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TRANSPORT CORRIDORS IN AFRICA
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
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This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
TRANSPORT CORRIDORS
IN AFRICA
Edited by
Hugh Lamarque and Paul Nugent
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
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is title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
is book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC)
Advanced Grant for the project entitled African Governance and Space:
Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS)
[ADG-–]
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Cover photograph: Trucks and petrol tankers waiting to cross from Katuna
(Uganda) to Gatuna (Rwanda) on Northern Corridor, with One-Stop Border Post
under construction () (photograph: Paul Nugent)
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
v
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface and Acknowledgements xii
. Introduction
Transport Corridors in Africa: Synergy, Slippage and Sustainability
P N H L
. Infrastructure, Development and Neoliberalism in Africa:
e Concept of Transport Corridors
S C
. Hidden in Plain Sight: e Temporal Layers of Transport Corridors
in Uganda
I S
. From Priority Projects to Corridor Approaches: African and
European Transport Networks in Perspective
S O J F M
. e Political Economy of West African Integration: e Transport
Sector on Two Port Corridors
B B S W
. e Dakar–Bamako Corridor: Between Boom and Contradictions
J L
. Privatising the Port: Harbouring Neoliberalism in Lomé
N S
. A Time for Realignment? Retrot in the Golden Era of the
Cameroonian Railways
J-M M
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
vi C
. When is a Corridor Just a Road? Understanding warted
Ambitions Along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor
P N
. e Jealousy of Roads: Construction, Circulation and Competition
on East Africa’s Transport Corridors
H L
. Following the Tracks: Chinese Development Finance and the
Addis–Djibouti Railway Corridor
Y C
. Corridors of Opportunity? African Infrastructure and the Market
Expansion of Chinese Companies
E G
Index
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
vii
Illustrations
Maps
. Trans-African highways as dened in
. e transport networks to be supported by the rst PIDA PAP by
and
. European Transport Corridors of the TEN-T as revised in
. Map of population density in Africa, and map of the transport
networks to be supported by the PIDA PAP, – –
. Map of the region and ports
. Total trac and share of transit trac in West African ports,
–
. Cameroon’s railway network circa
. e Northern Corridor, Mombasa–Kigali
. e Central Corridor, Dar es Salaam–Kigali
. Ethiopia’s railway network and Addis–Djibouti railway
Photographs
. Dubai Port World container terminal at Dakar port,
. ueue of trucks waiting at the Malian border,
. Convoy of tankers in the city of Kayes, Mali,
. European Commission’s President Ortoli and Cameroon’s Minister of
Planning Maïkano watching track-laying operations in the vicinity of
Ngaoundéré, July
. De la Renaudière to Delapierre, ‘Cameroon – Identication of
highway projects & supervision of ongoing studies – Terms of
Reference’, February
. Loan signing for Cameroon’s Second Railways Project; seated from
right to le World Bank’s Vice-President Chaufournier (Western
Africa Region) and Cameroon’s Ambassador Tchoungui, Washington,
D.C., September
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
viii I
Figures
. Trac trend in the port of Dakar, – (Tons)
. Container trac at the port of Dakar, – (TEU)
. Transit trac to Mali at the port of Dakar, – (Tons)
. Malian import trac by road and rail on the Dakar–Bamako
Corridor, –
. Malian export trac by road and rail on the Dakar–Bamako
Corridor, –
. Distribution of road trac to Mali by West African corridors,
–
. Critical steps in track relaying/realignment of Yaoundé–Otele section
. China’s commitments to fund African infrastructure (–) in
US$ billion
Tables
. Index of per capita GNP and the mobility of nations,
. TEN-T and PIDA PAP transport priority projects
. Freight trac through Tema Port, – (tonnes)
. Evolution of freight trac on the Dakar–Bamako Corridor
(in tons, –)
. Exports from countries on Abidjan–Lagos Corridor (US$)
. Border crossing times for trucks in hours, –
. Timeline of Northern and Central Corridor developments –
. Railway projects constructed in Ethiopia –
. Key FOCAC nancial commitments
Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. e editors,
contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons for permission
to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every eort has been made to
trace the copyright holders; apologies are oered for any omission, and the publisher
will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
ix
Notes on Contributors
Bruce Byiers is a development economist with a doctorate from the University
of Sussex. He has headed the African Institutions and Regional Dynamics
Programme at ECDPM since . e main focus of his work is on regional
organisations and broader regional co-operation and integration dynamics in
Africa, seeking to link a political economy approach to understanding these
dynamics with policy implications for regional policy-makers and international
partners. He has also worked on issues related to enterprise development, infor-
mality and tax policies, all of which come into this work. He worked in the
Mozambican Ministry of Planning and Development/Finance for ve years, and
has worked on multiple projects across the continent, working at both regional
and national levels for a variety of international partners.
Yunnan Chen is a Senior Research Ocer at the Overseas Development
Institute, focusing on development nance institutions China’s role in the
global development nance architecture, and Chinese infrastructure projects
(particularly rail) in Africa. She is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins School
of Advanced International Studies and formerly a pre-doc fellow at the Global
Development Policy Centre, Boston University, and at the Centre for Global
Development. She has worked at the SAIS China Africa Research Initiative,
where she was a research assistant, at the Institute of Development Studies,
Sussex, and Chinadialogue, London. She holds an MA in Political Science
from the University of British Columbia, and a BA in Politics, Philosophy and
Economics from the University of Oxford.
Sidy Cissokho is a post-doctoral Research Fellow on the AFRIGOS project
at the University of Edinburgh. For his PhD he has researched the Senegalese
professional driver association and their relationship with the government and
political parties of Senegal.
Elisa Gambino is a Fellow in the International Politics of China at the London
School of Economics and Political Sciences. Prior to this, her PhD in African
Studies at the University of Edinburgh contributed to the ‘African Governance
and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition’
(AFRIGOS) project funded by the European Research Council. Elisa’s research
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
x N C
focuses on the analysis of power relations among Chinese and African state and
non-state actors in the development of major infrastructure projects. She has a
Master’s in Chinese Studies from the University of Edinburgh and a Bachelor’s
in Applied Languages from the University of Turin.
Hugh Lamarque is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh
with a Doctorate in Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London. Hugh has previously worked for the European Research
Council AFRIGOS Project, the United Nations Development Programme, the
World Bank, the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform, AKE Group,
the British Institute in Eastern Africa, and as visiting Research Fellow at Lisbon
University’s Institute for Social Sciences.
Jerome Lombard is Doctor in Geography and Research Director at the French
Research Institute for Development. His current research is on African transport
systems and their relationship with territorial development. He focuses mainly
on West Africa, especially on Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco.
Francesc Magrinyà is a civil engineer with a PhD in urban planning, and an
expert in urban planning, transportation and resilience of metropolitan areas. He
is Professor of Urban Planning at the Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering (Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona Tech) and the
Coordinator of the EXIT-UPC Research Group (Engineering, Networks,
Infrastructures and Transport). He was previously Director of the Strategic
Planning Area of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area.
José-María Muñoz is a social anthropologist who has conducted research in
West–Central Africa since . He is a Senior Lecturer in African Studies
and International Development at the University of Edinburgh. His works
include Doing Business in Cameroon (Cambridge University Press, ), a book
monograph on economic governance in the city of Ngaoundéré.
Paul Nugent is a historian and political economist with a rst postgraduate
degree from the University of Cape Town and a doctorate from SOAS,
University of London. He is Professor of Comparative African History at the
University of Edinburgh and the Principal Investigator of the AFRIGOS project.
In , he published Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Aica
(Cambridge University Press, ) which is a comparison of the ways in which
border dynamics in Ghana/Togo and Senegal/Gambia have shaped states and
understandings of community dierently across two sub-regions. As part of
the AFRIGOS project, he has also conducted research in East Africa. Paul is
the founder/chair of the African Borderlands Research Network. He is also a
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
N C xi
member of the Africa–Europe Strategic Taskforce dealing with transport and
connectivity, which is convened by the Africa Europe Foundation in support
of African Union/European Union co-operation.
Sergio Oliete Josa is a civil engineer and urban planner specialising in transport
and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. He works for the European Commission as
team leader for the transport sector in the Directorate-General for International
Partnerships. He has been posted in several countries in West and Central
Africa and has written a number of academic papers analysing the evolution
and sustainability of the transport networks in the continent.
Isabella Soi is an associate professor in African History at the University of
Cagliari. Her research interests focus on borders development and dynamics,
particularly in relation to trade and population movements; refugee movements;
national and religious minorities; and the relation between religion and politics
in East Africa, particularly in Uganda. Her publications include Minoranze
religiose nel continente aicano: Il caso delle comunità ebraiche di Tunisia e di
Uganda (with Filippo Petrucci; Aracne Editore, .
Nina Sylvanus is a political and economic anthropologist whose work centres
on capital and labour, value and aesthetics, infrastructure and technology, and,
more broadly, critical transformations in the neoliberal global economy. Sylvanus
is the author of Patterns in Circulation: Cloth, Gender and Materiality in West
Aica (University of Chicago Press, ), a study of the dense materiality and
rich signifying qualities of African print cloth.
Sean Woolfrey is a Senior Policy Advisor at the International Institute for
Sustainable Development (IISD). He is responsible for developing and coordi-
nating IISD’s research on how trade, investment and equitable markets in food
and agriculture can serve to promote food security, improve livelihoods, reduce
inequality, and ensure more responsible use the planet’s resources. Prior to
joining IISD, Sean worked at the European Centre for Development Policy
Management, where his work covered topics relating to African and European
trade, the political economy of regional integration in Africa and the sustain-
ability of African food systems.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
xii
Preface and Acknowledgements
is volume arises out of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled Aican Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border
Towns and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-–]. Paul
Nugent was the principal investigator for the project hosted at the University of
Edinburgh which has, at various times employed Sidy Cissokho, Elisa Gambino,
Hugh Lamarque, José-María Muñoz, Wolfgang Zeller and Tim Zajontz, with
Isabella Soi from the University of Cagliari participating as a research aliate.
Under the architecture of the project, Cissokho was mandated to research the
role of international institutions, while the doctoral project of Gambino was
focused on the Chinese involvement in corridor development. All the other
researchers were mandated to deal with one or more sub-region and a specic
corridor within it. When it came to compiling a book for the project, we wished
to bring out the richness from each of these sets of case studies. But we were
also conscious of the fact that we needed to oer a more rounded view and to
address some case studies that were not part of the original project design. We
are fortunate, therefore, to have been able to enrich the volume by including
contributions from Sergio Oliete and Francesc Magrinyà, Bruce Byiers and Sean
Woolfrey, Jérôme Lombard, Nina Sylvanus and Yunnan Chen.
e editors are grateful to all of the above. In addition, we would like to
acknowledge three individuals who oered advice at various stages and facili-
tated the eld research: Ziad Hamoui of the Borderless Alliance in West Africa,
Michael Ojatum of TradeMark East Africa and Lovemore Bingandadi of the
SADC Secretariat. Finally, we are indebted to our ethics advisor, Karine Bennaa
and the other members of the advisory board, Mohamadou Abdoul, Gregor
Dobler and Olivier Walther. Many thanks are also extended to Brooks Marmon
and Simon Dix for outstanding editing work.
is title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND.
e ideas developed in this work reect the authors’ views alone. e ERC is
not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Hugh Lamarque and Paul Nugent
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
1
C 1
Introduction
Transport Corridors in Africa:
Synergy, Slippage and Sustainability
P N H L
e critical attention and material resources that governments have devoted to
transport infrastructure has uctuated markedly over time. A hundred years ago,
colonial regimes were investing in infrastructure to serve the incipient mining
industry and the cash crop zones, in an eort to render their colonies economi-
cally viable – that is before the onset of the Great Depression forced them back
into their shells. In the s, the post-war commodity boom, and the imperative
to win the compliance of African subjects, led to unprecedented investments in
roads, railways and seaports across the British and French colonies – all in the
name of something that came to be labelled as ‘development’. is provided
the infrastructural foundations that post-colonial regimes continued to build
upon over the ensuing decades. e one dierence was that almost no railways
were built aer the s, because they had come to be perceived as being
prohibitively expensive – although certain key lines were maintained when they
were needed by the mining industry or were regarded as an essential lifeline for
landlocked countries.
