The road less traveled: the link between good transport and economic development

How important are good roads? To the city of Kilongo, Congo a well-groomed road is very important indeed. A story in Washington Post shows that due to appalling road conditions, the mere 30-mile journey from Kilongo to Lumbashi – with its markets and jobs and movies and other goods – was too long for most people. They stayed home and suffered for it. Here’s the subtext: Access to education was low, as well as goods (Rambo movies!) and health services. Not to mention employment opportunities and knowledge of the outside world.

Things changed when a mining company paid to have the road graded, part of a $10 billion deal the government signed with the Chinese, hoping to link ports to the country’s bountiful mines. Throughout much of Congo, poor transportation has locked people in. Consider this: Congo is a country the size of Western Europe with only 1,700 miles of paved roads. Some villages are so isolated that officials haven’t paid a visit in 20 years.

Needed: African Automobile Association?
This problem may be extreme in densely forested Congo, where weather and terrain combine to make all road construction futile. But it echoes throughout much of the continent. Much literature exists establishing a link between reduced transportation costs and increased economic accessibility. Think about it: An easier, less dangerous ride will tax vehicles less, leading to an increase in transport because buses and taxis, delivery trucks and private cars will be willing to make the trip. On the warm-and-fuzzy side, this builds comradeship because people can expect more visits from friends and families (and, as the story explains, prostitutes).

Better roads drive up trade, the economist Seetanah Boopen found. Government spending cuts and neglecting infrastructure needs actually brings down private sector investment and economic growth. (In fact, Boopen points to two studies which argue that the shriveling of the African state during the 1980s lead to less infrastructure spending and – voila – a drop in productivity.)

Boopen points out there’s a surreal, ad-hoc feel to many country’s transportation plans, which often leave out any thought of long-term strategy or goals. He claims that with a proper integrated traffic plan, governments could take advantage of, say, the World Bank’s infrastructure and development loans.

Not another food piece?
Yes, people: A link exists between food security and good roads. Biofuels, right? No, not really. Calestous Juma, a professor of international affairs, argues that Africa could surely benefit from better regional integration, meaning improving transportation infrastructure in all forms: roads, railways, ports and airports. Let’s stick with roads for a second. Poor highway infrastructure makes getting food to people very difficult. “Bad roads mean that transported food is unaffordable, inadequate or simply unavailable,” Juma writes.

It runs deeper than that, Juma argues. Farmers won’t plant crops they can’t get to market; agribusiness won’t invest in inaccessible places.

Let’s remember
Before you start writing those checks to purchase hard hats, orange vests and a bunch of second-hand construction equipment to ship to Africa, we’re talking about grading roads, not laying down asphalt. Grading a road is much less financially, manually and temporally intensive than dumping a little asphalt one year and preying it sticks around for the next few seasons. Road grading is not perfect. It must be redone each year, usually after the rains, to be effective. But in many rural areas, it’s most likely superior to asphalt because the pizza-cheese thickness of blacktop laid on rural roads will surely break up in a few short years. Transporters of all stripes will tell you: A poorly graded road is much easier to maneuver and better on vehicles than a pot-holed piece of hell.

As oil prices climb, what future for Africa's rail system?

Just a half decade ago, the freight rail industry in the United States was teetering on the edge of relevance. Its infrastructure was shoddy. People where moving goods by other transport. Major railroads laid off nearly 5,000 workers in 2002. Today, many of those jobs have been rehired. New tracks have been added for the first time in 80 years. Further upgrades to rail infrastructure has also been completed, increasing train speeds and delivery times. As the Washington Post points out, trains are much more efficient than trucks: A train can transport a ton of freight on just one gallon of diesel fuel, three times more energy economical than a semi.

Blame it on the combination of growing global trade, high gasoline prices and environmental marketing: freight rail is back in the United States.

On the rails in Africa
What about Africa? Although catching up, business on the continent still suffers from high transport costs and a host of other infrastructure issues, which keeps it in the lower tier of world trade.

