THE World Bank has promised a loan of $100-million to help finance the reconstruction of the railway linking Mozambique’s port city of Beira, in the central province of Sofala, to Malawi and to the coal mines of Moatize, in the western province of Tete. Chairman of the board of directors of the publicly-owned Mozambican railway company, Rui Fonseca, said that the money necessary for the entire job amounts to $300-million, and Mozambique is currently negotiating with Spain, Australia and Canada to raise the remaining amount. The line was comprehensively sabotaged during Mozambique’s civil war in the 1980s. It is the only one of the country’s major rail lines that has not yet been rehabilitated. It includes the longest rail bridge in Africa, the Dona Ana bridge over the Zambezi. Two spans of this bridge, one on either bank, were blown up in 1986.