1 Frederick Cooper, ‘Modernising Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the
Development Concept’, in Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard (eds),
International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays in the History and Politics
of Knowledge (Berkeley & London, ), pp. –; On seaports, see B.S. Hoyle
and D. Hilling (eds), Seaports and Development in Tropical Aica, London, .
2 e Transcamerounais, which is dealt with by Muñoz in this volume, was one
important exception. e other was the Chinese-constructed Tazara railway,
running from Zambia to the Tanzanian port of Dar-es-Salaam. It was completed
in . Jamie Monson, Aica’s Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development
Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania, Bloomington, . e slow
decay of the Bamako–Dakar railway exemplies the continental pattern.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
2 P N H L
Aer the oil crisis of the mid-s, most cash-strapped African governments
lacked the resources to do more than mark time. In the case of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR) functional
transport infrastructure may actually have halved. Donors to heavily indebted
countries became increasingly sceptical about the ability of large-scale and costly
infrastructural investments to deliver economic transformation. Most donor
funding went into supporting road networks, and much was channelled into
feeder roads linked to agricultural development projects sponsored by the World
Bank. During the heyday of structural adjustment in the s, African govern-
ments were pressured to establish the right macroeconomic conditions, to get
the agricultural prices right and to scale back on costly public investments. At
the same time, they were encouraged to let the private sector take the lead in
fostering transport links. e shi was most evident in ports and on the railways
where international corporations like Bolloré and Maersk managed to cement
their grip.
But this did not necessarily translate into signicant fresh investment
in the underpinning infrastructure, in a context where donor investment in the
transport sector was miserly.
It is only since the turn of the millennium that
the pendulum has swung back again – and with some force. As we indicate
below, African governments have been willing to take on new debts, and new
types of debt, in order to achieve their own infrastructural ambitions. It also
has had much to do with the willingness of China to nance and construct
new infrastructure (Gambino, this volume), which has been matched by a
paradigm shi within the World Bank, the European Union (EU) and the
African Development Bank (AfDB). Given Africa’s limited contribution to
global trade, the revised wisdom is that Africa’s economic potential needs to be
‘unblocked’, which involves tackling a number of geographical challenges and
3 Peer Schouten, ‘Roadblock Politics in Central Africa’, Enironmental Planning D:
Society and Space, :, , –, at p. . Oil-rich states like Nigeria invested
heavily in infrastructure during the boom, but much of it was centred on the cities.
is was especially apparent in Lagos.
4 Jean Debrie, ‘e West African Port System: Global Insertion and Regional
Particularities’, EchoGéo, , , –, at pp. –.
5 Sergio Oliete Josa and Francesc Magrinyà, ‘Patchwork in an Interconnected World:
e Challenges of Transport Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Transport Reviews,
:, , p. .
6 Paul Nugent, ‘Africa’s Re-Enchantment with Big Infrastructure: White Elephants
Dancing in Virtuous Circles?’, in Jon Schubert, Ulf Engel and Elisio Macamo (eds),
Extractive Industries and Changing State Dynamics in Aica: Beyond the Resource
Curse, Abingdon, , pp. –.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I 3
historical legacies that have served to fragment African economies. In , a
World Bank report, explicitly invoking the language of ‘transformation’ (and
jettisoning the logic of the once-hegemonic Berg Report), estimated that African
countries would need to spend US$ billion per year (or per cent of GDP)
to cover the infrastructure decit.
Railways are back in vogue, multi-lane conti-
nental highways are planned, and large-scale investments are being made in port
developments across the continent. Indeed, such has been the infrastructural
feeding frenzy that doubts are emerging about the capacity of governments to
manage mountains of debt, which are oen secured against the expectation of
windfalls from natural resources, in the coming years. At the time of writing –
as the COVID- pandemic pushes the global economy into recession – some
of the enthusiasm seems decidedly misplaced. What is abundantly clear is that
African governments have channelled resources into infrastructure – with the
active compliance of donors and the banks – on an impressive scale. is book
therefore comes at an important crossroads where it makes sense to take stock.
e topic of infrastructure in Africa is potentially vast. In this book, we have
chosen to narrow the focus to transport corridors – not merely because this is
where so much of the spending has been directed, but also because these are
precisely where the claims about the transformative potential of infrastructure
reside. In tackling this topic, it makes sense to avoid both African exception-
alism and methodological nationalism. ere is a tradition of writing about
transport corridors in other parts of the world, very largely emanating from
the work of economic geographers. Much of this has been concerned with
North America and Europe, but it has also reected a more recent proliferation
7 Benno J. Ndulu, ‘Infrastructure, Regional Integration and Growth in Sub-Saharan
Africa: Dealing with the Disadvantages of Geography and Sovereign Fragmentation’,
Journal of Aican Economies, , AERC Supplement , , – , at pp. –.
8 Vivien Foster and Cecilia Briceño-Garmendia (eds), Aica’s Inastructure: A Time
for Transformation, Washington, D.C., . Elliot Berg, who was the driving force
behind the report, which provided the rationale for structural adjustment,
had earlier critiqued the transformationist agenda in Ghana. See Elliot J. Berg,
‘Structural Transformation versus Gradualism: Recent Economic Development in
Ghana’, in Philip Foster and Aristide Zolberg (eds), Ghana and the Ivory Coast:
Perspectives on Modernisation, Chicago & London, , pp. –.
9 Jean Debrie and Claude Comtois, ‘Une Relecture du Concept de Corridors de
Transport: Illustration Comparée Europe/Amerique du Nord’, Cahiers Scientiques
du Transport, , , pp. –.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
4 P N H L
of corridors in Asia.
It is very noticeable, but not altogether surprising, that
Africa has been marginal to most of these discussions. At the present time,
much of what is currently available consists of ocial publications and grey
literature generated by institutions involved in rolling out, or otherwise
supporting, corridor development. On the academic side, the greater part of
the literature has been generated by economists, oen with an applied focus
on transport and logistics, as well as by economic geographers. e rest of
the Social Sciences is driing somewhat behind the infrastructural wave, with
the exception of a body of anthropological literature that addresses what infra-
structure means to those who are impacted by it and/or actively engage with
it.
From a political economy perspective, there is also some work emerging
on the logic that underpins decisions about what to invest in and where. is
provides the potential for a less positivist and much more critical approach to
the topic. But clearly this is a subject that cannot properly be grasped from
within narrow disciplinary silos. e oerings within this book oen reect a
grounding within a specic discipline, but also range more widely. What also
makes it distinctive is that it includes contributions from authors who have been
directly engaged with the policy domain. While there are inevitably dierences
10
Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh Khonthapane and Christian Taillard (eds), Transnational
Dynamics in Southeast Asia: e Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits
Economic Corridor, Singapore, .
11
Ndulu, ‘Infrastructure’, pp. –; César Caldéron and Luis Servén, ‘Infrastructure
and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Journal of Aican Economies,
, AERC Supplement , , pp. i–i.
12 Adeline Masquelier, ‘Road Mythographies: Space, Mobility and the Historical
Imagination in Postcolonial Niger’, American Ethnologist, :, , –; Brian
Larkin, ‘e Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology,
, , –; Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox, ‘e Enchantments of
Infrastructure’, Mobilities, :, , –; Kurt Beck, Gabriel Klaeger and
Michael Stasik, “An Introduction to the African Road”, and other contributions to
Gabriel Klaeger and Michael Stasik (eds), e Making of the Aican Road, Leiden,
; and Dimitris Dalakoglou, e Road: An Ethnography of (Im)mobility, Space
and Cross-Border Inastructure in the Balkans, Manchester, .
13
An early marker was laid down by contributions to Fredrik Söderbaum and Ian
Taylor (eds), Ao-Regions: e Dynamics of Cross-Border Micro-Regionalism in
Aica, Uppsala, . For the political economy of ports, see Hugh Lamarque,
‘Protable Ineciency: e Politics of Port Infrastructure in Mombasa, Kenya’,
Journal of Modern Aican Studies, :, , pp. –; Jana Hönke and Iván
Cuesta-Fernández, ‘Mobilising Security and Logistics through an African Port: A
Controversies Approach to Infrastructure’, Mobilities, :, , pp. –.
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I 5
in register across the pieces, we believe that the advantages of a catholic approach
outweigh the downsides. In this introduction, we seek to convey a sense of
emerging themes in the study of transport corridors in Africa, while pointing
to certain methodological challenges along the way.
What is a Transport Corridor?
Let us begin with a deceptively simple question: namely, what is a transport
corridor? is is arguably more complex than addressing the question of what
is a city, or even what is a pandemic, for the reason that the object of study has
been so heavily shaped by a paradigm in ux. At the most basic level, a transport
corridor may be dened as an infrastructural assemblage that connects two or
more geographical points across international borders and provides a conduit for
the movement of people and goods. Transport corridors do not simply exist in a
straightforward empirical sense: there may be cranes, rail tracks and road surfaces
to be sure, but even when bundled together these do not a corridor make. It is the
level of connectivity that counts, which is why corridors are oen described in
terms of networks. e problem here is that corridors exist in large part because
governments, funders and development experts either believe that they do or that
they should exist. e reality is that the should very easily slips into the do, at
the same time as what already exists is repeatedly rebranded. is accounts for
the oen stark contrast between corridors that are described on paper and what
actually exists on the ground. Moreover, many of the corridors that are the object
of vigorous boosting by national governments, regional economic communities
(RECs), donors and investors are characterised less by eortless ows than recurring
blockages. Containers pile up at seaports and trucks routinely nd themselves
stuck in queues at weigh stations and at border crossings. Meanwhile, eorts to
patch up the road surfaces that are pummelled by heavy goods vehicles represents
constant work in progress as potholes announce themselves in new locations –
which is intimately related to a frightening rate of accidents and deaths on the
road. In many ways, this could stand as a metaphor for corridor management as a
whole, which necessarily tends to be much more reactive than toolkits and ocial
pronouncements might lead one to believe. We need, therefore, to understand
what the various institutional actors believe they are doing, but also to have a feel
for the realities that are unfolding on the ground – realities that may be following
a number of dierent social and temporal logics. is was, in fact, the starting
point for the AFRIGOS project, which provides the backbone to this volume.
e concept of the transport corridor can be understood by approaching
each of the signiers separately. To begin with transport, corridors can only be
held to exist in so far as the underlying infrastructure is in a condition, and if
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6 P N H L
there is adequate security, to enable people and goods to move. At the very least,
there needs to be a road surface that is motorable. But clearly most corridors
consist of other elements as well. ere are seaports, inland dry ports, multi-lane
highways, navigable waterways and railways – either in existence, currently under
construction or being planned. In a functioning multi-modal system, goods are
expected to shi from one means of transport to another, according to the balance
of aordability and convenience. Multi-modality remains an aspiration in Africa,
given that most freight and passenger trac is still conducted by road and little
investment has been channelled into waterways. For example, the Walvis Bay
Corridors are entirely dependent on road haulage.
In the wake of the privatisation
of mines in Zambia, the shi in the geographical centre of mining operations and
the penetration of the South African trucking business, there has indeed been a
pronounced shi from rail to road in the sub-region. In East and West Africa,
there is more in the way of rail, much of it very old, but road transport remains
dominant. As Lombard outlines (this volume), the uptake in road transport had
reduced the share of the Dakar–Bamako railway to around per cent. Within
the East Africa Community (EAC), road accounts for per cent of market
share, while along the Northern and Central Corridors specically rail carried
only per cent of the total volume of goods transported around . e
completion of the Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) has altered
the picture somewhat. But at the time of writing, nancing constraints mean that
there are doubts as to whether the line will reach the border and about whether
Uganda will be able to continue the line to Kampala and beyond. Tanzania is
constructing another SGR along the Central Corridor, which is expected to link
up to transport on Lake Victoria; but whether this line would be extended to
neighbouring countries equally remains in doubt. Across the Horn, the picture
is similar. Although the completion of the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway now
provides an alternative, many users continue to prefer road transportation because
of a number of logistical challenges (Chen, this volume).
