Transport Board of Burundi
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Transport Board of Burundi (Office des Transports du Burundi), or OTRABU, was a state-owned company that ran trucks and buses in Burundi. It was created in the 1970s, its debts were written off in 1979 and again in 1984, and it was finally liquidated in 1991.
Road transport company
Due to disputes within and between countries in the Great Lakes region in the 1980s, landlocked countries such as Burundi tried to establish new routes to the ports of Mombasa, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that would be secure and economical.
The Organization Transportes Regionaux Au Burundi (OTRABU) was founded to achieve transit security.
The Ministry of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications owned OTRABU, which had a monopoly on road transport along the Northern Corridor.
OTRABU periodically contracted with the Office National de la Tourbe (ONATOUR) to transport peat from its bog sites to Bujumbura.
In 1979 the government of Burundi assumed service of OTRABU's debt due to its financial difficulties.
The 1,804 kilometres (1,121 mi) Northern Corridor route from Mombasa to Bujumbura, Burundi, is entirely graded and asphalted.
OTRABU obtained sophisticated Mercedes trucks to operate this route, helped by German technical cooperation.
It had priority on this route from March 1981, but after three years the fleet had deteriorated greatly due to many accidents.
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