Why and Where Africa Needs More Rail and Roads

We can report good and bad news for Africa’s transportation infrastructure.

Africa’s Transportation Infrastructure

The Good News

Called the “Ports Race,” Africa has experienced a surge in port development. As a result, they’ve been able to create regional hubs that supply adjacent areas and connect to smaller feeder ports.

The container hubs encircle Africa:

Meanwhile, at approximately $13 billion between 2010 and 2022, the port investment, came from private and public money:

One tangible result was more cereal and oil imports:

The Bad News

Africa still needs to take the leap from ports to roads, railways, and airports. While port investment has been considerable, further infrastructure development has been inadequate.

To see the need, we can do a global comparison. Africa represents 20% of the world’s land mass but only 1.5% of its paved roads:

But also, focusing solely on Africa reveals a similar deficit. Most of the continent’s goods and people travel on roads that are “poorly maintained.” However, there is considerable disparity between North and sub-Saharan Africa. Concentrated in South Africa and Algeria, Africa’s paved road network is six times smaller than India’s:

Correspondingly, suffering from a lack of funding, the story is similar for the continent’s railways and airports.

Our Bottom Line: U.S. Transportation Infrastructure History

I always like to start with the Erie Canal when asked about the development of the U.S. transportation infrastructure. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal connected East and Midwest markets and served as a prototype for copycat waterways. It enabled regional specialization and the U.S. 19th century version of comparative advantage.

From Michigan to Connecticut and New York to Virginia, others sought to copy the Erie’s success. As a result, each part of the nation could specialize in what it did best. The Northeast could concentrate on manufacturing, the West could grow farm goods and raise livestock, the South could focus on cotton. What you did not provide locally, you could get from a distant place. Rocky New England farms no longer needed to grow tobacco. People in the South could stop making their own shoes. Easily, quickly, and cheaply, goods and people could move across the nation.

From there we built a transcontinental railroad system that connected the East with West by 1869. Easily, quickly, and cheaply, goods and people could move across the nation. As a result, by the end of the 19th century, the U.S. was on the road to becoming an economic dynamo.

Returning to Africa, we certainly see the economic potential that could evolve with a transportation infrastructure.

My sources and more: Thanks to my SEMAFOR email/newsletter for alerting me to the State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report.

Please note that one section of “Our Bottom Line” was in a past econlife post.