14 Plans for a rail link between Grootfontein and Katima Mulilo in Namibia are
currently on hold.
15 e Zambian Copperbelt was dependent upon the railways until the s.
ere has since been a shi to road transport, which has to some extent shied
the nancial burden onto the state. Gaël Raballand and Alan Whitworth, Should
the Zambian Government Invest in Railways?, ZIPAR Working Paper No. ,
(Lusaka, Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research).
16
Charles Kunaka, Gael Raballand and Mike Fitzmaurice, How Trucking Services Have
Improved and May Contribute to Development: e Case of East Aica, WIDER
Working Paper /, p. .
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I 7
In theory, railways are more cost-ecient and environmentally friendly than
roads. But there are two fundamental reasons why they do not carry the day. e
rst is that the xed costs of establishing a railway are very high, and because
they place a very visible burden of debt on government, these have ultimately
to be transferred to the users. By contrast, the cost of repairing the damage
done to roads by trucking is not borne by users to any meaningful extent, while
the nancial obligations are less visible and more incremental.
Secondly, the
debate on road versus rail has been a highly political one since colonial times.
As Muñoz demonstrates in this volume, it was a signicant factor in the lengthy
delays to the resolution of Cameroon’s transport dilemmas. In many countries
today, like Ethiopia and Kenya, there remain powerful interests that insist on
the primacy of trucking, which politicians ignore at their peril. As things stand,
therefore, road continues to trump rail.
e corridor signier is relatively easy to grasp. Within global trade, there
is never really a clearly dened start and end point. Proponents of the corridor
construct impose a boundedness for reasons of convenience. In other parts of
the world, corridors are oen taken to include the shipping lanes along which
the container trac moves. But in Africa, the corridor is typically considered
to start at the coastal port and to end with a conurbation or a mining cluster.
Part of the reason is that there little in the way of short-sea shipping. Possibly
because governments and RECs are the ones pushing the agenda, the boundaries
tend to be drawn at the jurisdictional limits of the state. Across Africa, there are
dierent types of corridor. e Northern and Central Corridors in East Africa,
which begin in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam respectively and extend into the
Congolese interior, are classic coast-to-hinterland congurations. is is also
true of the Walvis Bay–Lubumbashi–Ndola Corridor, with the dierence that
it is very much shaped by the demands of the mining industry. e usage of
‘corridor’ to refer to urban-to-urban connections is much less common in Africa,
with the one important exception of the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor. Whereas the
others run from the coast to the interior, this particular one links multiple cities
(and ports) along the littoral (see Nugent, this volume).
eo Notteboom reminds us that corridors should not be conceived of purely
in terms of point-to-point connections and invokes the network metaphor:
17 e ability of roads to adapt to usage was a structural dierence with railways that
conrmed the ‘superiority of roads over railways’, in the classic account of: Albert
O. Hirschman, Development Projects Observed, Washington, D.C., , p. .
18 See, for example, the origins of the infamous ‘road gaps’ policy in the Gold Coast,
G.B. Kay (ed.), e Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana: A Collection of
Documents and Statistics –, Cambridge, , pp. –.
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8 P N H L
A transport corridor is very oen viewed as a point-to-point connection. In
reality, individual transport corridors are mostly part of extensive transport
and logistics networks consisting of a range of corridors, each with specic
characteristics in terms of scale, transport modes used, price and service
quality. e future development of transport corridors will therefore have
to be assessed ever more from a network perspective.
However, a network conguration is only really apparent in Southern Africa
where a number of corridors intersect and are expected to feed the three seaports
of Walvis Bay, Lobito and Durban. A corridor network might emerge in West
Africa if the mooted railway loop is ever completed, but this now seems unlikely.
Across the continent, the prevailing pattern is one of a single port serving a
transport corridor. is, in turn, leads to a situation of corridor competition
rather than complementarity – as is explored in greater detail by Lamarque
in this volume. e stakes are high when it comes to making infrastructural
investments, and this serves to create something that looks rather more like a
zero-sum game than a state of healthy competition. A corridor network could,
of course, involve not just connectivity between railways and highways, but
also the ports. In , Notteboom and Rodrigue identied the limitations of
older models of port development that were premised on single ports operating
in close proximity to large cities. ey pointed to a process of regionalisation
that has led to the emergence of transshipment hubs in remote locations and
dry ports and inland terminals in the hinterlands. In Africa, nodes have been
mapped by researchers on the basis of global maritime ows linking to dominant
hubs in Europe (Rotterdam) and Asia (Singapore): namely, Alexandria, Durban,
Cape Town, Pointe Noire, Casablanca, Lagos, Abidjan (albeit interrupted by
years of political crisis). One might also add Dakar, Lomé and Tema to the list
(Lombard, Sylvanus, Byiers and Woolfrey, this volume). Tanger-Med in Morocco
is a major transhipment hub. However, although it has been suggested that
19 eo Notteboom, ‘Strategies and Future Development of Transport Corridors’, in
Yann, Alix (ed.), Les Corridors de Transport, Caens, ), pp. – <https://
www.faq-logistique.com/EMS-Livre-Corridors-Transport--Strategies-Future-
Develoment.htm> [Accessed April ].
20 eo E. Notteboom and Jean-Paul Rodrigue, ‘Port Regionalisation: Towards a
New Phase in Port Development’, Maritime Policy & Management, :, ,
pp. –.
21 César Ducruet, Sylvain Cuyala and Ali El Hosni, ‘Maritime Networks as Systems
of Cities: e Long-Term Interdependencies between Global Shipping Flows and
Urban Development, (–)’, Journal of Transport Geography, , , pp.
–.
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I 9
Durban and a new port at Ngqura/Port Elizabeth have the capacity to perform
that role in the future, transhipment operations are for the time being quite
limited.
We can also see the beginnings of a spatial reconguration of the ports
in the shape of inland terminals that are generally under the management of
international logistics companies, and the steady growth in the number of dry
ports (oen under private ownership) where customs clearance for imported
goods takes place. But this is at a very incipient stage.
Finally, the concept of the ‘development corridor’ has gained some traction
in Africa, not least aer its endorsement by the AU and several RECs in .
e latter shares many of the same elements as a transport corridor, but has a
more explicit spatial referent that is captured in the terminology of the spatial
development initiative (SDI). Whereas some transport corridors manifestly serve
the extractive industries, RECs have embraced the notion that corridors ought to
promote intra-regional trade and build on complementarities between African
economies. In that sense, investments in corridors are intended to promote
new sites of economic dynamism through a multiplier eect. Investments
are oen located away from the main cities, and are expected to contribute
to a more balanced form of national and cross-border development.
Special
economic zones (SEZs) and industrial parks, which are springing up in a number
of countries like Ethiopia, are similarly part of an eort by governments to
22
Hwa-Joong Kim, Jasmine Siu Lee Lam and Paul Tae-Woo Lee, ‘Analysis of Liner
Shipping Networks and Transhipment Flows of Potential Hub Ports in sub-Saharan
Africa’, Transport Policy, , , pp. –.
23 In , South Africa had six inland terminals but only one dry port at City Deep.
Erené Cronje, Marianne Matthee and Waldo Krugel, ‘e Role of Dry Ports in
South Africa’, Transport and Communications Bulletin for Asia and the Pacic, ,
, pp. –, at p. . e French logistics giant, Bolloré, operates no fewer
than inland terminals: <www.bollore-ports.com/en/our-port-expertises/inland-
container-depots.html> [Accessed April ]; Benjamin Steck, ‘L’Afrique
des Ports et des Corridors: Comment Formuler l’Interaction entre Logistique
et Développement’, Cahiers de Géographie de Québec, :, , pp. –.
Transhipment has had an outsized share in the performance of ill-judged new port
investments such as Kribi (Cameroon).
24 Fourth Annual Meeting of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA), held
in Tokyo in March .
25 David Simon and Muriel Samé Ekobo, ‘Walvis Bay-Swakopmund: Desert
Micro-Region and Aspiring Regional Gateway’, in Söderbaum and Taylor (eds),
Ao-Regions, pp. –, at p. .
26
Fredrik Söderbaum and Ian Taylor, ‘Considering Micro-Regionalism in Africa in
the Twenty-First Century’, in Söderbaum and Taylor (eds), Ao-Regions, p. .
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10 P N H L
give private investors an incentive to turn the corridor into an instrument of
development. An excellent illustration of how these visions come together is
provided by the Nacala Development Corridor, which is expected to run from
coal mining concessions in the Tete Province of north-west Mozambique, to
connect with a revamped railway line running to the north of Malawi, and
then link to a modernised port at Nacala – in the vicinity of which a SEZ was
established in . e vision for the corridor turns not merely on mining, but
also on the development of modernised agriculture in Mozambique, Zambia
and Malawi. A large number of other development corridors are currently
mooted or are under construction, despite concerns about their environmental
and economic sustainability.
Some are road corridors nesting within the greater
Trans-African Highway project (see Oliete Josa and Magrinyà , this volume),
others are rebranded REC transport corridors (such as the Central Development
Corridor in East Africa), while still others seem to be national initiatives linking
hinterlands to ports that are intended to join up with neighbouring countries
at some unspecied point in the future.
As things stand, the developmental
outcomes remain in the future tense, with corridors tending to reinforce enclave
eects. Moreover, SEZs and industrial parks have as yet failed to deliver their
promised benets. As Farole and Moberg indicate, this is partly because the
choice of locations has been driven by a political calculus and partly it comes
down to misplaced assumptions about where comparative advantages reside.
In so far as these initiatives are intended to boost intra-regional exchange (as
27 Republic of Mozambique, e Project for Nacala Corridor: Economic Development
Strategies in the Republic of Mozambique – Final Study Report, Maputo, , pp.
–; Euclides Gonçalves, ‘Agricultural Corridors as “Demonstration Fields”:
Infrastructure, Fairs and Associations along the Beira and Nacala Corridors’, Journal
of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , pp. –.
28 Bill Laurence, Sean Sloan, Lingfei Weng and Jerey A. Sayer, ‘Estimating the
Environmental Costs of Africa’s Massive “Development Corridors”’, Current Biology,
, , pp. –. e authors list planned or existing corridors.
29 An example is the Mombasa–Nairobi–Addis Ababa Road Corridor.
30 e Mozambican government launched the Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor with
donors and private investors in , and the Mtwara Development Corridor with
the AfDB in . See <www.agdevco.com/uploads/reports/BAGC_Investment_
Blueprint_rpt.pdf> and <https://projectsportal.afdb.org/dataportal/VProject/
show/P-Z-D–> [both accessed April ].
31 John Farole and Lotta Moberg, ‘Special Economic Zones in Africa: Political
Economy Challenges and Solutions’, in John Page and Finn Tarp (eds), e Practice
of Industrial Policy: Government-Business Coordination in Aica and East Asia,
Oxford, , pp. –.
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I 11
opposed to merely maximising overseas exports), their likely success depends
on the ease of doing business across borders.
In the light of the above, the task of studying transport corridors throws up
a particular set of methodological challenges for researchers. e rst is that of
bridging the divide between policy and everyday practice. We need to understand
the perspectives of those who plan, nance and construct corridors, given that
they operate according to specic temporal horizons and understandings about
risks and rates of return. But we equally need to focus on those who carry out
ocial functions – such as customs, immigration and security – as well as those
who perform outsourced responsibilities such as maintenance and repair. And, of
course, we need to pay close attention to the many actors who make use of the
corridor – more on this below. Secondly, research has to be exible enough to
observe corridor dynamics from xed points, such as ports or one-stop border
posts (OSBPs), but also to capture the reality of people and goods as they move
through space. e perspective of a trucker, a customs ocer and an engineer
are likely to be very dierent, not simply because of the work they perform, but
because of their quite dierent elds of vision. irdly, there is the challenge
of comparing the patterns that play out across corridors. at is, we need to be
able to distinguish what is specic to a corridor from that which is more generic.