It’s not that Africans don’t acknowledge the bonus of having a good rail system. They merely have to hark back at their history to find that reliable, efficient transport is a necessary ingredient of trade. “All new countries must remain ‘savage’ as long as the lack a means of transport,” began a 1904 New York Times article on railways in colonial Africa. It’s true. Africa’s colonial masters exploited the continent’s people and resources through a relatively vast network of railroad lines, mostly built with forced labor. Following independence, some of those railways expanded; in many places, however, they fell victim of neglect due to financial reasons or war and chaos.

A widespread argument today claims that better transport infrastructure means easier movement of people, and possibly more important, goods. It will allow landlocked countries like Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali with better access to ports in Lome, Abidjan and Tema, Ghana. Also, efficient rail service will decrease distances of the supply chain. All this will boost trade and economic opportunity, of course. A World Bank program has been launched to develop all forms of African transport, including rail.

Other factors exist: A smooth running railway is much less dangerous than a hundred thousand trucks – many of questionable repair – on the roads. Railways, if planned correctly, will also decrease traffic in clogged urban areas.

Hot Links
How to bring this about? The African Union – along with national transport ministers – is currently toying with the idea of “linking” African countries via a number of key corridors to create a continental-wide rail system. However, hurdles exist in this scheme, argues Jeff Radebe, South Africa’s minister of transport. First, there are a good number of missing links, especially in underdeveloped African countries. Also, in some countries it remains difficult to bring the private sector on board in government schemes (more on this later); funding commitments are hard to come by; and, cross border issues remain.

Regardless, Radebe points out that the following projects are already underway:

• Linking the lines of South Africa, Botswana and Namibia
• Strengthening ties between South Africa and Mozambique and Lesotho and ports in South Africa;
• Increasing regulatory ties in east Africa also, between Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Swaziland.

In the dream stage remains a plan to link the rails of West Africa and South Africa. Also, to create a rail/pedestrian/auto bridge over the Congo river to connect Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

Don’t call it privatization
The World Bank would like shift of the responsibility of Africa’s transport infrastructure from a primarily government function to one involving the private sector. These partnerships will most likely come in the form of national governments working alongside international concerns, but the World Bank also envisions small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs getting on board. This web of public/private partnerships will help create adequate legal, regulatory – and most importantly – financial framework to build better transport across the continent, increasing trade, competition, access to rural areas, etc. More than ten years ago, the World Bank argued that throughout Africa problems remain liberalizing the transport sector, where partnerships like these are not only difficult to initiate – but illegal. (They didn’t say which ones.)

Yet, the approval of the private sector is vital to build the continent’s necessary transport infrastructure, because: 1) let’s be honest, transport is primarily used by commercial entities; 2) national governments have a long history of backing away from regulatory and financial responsibilities in the transport domain, especially equipment heavy physical infrastructure like railways; 3) the private sector can provide a large amount of funding, which can be hard for governments to accumulate. (A point I don’t really agree with, unless you are talking of “international private sector.”); finally, 4) providing the public sector with a voice will increase service.

West Africa: Home to the world's most expensive and inefficient road system

“It costs more to move goods across West African countries by road than any other region in the world due to the huge unofficial payments business owners have to make at the borders,” says Business Day in Nigeria.

From the Story:

WATH, a regional trade facilitator established by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), says the elimination of corruption at the borders is critical to the success of the economic integration aspirations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The unofficial payments, WATH noted, most times cost more than what traders pay to the official sources. West Africa, the agency maintains, has the least efficient trucking in the world due to delays at numerous road check-points and border posts as a result of bribe-taking by uniformed officers such as the police, customs and immigration officials as well as gendarmes.

“West Africa has the most expensive, least efficient road transport in the world. Reasons include the high costs of inputs and taxation, low capacity use, overloaded vehicles running on degraded roads, and a surfeit of old, dilapidated trucks operating when they should be retired from the fleet.

“Another source of high costs is road barriers, set up mostly by law-enforcement agents to exact bribes from truckers. Bribery and delays also occur at border crossings, where officials may exploit the need to redo paperwork for cargo as part of the transition from one country to the next”