, a