A nal set of challenges relates to matters of scale, to which we also return in
greater detail below.
When is a Transport Corridor? Recurring Temporalities
Having dealt with what a transport corridor is, the next question that arises
is the point from which one can meaningfully trace its emergence. It is clear
that it had already begun to take shape in Europe and North America by the
s. As far as the World Bank is concerned, the concept arose in discussions
about developing countries somewhat later, and later still with respect to Africa
(Cissokho, this volume). What this already underlines is that certain concep-
tions about the relationship between transport and development have dried in
and out of fashion, oen being repackaged in the process. Ironically, the allure
of the corridor concept has resided in the notion that what is being unveiled is
something fundamentally new. Today, this is reected in the contention that
global connectivity potentially unleashes all manner of synergies that did not
previously exist. is is linked in particular to transformations in global shipping
and port development that has enabled a prodigious number of containers to
be shipped around the world at a much lower cost per unit. But shipping is
precisely one of those areas where it pays to take the longer view. For historians,
much of the language surrounding investments in transport infrastructure is
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12 P N H L
redolent of the language of post-war developmentalism which was sold as a
qualitative leap forward in much the same terms. e dierence in Africa was
that the infrastructure was supposed to better connect the colonies with the
European ‘metropole’, whereas now the focus is much more upon the benets
of increasing trade with East and South-East Asia. It is clearly also the case that
many of the projects that are being promoted now build upon infrastructure
(notably road and rail) that was established in the colonial period or in the
early years of independence.
Hence the Addis–Djibouti Corridor is a direct
replacement for a former French colonial railway (Chen, this volume). Again,
the Zambezi Valley SDI in Mozambique is eectively a dusted-down colonial
project devised by Portugal and South Africa.
e Nacala Corridor is similarly
based on a much older system of road and rail in Mozambique and Malawi,
which was eectively disabled by the RENAMO insurgency four decades ago.
But there is also a case to be made for taking an even longer view. It is interesting
to note that a recent report from the Asian Development Bank has pointed to
precursors to contemporary transport corridors in South Asia which it dates to
Mughal and East India Company initiatives.
Isabella Soi (this volume) similarly
points to the historicity of certain trade routes that were important for estab-
lished kingdoms within the Great Lakes region. Trade brought commodities
in and out, but it also conferred revenues on the states that sought to regulate
and tax what moved along the routes. During the heyday of the trans-Atlantic
and Indian Ocean slave trades, a number of coastal ports became signicant
foci of maritime trade in West and East Africa. Some of these, like Mombasa
and Luanda, remain important to this day. In the nineteenth century, the links
32 Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio, ‘On the Coloniality of “New” Mega-Infrastructure
Projects in East Africa’, Antipode, :, , –. See also Johannes eodore
Aalders, ‘Building on the Ruins of Empire: the Uganda Railway and the LAPPSET
Corridor in Kenya’, ird World Quarterly, published online March .
33 Milissão Nuvunga, ‘Region-Building in Central Mozambique: the Case of the
Zambezi Valley Spatial Development Initiative’, in Söderbaum and Taylor (eds),
Ao-Regions, pp. –, at pp. –.
34
World Bank, e Web of Transport Corridors in South Asia, Washington, D.C., ,
pp. –. A historic road link between Nepal and Tibet, which was eectively
closed in the s, has received a renewed lease of life as a consequence of Chinese
investments in a strategic corridor designed to connect East and South Asia. Galen
Murton, ‘Trans-Himalayan Transformations: Building Roads, Making Markets, and
Cultivating Consumption between Nepal and China’s Tibet’, in Yongming Zhou,
u Tenglong, and Li Guiying (eds), Roadology: Roads, Space, Culture, Chongqing,
, pp. –, at p. .
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I 13
between the interior and the coastal ports were more fully elaborated, both in
East and West Africa. In the case of Asante, Ivor Wilks identies a conscious
attempt to develop a system of ‘great roads’ converging on the capital of Kumasi
from the coast and the Sahel.
Guaranteeing a modicum of physical security
along the routes was a precondition for trade – as it certainly is today – but they
had also to be actively maintained if they were to be serviceable. Challengers
to the established order sought to cut the routes and/or to impose their own
conditions on traders. For this reason, Peer Schouten observes that there is a
prehistory to the modern roadblock in Central Africa – roughly Chad and
Central African Republic – in the shape of taxes that were imposed upon people
and goods at strategic chokepoints. A similar logic applied to the ‘protection
money’ demanded from the caravans that passed through Harar to Berbera by
Somali clans along the route.
Colonial propagandists, who were inclined to posit a sharp break with the
past, were dazzled by feats of engineering, such as the Chemin de fer Congo-
Océan, by which Europeans imposed their stamp on the continent, as well as on
the African subjects whose labour was required to realise them. But we know that
in the early twentieth century, many existing transport routes gained a second
life as colonial infrastructure. Hence the ancient livestock trade route to Berbera
was rst valorised by the British, who channelled meat supplies towards Aden,
and was then embedded when the Italian army constructed a motorable road in
. e continuities were obvious in the case of lake transport, but they are
also apparent when it comes to roads. Some road projects undoubtedly repre-
sented something novel because they were tied to new developments in mining
and cash crop production.
But many were superimposed upon something that
embodied a greater historicity. Existing routes were widened, straightened and
attened to facilitate the circulation of wheeled transport, but they connected
35 Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: e Structure and Evolution of a
Political Order, Cambridge, , ch. .
36 Schouten, ‘Roadblock Politics’, p. .
37
Finn Stepputat and Tobias Hagmann, ‘Politics of Circulation: the Making of the
Berbera Corridor in Somali East Africa’, Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space D, :, , –, at p. .
38
Luca Ciabarri, ‘Biographies of Roads, Biographies of Nations: History, Territory
and the Road Eect in Post-Conict Somaliland’, in Klaeger and Michael Stasik
(eds), e Making, pp. –, at p. .
39
Libbie Freed, ‘Conduits of Culture and Control: Roads, States and Users in French
Central Africa, –’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin
Madison, .
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14 P N H L
the same places – most notably urban settlements and port towns. Contemporary
transport corridors today connect up segments of existing roads and stretches of
rail that were established in the colonial period. In this we can discern longer
cycles of decay as well as moments of retrotting. Much as stripping back the
layers of an actual road reveal many dierent moments of construction, and
multiple patch-ups, corridors may be seen as the accretion of so many older
iterations of construction, maintenance and repair. If we start to conceive of
transport corridors as explicitly modernist constructs that cover over the traces
of their own pasts, we can also arrive at a more nuanced appreciation of how
infrastructure actually works and is related to by local actors. Part of the reason
why so many corridor interventions fail is that they are put into eect with a
wilful ignorance of this history.
Scales (1): Institutional Actors
Although scale has become a contested concept within critical geography, it seems
indispensable when grappling with the complexities of transport corridors –
not least because it is a framing that key actors are themselves guided by. Moreover,
it is the slippage between interventions at dierent scales that frequently explains
why there is such a mismatch between grandiose visions and mundane realities.
e transport corridors that are unfolding across Africa are, at the most
fundamental level, intended to facilitate access to global markets. But they are
also embedded in other visions that extend well beyond the remit of corridor
authorities. In the case of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) invest-
ments in infrastructure are solicited by African governments and delivered by
Chinese companies, as part of an ambitious agenda whose origins clearly lie
outside the continent (Gambino, this volume). Although corridors could be
folded into the BRI agenda, they were almost incidental to the underpinning
rationale. And while Africa was not originally envisioned as part of BRI, projects
have been added to it in a manner that suits all the main parties (Chen, this
volume). At the same time, there are the continental initiatives that are intended
to link dierent regions through infrastructure. As Oliete Josa and Magrinyà
explain (this volume), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
(UNECA) formulated the Trans-African Highways (TAH) initiative as far back
40
Cymene Howe, Jessica Lockrem, Hannah Appel, Edward Hackett, Dominic Boyer,
Randal Hall, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Albert Pope, Akhil Gupta, Elizabeth
Rodwell, Andrea Ballestero, Trevor Durbin, Farès el-Dahdah, Elizabeth Long
and Cyrus Mody, ‘Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrot and Risk’, Science,
Technology and Human Values, :, , pp. –.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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I 15
as the s. In recent times, it has underpinned the African Regional Transport
Infrastructure Network (ARTIN) and the African Union’s Programme for
Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). ese plans for pursuing
continental integration through connective infrastructure bring together the
AU, the various RECs, the AfDB, the EU, donor countries and African states.
e various transport corridors map onto this larger infrastructural agenda,
but African countries also advance their own preferences while oen paying
lip-service to continental and regional plans.
National governments organise their bureaucratic functions according to a
very particular sense of scale. e presidency and core ministries in the capital
city decide on what the national priorities are, which opens up a eld of potential
contestation. Ministries of transport are oen weak relative to ministries of
nance and of planning, and each of these may be bypassed by presidential
secretariats that are intent on bringing infrastructural projects to fruition with
minimal delay (Muñoz, this volume). Who negotiates the deal with the Chinese
delegation is typically revealing about where the balance of power resides within
the structures of government at any given moment. en there are those agencies
that enjoy a degree of operational autonomy from the core ministries – this
typically includes the port and the revenue authorities (including customs),
which oen ght their own turf wars. eir role in collecting revenue, or
making revenue collection possible, lends them a voice and oen an enhanced
capacity to block and deect unwelcome changes. By contrast, while decen-
tralisation theoretically permits sub-national bodies a degree of latitude to set
priorities, this generally does not extend to national infrastructure projects. e
question of adequate compensation for land that may be requisitioned to build
a port or a railway is typically one of the points of friction, especially as resident
populations oen bear the additional inconvenience associated with long periods
of construction.
41
e remit of PIDA is far wider than transport infrastructure and includes ICTs,
energy and trans-boundary water resource management. <www.au-pida.org/pida-
history/> [Accessed April ].
42 Lamarque, ‘Protable Ineciency’, pp. –.
43 is is true of LAPPSET. Charis Enns, ‘Infrastructure Projects and Rural Projects
in Northern Kenya: e Use of Divergent Expertise to Negotiate the Terms of Land
Deals for Transport Infrastructure’, Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, ,
pp. –; and Ngala Chome, ‘Land, Livelihoods and Belonging: Negotiating
Change and Anticipating LAPSSET in Kenya’s Lamu County’, Journal of Eastern
Aican Studies, :, , pp. –. Hassan K. Kochore, ‘e Road to Kenya?
Visions, Expectations and Anxieties Around New Infrastructure Development in
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16 P N H L
As members of one or more of the overlapping RECs, African countries have
signed up to regional protocols that formally commit them to the freedom of
movement of people and goods along the corridors. In theory, the agendas
of national governments and the RECs are perfectly aligned, but in practice
governments sign up to far more than they are willing or able to implement.
e REC secretariats are chronically underfunded and have limited capacity to
pressure governments to honour their commitments. Like the AU, the RECs
formally respect national sovereignty, but seek to persuade and cajole national
governments to take their obligations seriously. Goods that are produced within
the RECs that have established customs unions are permitted to cross borders
free of duty, subject to local content provisions, while those that come from
outside are covered by a common external tari (CET). e harmonisation of
taris is supposed to place member states on a level footing, but also to enhance
commerce between member states. Some countries have negotiated ‘temporary’
exemptions for strategic commodities, and these have proved dicult to remove.
e African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is in the process
of being rolled out, is supposed to align with the existing free trade provisions
of the RECs and to scale them upwards. But, given the diculties experienced
by RECs, it remains to be seen whether a continental authority would be better
placed to secure compliance.
