Construction in the Laki Laki area on the outskirts of Arusha will be undertaken by CRJE (East Africa) Limited from China

Construction of the Sh61 billion African Court on Human and People’s Rights (AfCHPR) headquarters is finally poised to begin after a Chinese contractor was given the mammoth project yesterday.

Construction in the Laki Laki area on the outskirts of Arusha will be undertaken by CRJE (East Africa) Limited from China. Major civil works will be completed in two years.

The total cost of the project is Sh61 billion, of which Sh9 billion has been raised by the host nation, Tanzania, AfCHPR officials said.

“The rest of the funds will be mobilised by the Court from other partners,” they told The Citizen as the 24-hectare land was handed over to the contractor.

The handover stage of the construction site not only elated the President of the Pan African Court, Lady Justice Imani Aboud, but also came as a relief to her staff members.

“We have been waiting for this for 16 years. We have been yearning for this”, she said at the site, some 13 kilometres from Arusha city centre.

Lady Justice Aboud, the former Judge of the High Court of Tanzania, lauded the Tanzanian government “for the generous support given to us”.

She described the multi-million-dollar headquarters project as one of the major projects ever undertaken by the Arusha-based legal facility.

She said the new headquarters of the Court would provide comfort to the 150-plus staff of the judicial organ of the African Union.

“We are happy that the Tanzanian government has fulfilled its promise. We appreciate the host government for offering land”, she went on.

Between 80 and 90 of the over 150 staff members of the Court are professionals in legal services, while the rest are support staff, a significant number of them from Tanzania.

The site for the proposed seat of the Court sits close to another high-profile judicial organ, the UN Tribunal, which has been trying suspects of the Rwanda genocide. The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) will, however, close shop shortly.