Design and Construction of a rural suspension bridge in Malawi

Over the summers of 2006 and 2007, a team of students from Imperial College London spent 10 weeks constructing a suspended footbridge (Fig. 1) in Uledi, northern Malawi. The bridge was required to provide year-round pedestrian access across the North Rukuru River, which floods regularly during the rainy season. The authors of this paper were part of the team who travelled to Malawi in 2007 to complete construction of the bridge. This paper details the main tasks in the planning, design and construction of the bridge, the problems encountered and the solutions arrived at.