Some of the greatest challenges have arisen from a proliferation of non-tari
barriers. is includes a range of fees that are levied at the border, notably for
rights of transit, but also innumerable hurdles encountered on the road (Byiers
and Woolfrey, this volume). One of the most persistent challenges has been
the proliferation of roadblocks thrown up by a range of agencies, typically in
the name of road safety or national security. ese are extreme in the DRC,
but they are also ubiquitous in Kenya and Ghana, whose governments are
formally committed to regional integration. Along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor,
sub-units of Nigerian customs and immigration compete in the establishment of
their own roadblocks (Nugent, this volume). Corridor management authorities
are typically skeleton bodies with sta seconded from national ministries that
have a greater or lesser input from the private sector. eir ability to shape the
behaviour of governments is therefore even more limited than that of the RECs.
In West Africa an additional diculty is that the Francophone countries are
Northern Kenya’, Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , pp. –. e
speculation and outright scams surrounding compensation claims is also a factor
in the equation.
44 Schouten, ‘Roadblock Politics’, pp. –.
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I 17
members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
and of l’Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest-Africaine (UEMOA). Despite
the eorts to harmonise the rules, divergences between them – for example
over axel load limits – have culminated in misunderstandings and frequent
stoppages. Some of the same complications occur in the Great Lakes where a
number of countries are members of the East African Community (EAC) as
well as COMESA.
Along the corridors themselves, ocials oen enjoy a degree of operational
autonomy that enables them to exploit the complexities of scale and the lack
of alignment between institutional actors. Ocials ignore and blunt ocial
dictats that are not to their liking and nd ways of carrying out their functions
in accordance with their own understandings of ‘business as usual’. Although
the latest directive oen cascades down to the local police station or customs
post, its ecacy is oen limited and short-lived, as there is a keen appreciation
that follow-ups are unlikely and aer some time it will probably be forgotten.
e ocials who formally do the work of government at the local level have
adopted their own conventions, which are oen worked out in tandem with
the freight forwarders, truckers, traders and road builders who are present along
the corridor. ese conventions persist because they are relatively predictable –
although they do not necessarily work for everyone or to the same degree – and
those who are newly arrived are quickly inducted into the rules of the game. As
omas Bierschenk indicates, such innovations should not necessarily be treated
as corruption, disobedience or collusion because the reality is that policies that
issue from the centre are oen impractical as they stand. Nevertheless, the
workarounds that local actors fashion lead to a situation where the mismatch
between the theory surrounding the corridor and the everyday realities is never
actually bridged – and in some cases becomes even starker as time passes. is
underlines a crucial nding, which is that the cumulative eects of actions
taken by ocials at the lowest scales oen outweigh the impact of regional
and national decision-makers who notionally call the shots.
45 José-María Muñoz, Doing Business in Cameroon: An Anatomy of Economic
Goernance, Cambridge, , pp. –.
46 omas Bierschenk, ‘Sedimentation, Fragmentation and Normative Double-Binds
in (West) African Public Services’, in omas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de
Sardan (eds), States at Work: Dynamics of Aican Bureaucracies, Leiden & Boston,
, pp. –, at p. .
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18 P N H L
Scales (2): The States, Corporations and Small Fish
Factoring in scale is especially important for understanding the role, inuence
and physical presence of private sector actors along the corridors. It is a common-
place observation that the relationship between the African state and capital has
been recongured during the s and s under the regime of structural
adjustment. e reality that political elites could actually benet from the logic
of ‘privatisation’ is well-established.
But the withdrawal of the state has also
been much exaggerated. Although African governments do not implement many
infrastructural projects directly, they do nance many of them and, as impor-
tantly, they underwrite the external loans. In many countries such as Kenya, it is
the politicians that have been keen to accelerate infrastructural projects, in the
belief that this will play well with voters. As Lombard and Sylvanus both indicate
(this volume) ports also occupy an important place in national imaginaries. In
Ghana, the decision to roll out three new transport corridors from Tema to the
North may be seen as a revival of the vision of achieving economic transfor-
mation through infrastructural development that Kwame Nkrumah had once
championed – even if the Akuo-Addo government belongs to the competing
political tradition. In Ghana, like Kenya, promising roads and railways is part
of the currency of national politics – and because it depreciates rapidly, new
projects constantly have to be conceived. At the same time, nothing has been
done to develop transport along the Volta Lake, which would be key to a
functioning multi-modal transport network. Paradoxically, it would require
much less capital investment to accomplish, but the crux is that it would yield
a correspondingly lower political dividend.
e gatekeeping role that particular branches of the bureaucracy perform also
has an important bearing on what gets built where, but also denes who gets to
build it and under what terms and conditions. Corporate actors therefore have
a vested interest in cultivating long-term relationships with the most important
branches of the bureaucracy, while remaining on good terms with powerful
interest groups on an everyday basis. Playing the long game, large corporate
players are oen prepared to take on loss leaders, such as creaking parts of rail
links, in order to remain in the larger contest. Needless to say, the mutual embed-
dedness of corporate actors and gatekeepers frequently means that the transport
congurations are not necessarily the economically optimal ones.
Two dominant perceptions about what has unfolded over the past years
each contain an element of truth, but need to be nuanced. e rst is that states
47
Fredrik Söderbaum and Ian Taylor, ‘Competing Region-Building in the Maputo
Development Corridor’, in Söderbaum and Taylor (eds), Ao-Regions, pp. –.
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I 19
have essentially rolled over and allowed corporate capital to assume control over
transport infrastructure where the juiciest pickings are to be found. While it
is true that there has been a concentration of capital in global shipping over
recent decades, there has also been erce competition between companies
over access to port facilities. e intrusion of Dubai Port World (DPW), the
Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and China Merchant Holding
International (CMHI) has reduced some of the earlier dominance of Bolloré
and Maersk.
is has enabled governments to play a range of actors o against
each other (Lombard, this volume). While governments have been willing to
lease container terminals to shipping and logistics companies, port authorities
(PAs) have retained overall oversight. Governments have generally preferred
joint ventures to outright privatisation. For example, Tema remains a public
port under the control of the Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority (GPHA).
In , GPHA granted Meridian Port Services (MPS) the contract to build
and operate a container terminal, which was opened three years later. As Brenda
Chaln underlined a decade ago, the GPHA was careful to retain a grip over the
port, and this picture has not changed signicantly since then.
In , the rst
phase of the container port expansion was completed, with the second phase to
follow in . Crucially, MPS was to be jointly owned by GPHA itself ( per
cent), APM Terminals (a subsidiary of A.P. Moller/Maersk on per cent) and
Bolloré ( per cent) – although the GPHA stake was eectively halved in
when additional shares were issued without its knowledge. Governments have
also shown their willingness to ex their muscles in relation to both ports and
48 Debrié, ‘West African port’, p. .
49 When DPW won the contract to run the Berbera port, the state-owned Ethiopian
Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE) was cut in on the deal. Warsame
M. Ahmed and Finn Stepputat, Berbera Port: Geopolitics and State-Making in
Somaliland, Ri Valley Institute Brieng Paper, Nairobi, , p. .
50 Brenda Chaln, ‘Recasting Maritime Governance in Ghana: e Neo-Developmental
State and Port Governance in Tema’, Journal of Modern Aican Studies, :, ,
pp. –.
51 e scandal was unravelled in Andrew Weir, ‘How Vincent Bolloré Won Control
Over Ghana’s Biggest Port”, Aica Condential, :, <www.africa-condential.
com/article/id//SPECIAL_REPORT_How_Vincent_Bollor%C%A_
won_control_of_Ghana%E%%s_biggest_port> [Accessed July ].
Consortia such as this one involving the partnering of competitors are not unusual.
A similar shareholding arrangement among Bolloré, APM and Cameroonian
interests prevailed in the company that operated Douala’s container terminal from
to .
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20 P N H L
railways. An illustration is that of the Doraleh Container Terminal in Djibouti
which was constructed and operated by DPW, only for the government to expel
the company, alleging that it had acquired the concession through bribery.
e second perception is that China has cornered the market in infrastructure
by tying concessionary nancing to the award of contracts. While it is true that
Chinese companies have oen been awarded important construction contracts,
they have not, in most cases, secured the concessions to run the container
terminals. When it comes to new railway projects, the Chinese role is much more
visible. But Brautigam notes that China has actually only nanced four ‘greeneld’
railway projects. Of these, the Kenyan SGR is the one that has received the
most attention. e Djibouti–Addis Ababa railway was a Chinese project, but
Chen (this volume) points to the fact that the second main line to the north was
contracted to a Turkish company. In the case of the Central Corridor railway, the
rst sections were awarded to a Turkish/Portuguese consortium. And nally, the
Dakar–Bamako railway is an instance of retrotting an existing railway rather than
constructing something from scratch. In reality, the Chinese presence would appear
to be far more important lower down the food-chain, notably in the construction
of roads and highways that connect urban centres or address urban transpor-
tation – and are oen not the product of Chinese nancing. When it comes
to the infrastructure that is strung out along the corridors, it is also important
to recognise the presence of other actors. In the case of the Kazangula bridge
across the Zambezi River, for example, the bulk of the funding came from the
Japanese development agency, JICA, while the contract was awarded to Daiwoo, a
South Korean company. e Nacala Corridor is eectively a joint venture between
Vale (a Brazilian mining company), Mitsui (the Japanese multinational) and the
Mozambican state. In general, African companies lack the capacity to compete
for major contracts to construct or to manage large infrastructure projects – with
the exception of South African players like Transnet. ey tend to feature more
in the construction and maintenance of roads, where the award of contracts is
no less murky.
Moving to transport itself, there is less concentration of capital in road
haulage than in ports and railways. Across Southern Africa, there are a number
of international logistics companies that operate across the region. ese
handle the export of minerals, notably from the Copperbelt. In South Africa
52 Deborah Brautigam, ‘Chinese Loans and African Structural Transformation’,
in Arkebe Oqubay and Justin Yifu Lin (eds), China-Aica and an Economic
Transformation, Oxford, , pp. –, at p. .
53
ierry Pariault, ‘China in Africa: Goods Supplier, Service Provider rather than
Investor’, Bridges Aica, :, , no page.
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I 21
itself, Vilikazi identies seven large logistics companies that operate vertically
integrated businesses across Southern Africa, but also a signicant number of
smaller companies. is is signicant in a context where South Africa exports
a range of commodities to its neighbours. In East Africa, the consolidation of
a small number of large companies in Kenya, operating modern eets of trucks,
contrasts with the picture in other countries, most notably Tanzania. In West
Africa, the trucking industry is more highly fragmented. While transport unions
are relatively inuential, especially in the Francophone countries, they are made
up of a large number of small operators. e bilateral agreements over division
of the transit trac is an instrument that is intended to protect their interests
(Byiers and Woolfrey, this volume).
Across the continent, the cost of trucking is relatively high because of the
lack of a back-load and regulations that prevent cabotage (that is, the carrying
of goods in another country). Moreover, the powerful interests that coalesce
around road haulage at the national level make it unlikely that this will change
any time soon. Another major cost lies in delays at border crossings and the
bribes demanded at roadblocks. Here, it is the limitations to the exercise of
power by transport unions and logistics companies that is displayed. In West
Africa, the Borderless Alliance has worked together with RECs to underline
the downstream consequences of these practices, but with uneven results.
TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) is a dierent beast because it is funded by
donors and co-ordinates the delivery of corridor infrastructure like OSBPs.
But it also makes the case for open borders, exploiting its excellent access to
government. e functioning OSBPs in East Africa, many of which have been
implemented through TMEA, have managed to signicantly reduce border
crossing times – unlike in West Africa – but roadblocks and police corruption
have proved less easy to resolve. Among the users of the various corridors, some
of the most hard-worked are the drivers themselves, who bear much of the risk
and inconvenience for meagre remuneration.
e corridors are, of course, intended to serve as a conduit for trade, and again
there are quite dierent scales where this plays out. China has become the most
important trading partner for African countries. But apart from the large-scale
54 ando S. Vilikazi, ‘e Causes of High Inter-Regional Road Freight Rates for
Food and Commodities in Southern Africa’, Development Southern Aica, :,
, pp. –, at p. . Interestingly, he points to the growing domination
of a small group of larger businesses in Mozambique as well.
55 Kunaka, Raballand and Fitzmaurice, How Trucking Services Have Improved.
56 Paul Nugent and Isabella Soi, ‘One-Stop Border Posts in East Africa: State
Encounters of the Fourth Kind’, Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , p. .
