Colonial Connections: The Railway on the African Continent

Maputo Railway Station - Maputo, Mozambique. Image © Fedor Selivanov via ShutterstockThere’s a well-known catchphrase – “Cape to Cairo” – that has spawned numerous books and piqued the imagination of countless travellers of the African continent. The phrase’s origins are of imperial nature, birthed out of an 1874 proposal by English journalist Edwin Arnold that sought to discover the origins of the Congo River. This project was later taken up by imperiali