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22 P N H L
importers and exporters, corridors have also helped to spawn a range of other
actors. Many African traders make it their business to source their goods directly
from China or Dubai. In a fascinating account, Haugen reveals how traders
either share containers or ll their own containers using logistics agents based
in southern China who, in turn, source goods directly from the factories. e
agents channel the goods through the Chinese port which, at any given time,
are less likely to entail physical inspections. e traders typically employ their
own clearing agents in African ports who cultivate close relations with customs
authorities. ese containers may travel to inland cities or they may be opened
close to the port where individual traders can collect their own share of the
consignment. Many own their own stores, but also operate as wholesalers to
smaller traders who will purchase the goods and transport them by road to their
nal destination. e nancial margins reside in the intricacies of packing and
unpacking containers, the subtleties of customs valuations and in the size of the
truck loads plying the transport corridors. All these actors work the system as
best they can – which entails minimising risks and being able to adapt to sudden
shis in prices and demand – while exploiting the infrastructure and logistics
that is controlled by corporate business. What this also means is that many of
the most important users of corridor infrastructure are small-scale enterprises,
with petty traders at one end of the spectrum and larger merchants at the other
end. eir interests do not necessarily align with those of corporate capital, but
they are just as likely to diverge with those of domestic manufacturing interests.
e latter oen have an interest in reducing competition from neighbouring
countries, whereas the livelihoods of traders depend on the ow of goods in
innitely variable quantities. e port and the road therefore reveal, in very
sharp relief, the very dierent congurations of economic power along each
of the corridors.
It is also important to recognise that because corridors run through African
borderlands, they also have a signicant impact on the populations that reside
there. In East Africa, part of the rationale for the OSBPs is that they should
also benet small-scale cross-border traders. On the Uganda/Kenya border, the
authorities have sought to simplify the processes of making customs declarations
in an eort to encourage traders to use the facilities rather than plying the many
unapproved routes – in a context where cross-border trade underpins the liveli-
hoods of many people.
In West Africa, there has been much less progress on
57
Heidi Østbø Haugen, ‘e Social Production of Container Space’, Society and Space,
:, , pp. –.
58 Nugent and Soi, ‘One-Stop’.
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I 23
OSBPs, but the corridors oen run through thickly populated border regions –
especially along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor. As Nugent (this volume) indicates,
small-scale traders exploit the corridor in discrete segments because of the many
disincentives to crossing multiple borders. Lomé continues to serve as a focus for
Ivorian and Ghanaians traders who buy cloth, much of which is imported from
China, that is transported back along the corridor by companies that specialise
in this business.
In addition, revolving markets link traders across borders and
over considerable distances. Because there is money to be made from such trade,
border towns have tended to grow faster than the national average, especially in
West Africa.
is means that corridors have also served as a conduit for migrants
in search of greener pastures. Even where the border towns themselves are not the
primary focus, as in Southern Africa, migrants use the very same border crossings as
the trucks. Although the RECs are formally committed to freedom of movement
of people, this has been controversial in South Africa in recent years. It is highly
telling that when the COVID- pandemic struck in early , South Africa
closed all the borders that were associated with migration, and only allowed
vehicles transporting essential goods to pass along trucking routes. In general,
the potential for transport corridors to advance cross-border regionalism, in a
manner which includes borderlanders, remains largely untapped.
Financial Sustainability
e nal theme that needs to be raised is that of sustainability because it
underpins many of the fundamental debates about transport infrastructure: such
as the merits of road versus rail and the desirability of port/corridor competition.
ere are in fact two inter-related issues at stake here. e rst is whether the
infrastructural commitments that have been made are likely to deliver a rate of
return that will enable them to pay for themselves, whether in the immediate
future or over the long term. e second is whether African governments are
in a position to commit further to ambitious plans for corridor development
without incurring crippling levels of debt.
As far as the rst is concerned, funding institutions have generally taken
a sanguine view about investments on the basis that it is necessary to address
the infrastructural decit that acts as a dead-weight on Africa’s development.
59 On the changing patterns of the cloth trade, see Nina Sylvanus, Patterns in
Circulation: Cloth, Gender and Materiality in West Aica, Chicago & London,
.
60 OECD/SWAC, “Population and Morphology of Border Cities,” West Aican
Papers, No. , Paris, , pp. –.
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24 P N H L
On the back of years of economic growth, the argument is that Africa needs
to anticipate rising demand well in advance. Hence, there has generally been
nancial and moral backing for the development of African ports that are oen
relatively close neighbours. Competition between ports tends to be regarded
by economists in a positive light because it notionally drives eciency. As
things stand, there is little evidence that this is actually happening. Some African
ports are undoubtedly more ecient than others, but a recent World Bank
report indicates that none of them fare well from international comparisons.
e accent has therefore tended to shi to what needs to be done to address
structural ineciencies rather than considering the possibility that coastal
countries risk over-extending themselves. e COVID- pandemic delivered
a sharp shock, which was reected in an immediate decline in global shipping.
Although this may be a temporary eect, a global recession is likely to have a
signicant impact on international trade in the longer term. Many countries in
Africa face the prospect of a serious, and possibly prolonged economic downturn,
which is likely to deliver a further blow to the continent’s trade with the rest of
the world. is has palpable consequences for port developments. It has been
suggested that this moment might provide an occasion to build intra-regional
trade rather than trying to prise a way into global value chains – something that
could even help to nurture cross-border regions.
It is doubtful that it would
make much of a dierence to the viability of the ports, however, and it would
depend on making additional investments in order to redress the lack of connec-
tivity between transport corridors. Following some years in which governments
have been banking on port investments to deliver economic transformation, it
seems more likely that countries will be stuck with investments that will fail
to pay their way. In the case of railways, the early evidence from the SGRs in
Kenya and Ethiopia/Djibouti is that they are already struggling to break even. Of
61 eo Notteboom, César Ducruet and Peter de Langen (eds), Ports in Proximity:
Competition and Coordination among Adjacent Seaports, Abingdon & New York,
.
62
Martin Humphreys, Aiga Stokenberga, Matias Herrera Dappe, Atsushi Limi and
Olivier Hartmann (eds), Port Development and Competition in East and Southern
Aica: Prospects and Challenges, Washington, D.C., .
63 Andrew Mold and Anthony Mveyange, “Trade in Uncertain Times: Prioritising
Regional over Global Value Chains to Accelerate Economic Development in
East Africa”, Brookings, April <www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-
focus////trade-in-uncertain-times-prioritising-regional-over-global-
value-chains-to-accelerate-economic-development-in-east-africa/> [Accessed
April ].
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I 25
course, where they entirely cannot deect the costs, governments may choose to
subsidise rail,
but this would come at the cost of other important public goods
such as education and health. What all of this underlines is the tension inherent
within a form of regionalism that hangs on the vagaries of national politics.
As far as the second issue is concerned, the overall levels of public debt
began to rise in a worrying fashion well before the outbreak of the COVID-
pandemic. According to the World Bank, the average public debt increased from
to per cent of GDP, while the number of countries entering debt distress
had increased to , between and . Whereas Africa had previously
been indebted to multilateral institutions, notably the IMF and World Bank,
new forms of indebtedness have arisen in the shape of non-concessionary private
sector loans (typically repayable at much higher rates of interest), Eurobonds
(incurred in foreign currency) and domestic bond issues. As far as bilateral
debts are concerned, Africans have borrowed heavily from China in order
to nance infrastructural development, but opacity on the part of the main
Chinese lenders means that the details are obscure. Indeed, the Jubilee Debt
Campaign estimated that China accounted for around per cent of all African
government debt in .
At a time when the continent was experiencing years
of impressive growth, the inclination of governments was to go for broke. is
meant that when commodity prices tumbled in , African countries – and
especially oil producers – found themselves severely exposed. e pandemic
64 Kenya has imposed a railway development levy on imported manufactured goods,
which passes some of the costs onto consumers.
65 Francisco G. Carneiro and Wilfried A. Kouame, ‘How Much Should African
Countries Adjust to Curb the Increase in Public Debt?’, World Bank Blogs,
February <https://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/how-much-should-sub-
saharan-african-countries-adjust-curb-increase-public-debt> [Accessed April
].
66 Chukwuka Onyekwena and Mma Amara Ekeruche, ‘Is a Debt Crisis Looming
in Africa?’, Brookings, April <www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-
focus////is-a-debt-crisis-looming-in-africa/>. [Accessed April ];
James C. Mizes, ‘Who Owns Africa’s Infrastructure’, Limn <https://limn.it/articles/
who-owns-africas-infrastructure-/> [Accessed April ].
67 Ian Taylor and Tim Zajontz, ‘In a Fix: Africa’s Place in the Belt and Road Initiative
and the Reproduction of Dependency’, South Aican Journal of International Aairs,
: , , p. .
68 Yun Sun, ‘China and Africa’s Debt: Yes to Relief, No to Blanket Forgiveness’,
Brookings, April <www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus////
china-and-africas-debt-yes-to-relief-no-to-blanket-forgiveness/>[Accessed
April ].
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
26 P N H L
merely brought matters to a head. According to the latest IMF data, ve African
countries have accumulated debts at over per cent of GDP, and have debts
of more than per cent. Of the major RECs, SADC has the greatest problem,
with an average indebtedness of . per cent of GDP, whereas the EAC average
is per cent and that of ECOWAS is per cent.
With the exception of
Nigeria, the oil-producing countries have incurred the greatest debt burden.
But it is equally clear that a number of the countries that have been investing
most heavily in infrastructure – notably Djibouti ( per cent), Mozambique
( per cent), Zambia ( per cent), Ghana ( per cent), Namibia (
per cent) and Kenya ( per cent) – are recording some of the highest levels
of indebtedness. Tanzania ( per cent) and Ethiopia ( per cent) have fared
somewhat better. It is true that there is a great deal of infrastructural expenditure,
including power generation, that is not directly related to transport, but this
varies by country.
Before the pandemic broke, there had already been some debate about what
action might be needed to mitigate the impact of indebtedness. Chen observes
that China itself had already written o signicant amounts of debt before
. In the case of the Addis–Djibouti railway, she recalls that China cancelled
some of the Ethiopian loans and extended the repayment period for others.
In , there were various responses to the reality that African countries faced
the prospect of having to default. e IMF cancelled six months of debts owed
by African countries, the G countries agreed a debt freeze until the end of
, while China cancelled interest-free loans that would mature at the end of
the year (a small percentage of the total). China’s response has been distinctly
69 IMF Data Mapper <www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_GDP@
AFRREO/ZMB/NGA> [Accessed April ].
70 For the Zambian case, see Tim Zajontz, ‘e Chinese Infrastructural Fix in Africa:
Lessons from the Sino-Zambian Road Bonanza’, Oxford Development Studies,
published online December , DOI: ./..
[Accessed March ].
71 According to World Bank estimates of infrastructural nancing needs, less than a
quarter would be required for transport, whereas per cent would be required for
power generation. But clearly some of what is covered under ICTs relates directly
to transport corridors. Foster and Briceño-Garmendia (eds), Aica’s Inastructure,
Overview at p. .
72 Yunnan Chen, ‘Countries Facing COVID - Debt Need Flexible Financing: Lessons
from China’, ODI Blog April <www.odi.org/blogs/-countries-facing-
covid--debt-need-exible-nancing-lessons-china> [Accessed April ].
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I 27
cautious, and this may well signal a more guarded approach to infrastructure
nancing in the years to come.
It seems very likely that the more ambitious plans for linking corridors will
have to be put on ice and that some infrastructural projects will be suspended
or abandoned altogether. is would, of course, t perfectly with a historical
oscillation between caution and enchantment about the transformative potential
of infrastructural investments. Indeed, today’s stalled projects will provide the
material for tomorrow’s retro-t. But it would appear that we may well have
witnessed the end of a cycle – both of thinking and of nancing. In future, one
imagines that funding to cover the ‘infrastructure decit’ will become much less
readily accessible. It may well be that the enchantment with big infrastructure
is itself beginning to fade as funders and governments alike are forced to weigh
up priorities. While electrication, urban sanitation and water supply cannot be
avoided, it may well be that transport corridors slip down the list of priorities
or are repackaged to serve these agendas. At the time of writing, however, it is
too early to tell whether we are witnessing something more profound than a
temporary blip.
Transport corridors are elusive because they represent models for the way
the world works, but are simultaneously embodied in material objects and
immaterial ows. Capturing these complexities has been one of the principal
challenges for AFRIGOS, but also for the composition of the current volume.
As indicated in the preface, this book brings together chapters that have arisen
directly from the AFRIGOS project and others that were specically commis-
sioned with a view to achieving a more rounded coverage of continental trends
while capturing the dynamics of particular regions and specic corridors. e
contributors cover a spectrum that runs from conventional academia to those with
a closer relationship to policy. e contributors hail from very dierent disciplinary
backgrounds, and partly for that reasons they draw on distinct types of data that
capture realities in very dierent registers and at very dierent scales – including
material from World Bank, EU and national archives in Africa and Europe;
statistics and reports issued by international agencies, development banks and
national governments; interviews and informal interactions with actors engaged in
construction, corridor management and border control; and, nally, engagements
with the everyday users of corridors like small-scale traders and the general public.
Some of the corridor actors are unlikely to ever meet, whereas others encounter
each other on a regular basis and work collectively to reproduce and actualise a
discourse surrounding what corridors are and ought to be.
Most of the contributions to the volume speak to at least one other chapter
directly – and oen several at once – and this has helped to inform our decisions
about the structure of the book as a whole. First of all, there are chapters that
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
28 P N H L
are explicitly historical in focus. Sidy Cissokho explores the genealogy of the
corridor concept within the World Bank. He tracks the emergence of the
contemporary instantiation of the transport corridor as a conceptual synthesis
that combines a traditional focus on transport with one that is directed to the
facilitation of trade. e manner in which corridors are laid across older spatial
logics is taken up by Isabella Soi in her account of the historicity of topography
of trade and transport routes, and the rivalry between them, across East Africa
and the Great Lakes region. is encourages us to think more deeply about how
some colonial infrastructure built on some of what was already in existence. In
his contribution, José-María Muñoz brings a dierent historical lens to bear in
his detailed account of the wrangling between the World Bank, bilateral donors
and segments of the Cameroun government bureaucracy over the realignment
of the former colonial Douala–Yaounde line during the s. e evolution
of continental transport planning aer independence also features prominently
in the comparative discussion of European and African transport policy and
nancing by Sergio Oliete Josa and Francesc Magrinyà. Whereas Cissokho
focuses on the role of the World Bank, they highlight a range of other interna-
tional actors and fora where corridor policy has been forged. Whereas their focus
is largely on the European Union, Elisa Gambino provides a detailed account of
how African transport corridors have also been folded into the Chinese Belt and
Road Initiative – further underlining the multivalence of the corridor concept.
A number of contributions address aspects of competition: notably between
ports/corridors and between modes of transport. Port competition is a topic that
is squarely addressed by Bruce Byiers and Sean Woolfrey, who point out that
despite the large number of ports in West Africa, competition has not reduced
the costs to end-users – in part because of the monopolistic hold of a handful
of large logistics corporations. e substantial investments in upgrades to ports
inevitably are based on future projections and a large amount of guesswork. As
Jérôme Lombard indicates, the Senegalese corridor strategy has been premised
on increasing the ows through the port of Dakar which, with respect to the
transit trade to Mali, involves competition with the ports of Abidjan, Lomé
and Tema. Distances, operating costs and security are among the main factors
determining the choices that economic operators make. In the case of the transit
trade with Ougadougou, the chapters by Nina Sylvanus and by Byiers and
Woolfrey both indicate the success with which the port of Lomé has competed
with Tema and Abidjan – which is also the source of a certain amount of civic
pride. As Paul Nugent indicates, the port of Lomé continued to attract small
traders from as far aeld as Abidjan until the border closures that came with
the COVID- pandemic. While many of the contributions focus on West
Africa, Hugh Lamarque provides a comparable account of the high-stakes rivalry
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I 29
between the ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam – and the Northern and
Central Corridors that they serve. Like Byiers and Woolfrey, he points to the
array of interests that cluster around the operation of the ports and corridor
management – underlining the point that the quest for greater eciency is far
from being the only factor in the equation.
When it comes to road and rail competition, Lombard indicates that road
has trumped rail in the Senegambia – although, like Muñoz and Byiers and
Woolfrey, he points to ongoing plans to rehabilitate the railways. Although rail
is once more promoted as a viable alternative to road, notably in East Africa and
the Horn, Yunnan Chen and Lamarque signal that questions remain about their
nancial viability. Among road transporters, there is oen resistance to anything
that smacks of favouritism – as has been amply demonstrated by resistance to
government eorts to favour the SGR in Kenya. Byiers and Woolfrey also point
to the ways in which port competition is closely bound up with struggles for
control over trucking between transporters in Burkina Faso, Togo and Ghana.
is has been a recurring feature along the East and Southern African transport
corridors as well.
A number of contributions address corridor nancing and construction –
notably the chapters by Cissokho, Muñoz and Oliete and Margrinyà. As
Gambino and Chen both demonstrate, the Chinese state has become important
as a nancier of African corridor infrastructure, but Chinese companies also play
a key role in construction – oen enabling African governments to bring their
own pet projects to fruition. As Gambino indicates, this is true in dierent ways
of the SGR between Mombasa and Nairobi and the Lamu port project. In a
complementary chapter, Chen focuses on the role of Chinese and Turkish actors
in the construction of the Djibouti–Addis Ababa railway that has been central
to Ethiopian plans for redressing its landlocked status. While there is abundant
evidence that African governments have been able to advance their priorities,
Lamarque points to some of the problems that arise when neighbours more or
less consciously undermine each other’s position. Nugent reveals how the lack of
consensus has played out dierently along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor where
Nigerian protectionism reduced trucking to a trickle and then to nothing as
the border with Benin was unilaterally closed since . e manner in which
vested interests cluster at the national level oen means that policy interventions
are thwarted at the corridor level. Where corridor management authorities exist,
they tend to be toothless.
Finally, the volume pays some attention to the everyday users of the corridor.
Unfortunately, the original plan for a chapter specically on trucking in Southern
Africa did not come to fruition – although a number of chapters do allude to
the hardships associated with being on the road and the frustrations of being
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
30 P N H L
stuck at border crossings. Lombard observes that while populations living along
a corridor are supposed to reap many of the rewards, they also have also been
le to deal with the downsides. Along the busiest corridor routes, such as along
the Northern Corridor, accidents and deaths caused by heavy trucks are a daily
hazard. e neglect of secondary roads is another corridor eect that rural
populations are forced to put up with. Border populations who use segments
of the corridors are oen subjected to everyday harassment and are forced to pay
a range of bribes at the crossing points. Whereas in East Africa, there has been a
conscious eort to encourage small-scale traders to make use of OSBP facilities,
this has scarcely been seen as a priority along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor.
is particular corridor perhaps demonstrates the greatest mismatch between
the grand designs at the continental level and what plays out on the ground.
While it sometimes seems that ocial discourse has the miraculous capacity to
conjure corridors into existence, the stark reality of border blockages can about
a much-needed reality check.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
35
C 2
Infrastructure, Development and Neoliberalism
in Africa: The Concept of Transport Corridors
S C
Introduction
Infrastructure in general, and transport infrastructure in particular, are the focus
of an increasing number of social science studies. While most have concen-
trated on how populations have adopted them, few have looked at how they
were perceived before they were established. However, the ways these physical
creations are viewed and justied do not merely stimulate a simple narrative with
no connection to the uses that can be made of them. Instead, they dene much
of what they actually are, as well as the limits within which they are created and
used. Starting out from this premise, this chapter will trace the trajectory of one
of the main intellectual constructs through which roads, ports and railways are
conceived by development actors in Africa: the ‘corridor’.
is archaeological work is all the more important because the term ‘corridor’
is used both by those who think and implement these infrastructures in the
expert domain, and by those who are responsible for producing a critical
discourse about them in the academic domain. is situation certainly concerns
other notions of the development world. However, it is not without its problems,
for how can a critical discourse be produced on the physical and institutional
achievements designated by the expression ‘corridors’ without distancing itself,
at least for a time, from the forms of knowledge and presuppositions that
contribute to making this category legitimate? e concept of corridors does
not refer to a mere association of infrastructures: it gives it a particular meaning.
It entails a certain representation of a territory based on regional, not national,
divisions. In addition, the rhetoric around the formation of these transnational
spaces, which are intended to be free of any constraints that might hinder the
circulation of goods, makes free trade the main vector of development, thereby
making transport infrastructure the material support for what is an eminently
liberal project.
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36 S C
Rather than on infrastructure itself or the science and technology that
enable its construction, this chapter focuses on how the narrative that justies
their existence has developed. is will require us to combine archival material
with informal conversations and observations made during an ethnographic
immersion among expert networks that advocate for this type of policies.
It
will take us on a journey through scientic and expert publications, summary
reports, audit reports, internal correspondences of international organisations
(when they are available), and will even follow the work of the individuals and
groups who deliver this discourse on the international stage, from one organi-
sation or forum to another. e purpose of this chapter is not to uncover the
origin of the notion of ‘corridors’, but rather to identify the starting point(s) of
its investment by development practitioners, the variations, hesitations, as well
as the contradictions inherent in the elaboration of the discourses with which
this category is associated.
When everything is taken together, it reveals the intellectual history of an
expression and its uses. It also exposes some of the mechanisms that have enabled
the neoliberal agenda to prevail and prosper in the small world of development.
Indeed, the rise of the use of the concept of ‘corridors’ has been in fact a response
to the exhaustion of the justications that had surrounded the construction of
transport infrastructure in the development eld since the post-war period. is
made it possible to match the motivations surrounding this type of investment
with the neoliberal thought that dominated the intellectual world in the s
and made the construction of transport infrastructure a necessary prelude to the
creation of transnational free trade zones. Since the time it was founded, this
branch of public policy and the beliefs it conveys have continued their process
of institutionalisation at the heart of an ensemble of international actors who
still contribute to its existence today. Our review of the various stages of devel-
opment and dissemination of the notion of corridors further demonstrates that
1 is chapter parallels the overview of various territories conducted between
and . It is rst of all the product of a compilation of informal interviews,
observations and archival work at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and with
European Union personnel in Brussels. It is also the result of observational work at
meetings attended by development practitioners devoted to transport infrastruc-
tures and trade liberalisation in various West African capitals. To all of this we
added the documentary research (reports, publications, documents and projects)
we carried out over the course of these three years.
2
On the victory of neoliberal ideas during the s, see Philip Mirowski and Dieter
Plehwe (eds), e Road om Mount Pelerin. e Making of the Neoliberal ought
Collective, London, .
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I, D N A 37
the structures of the market economy, of which transport infrastructures have
become the backbone, are the product of an ongoing political eort rather than
a spontaneous natural reality.
The Keynesian Moment: Transport Infrastructures and the
Developmentalist Imagination
At the root of the developmentalist discourse in the immediate aermath of
the Second World War, the link between development and the construction of
transport infrastructure was obvious; however, this link was not made explicit
until much later, at the end of the s. It emerged partly from the increasing
importance attributed by think tanks to the rationalisation of developmen-
talist thinking in the US. In the wake of the New Deal and the Keynesian
thinking that still dominated certain spheres of thought at the time, heavy public
investment in transport infrastructure was seen as a way of compensating for
underdevelopment by contributing to the ‘Big Push’.
As the developmentalist paradigm gradually spread in the immediate
aermath of the Second World War nancing transport infrastructure became a
key activity of the international institutions. e construction of railways, roads
and ports is considered to be one of the essential factors – if not the factor – for
driving development. In the early s, therefore, the construction of transport
infrastructure became one of the World Bank’s main areas of activity. Although
Africa remained neglected, the Bank was carrying out important work in this
eld in Latin America and India. e same was true of the European Economic
3 Karl Polanyi, e Great Transformation, Boston, .
4 Gilbert Rist, Le Développement: Histoire d’une Croyance Occidentale, Paris, .
5
On this subject, see omas Medvetz, ink Tanks in America?, Chicago, .
e expression is borrowed from developmental economist Paul Rosenstein-Rodan,
who theorised the idea in the s. It was subsequently used by Walter Whitman
Rostow. For its use in connection with the development in the transport sector, see
Sergio Oliete Josa and Francesc Magrinyà, ‘Patchwork in an Interconnected World:
e Challenges of Transport Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Transport Reviews,
:, , pp. –, p. .
6 Some recent works have suggested that the idea of ‘development’ was born in the
inter-war period, thereby challenging the timeline suggested by Rist. As we are
primarily interested in the institutionalisation of this school of thought, however, we
adopt the timeline suggested by Rist. Véronique Plata-Stenger, ‘Mission Civilisatrice,
Réforme Sociale et Modernisation: L’Oit et le Développement Colonial dans
l’Entre-Deux-Guerres’, Relations Internationales, :, , pp. –.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
38 S C
Community (EEC), which was also already one of six main providers of funds
in this sector at the time.
Transport infrastructure construction was not supported by any ocial
discourse during this period, however. For the bureaucrats, the signicance of
transport infrastructures in public development policies was a natural conse-
quence. e construction of transport infrastructure has been important element
of the actions taken by the Bretton Woods organisations since their creation in
the post-war context, where this type of infrastructure was particularly targeted.
Also, many of the employees of organisations that were promoting the devel-
opmentalist paradigm – whether they belong to the World Bank or the EEC
– had come from colonial administrations. Still, transport was at the heart of
the public policy being led by these administrations. ere was also a second
pool of international civil servants responsible for designing public development
policies who had come from national administrations in which transport infra-
structure was also seen as an important element of growth.
It was not until the early s that what had seemed to be obvious actually
took the form of a structured discourse in the development sector. Although the
EEC was already one of the largest providers of infrastructure construction, it was
not in its immediate environment that this discourse was being developed, but
rather in Washington, D.C.
One particular research programme was emblematic
of the formation of this discourse: the Transport Research Program, which was
nanced through a co-operation between the US and the World Bank. It was
created in the early s, and distributed its nal publication at the end of the
7 Wilfred Owen, Strategy for Mobility, Washington, D.C., , p. .
8 Véronique Dimier, ‘Politiques Indigènes en France et en Grande-Bretagne dans les
Années : Aux Origines Coloniales des Politiques de Développement’, Politique
et Sociétés, :, , pp. –.
9
Hélène d’Almeida-Topor, Chantal Chanson-Jabeur and Monique Lakroum (eds),
Les Transports en Aique XIXe–XXe Siècle, Paris, .
10 See, for example, Hugh S. Norton, National Transportation Policy: Formation and
Implementation, Berkeley, , but also, more broadly, works such as John K.
Galbraith, Le Nouvel État Industriel: Essai sur le Système Économique Américain,
Paris, .
11 Until the s, and even later, the European Union did not make its presence felt
as a meaningful producer among the players in international aid. See: Véronique
Dimier, e Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire,
Basingstoke, , in particular p. .
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I, D N A 39
s. One of America’s oldest and largest think tanks, the Brookings Institution,
was commissioned to carry out the work. In order to do so, it brought together
not only its permanent think tank employees but also outside consultants from
academia, who were exclusively economists. All together, they exported their
conception of transport infrastructure role in economic development forged in
the US national context, in the development eld.
e arguments that were developed in the various publications associated
with this programme are symptomatic of the justications elaborated during
the s and s around the construction of transport infrastructure in
Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to understand the emergence of this discourse
at that particular moment, we need to look at the history of the institution
from which it originated. e birth of the Transport Research Program corre-
sponded to the shi by many Washington think tanks from national policies
to development policies. e Brookings Institution belongs to the rst wave
of American think tanks created in the US in the early twentieth century by
forward-thinking philanthropic businessmen.
Aer playing an important role in dening the central elements of US
domestic policy, these institutions espoused the immediate post-war movement
designed by the US, which was increasingly invested in international aairs.
e type of discourse think tanks delivered also beneted from the signicant
status acquired by the expertise gained from legitimising public policy during
the war eort. ese institutions won numerous foreign policy contracts from
the American government and other Washington-based organisations, not just
nationally, but also internationally.
12 A series was published as part of this project. All the published works were reviewed
in the various specialist journals of the time. Strategy for Mobility, by Owen Wilson;
Transport Investment and Economic Development, edited by Gary Fromm; Goernment
Controls on Transport: An Aican Case, by Edwin T. Haefele and Eleanor B. Steinberg;
e Impact of Highway Investment on Development, by George W. Wilson, Barbara
R. Bergmann, Leon V. Hirsch and Martin S. Klein; Transport and the Economic
Integration of South America, by Robert T. Brown; Soiet Transport Experience: Its
Lessons for Other Countries, by Holland Hunter; and Distance and Development:
Transport and Communications in India, by Wilfred Owen.
13
Donald E. Abelson, ‘From Policy Research to Political Advocacy: e Changing
Role of ink Tanks in American Politics’, Canadian Review of American Studies,
:, , pp. –; Gerald Freund, Narcissism and Philanthropy: Ideas and
Talent Denied, New York, .
14 See in particular the chronology produced in Donald E. Abelson, Do ink Tanks
Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes, Montreal, , pp. –.
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40 S C
e career path of Wilfred Owen, the director of the programme, makes
this interweaving of national administrations, international administrations
and networks of experts that was specic to the US capital easier to under-
stand. Wilfred Owen was educated as an economist at Harvard in the early
s .
Immediately aer graduating, he joined the Highway Research Board
in Washington, a division of the US National Research Council. Created in
the early s, the Highway Research Board advised the US administration
at a federal level. roughout the s, he was one of the experts on the
National Resources Planning Board, which Roosevelt had created to support
his New Deal policy by providing studies on a number of important topics.
He then moved into the private sector and joined the Brookings Institution,
where he started out producing analyses of US domestic transport policy.
When the organisation became increasingly involved in draing reports on
US foreign policy and foreign countries, Wilfred Owen’s career became inter-
national. His expertise in transport grew, and he worked on the preparation
of reports for the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development
(USAID), the Asian Development Bank and the Ford Foundation in Asia,
Africa and Latin America.
e discourse that developed in the various studies from the Transport
Research Program was clear. e challenge was to bring the relationship between
transport and economic growth up to date, and so transport, and through it
the mobility of goods and people, was placed at the heart of the development
issue. e construction of transport infrastructure was not the only condition
for economic development, but it was a central one. Other intellectual output
from organisations on a similar path to the Brookings Institution reinforced
this argument, as was the case, for example, with the ‘mobility index’ developed
from the statistical work carried out by the International Road Federation.
is organisation had played an important role in disseminating road-building
standards in the immediate post-war era, and its experts now collaborated with
the United Nations, and even the World Bank, in the s.
e index below reproduces the major distinction between ‘developed’ and
‘undeveloped’ countries popularised by the American discourse in the immediate
post-war period. It introduces another division between ‘mobile’ and ‘immobile’
15 See also the career path of Albert O. Hirschman, which is retraced in Jeremy
Adelman, Worldly Philosopher: e Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman, Princeton, .
16 A piece by Graeme Zielinski published in the Washington Post on December
on the death of Wilfred Owen.
17
Charles L. Dearing and Wilfred Owen, National Transportation Policy, Washington,
D.C., .
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I, D N A 41
societies. As a result of this rhetorical work, the discourse on infrastructure is
directly superimposed on that on development.
Table 2.1. Index of per capita GNP and the mobility of nations, .
Country GNP Freight mobility Passenger mobility
Immobile nations
Ethiopia . . .
Pakistan . . .
India . . .
Ghana . . .
Columbia . . .
Peru . . .
Algeria . . .
Greece . . .
Mexico . . .
Mobile nations
Japan . . .
Spain . . .
Chile . . .
UK . . .
Sweden . . .
France . . .
West Germany . . .
US . . .
Canada . . .
Source: Adapted from Owen, Strategy for Mobility, p. .
Beyond the simple correlation between development and mobility revealed
by the use of numbers, the challenge at the time was to manage the causal
link between the two elements in a way that reected the canons of scientic
discourse as closely as possible. Was transport infrastructures a condition or a
consequence of development? In the literature produced by expert circles in
Washington, proof of this causal link necessitated repeated calls for examples
from American history in which roads and, even more, railways, occupied a
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42 S C
signicant place. In the context of the Cold War, however, the example of
communist countries served as a foil. Behind the opposition to it lay criticism
of the Soviet Union’s planning policies, and to a lesser extent those of China.
e leverage eect on development induced by investment in transport infra-
structure was also seen as being closely linked to the forms taken by existing
political and social structures. e combination oered by the examples of
developed countries – the Soviet Union aside – therefore served to dene a
path to development through transport.
Wilfred Owen’s adaptation of the famous stages of development of industrial
societies, which had been theorised by the economist Walt Whitman Rostow
a few years earlier, shows that undeveloped countries corresponded to stages
and and communist countries to stage , notably due to their emphasis on
rail. e US corresponded to stages and .
First was the period of immobility and traditional society. In this period,
it was dicult and costly to develop trade and cultural relations on any
large scale except where channels of communications were provided by the
rivers and oceans. e pattern of living emerging from these conditions was
predominately one of localised agriculture and handicra industries with
a minimum of economic integration and social intercourse. Most people
of the world still live in this initial stage of primitive transport, and their
eorts to break out of a subsistence environment and to achieve a better
life are being thwarted by the same barriers to movement that plagued all
generations before them.
A second stage of transport development was the period of internal
improvements and the growth of trade. Human and animal power was
made much more eective by the development of turn pikes and canals,
which reduced the cost of transport by traditional methods of moving
on land and water. is period of declining transport cost saw both an
expansion of capacity and a lengthening of the radius of trade and travel.
A third stage in the evolutionary process toward greater mobility and
higher standard of living was the period of transport mechanisation and
industrialisation. is was the period of steam power, which introduced
both the steamship and the rst railways. It was a period marked by heavy
18 Robert W. Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric
History, Baltimore, .
19 Ernest W. Williams, Freight Transportation in the Soviet Union, including Comparisons
with the United States, Princeton, .
20 Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist
Manifesto, Cambridge, , in particular pp. –.
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investments in transportation, as well as the establishment of a wide
assortment of manufacturing industries.
A fourth period in the evolution of transport has been the development
of motorisation and the new mobility. is has been an era marked by
growing dependence on trucks, buses and automobiles, and by extensive
eort to provide all-weather roads. is is the period when people and
economic activity were freed from the limited mileage of xed routes
provided by railways ad water ways.
A h stage still in the process of development is the air age and
the conquest of distance, a period in which the world is being united by
transport speeds that are obliterating political boundaries and adding a
third dimension to the solution of transport problems. is stage, however,
has not yet aected local and short-haul transport that comprises a major
part of the transport problem.
We should not over-emphasise the producers’ reasoning in this discussion,
however, as the extract suggests, for those who believed in the link between
mobility and development, the issue of the specicity of the social, political
and economic structures of so-called undeveloped countries raised the question
of the relevance of this model outside the West. What was being questioned
was not the model to be achieved – which was that of the US – but rather the
inescapable nature of the steps required to achieve it. According to the prevailing
economic theories of the time, the heavy public investment in transport infra-
structure had to enable developing countries to catch up, without repeating the
mistakes made by their North American ‘big brother’.
e role of the US, and especially Washington, in creating schools of thought
on the place of transport infrastructure in the development process, may seem
surprising in view of the other development topics from the same period. It
is linked above all to the available sources, which originated in the American
capital and its microcosm of experts, think tanks and national and international
ocials, the main producers of the discourse associating transport infrastructure
with development. Representatives of other organisations located in Europe or
elsewhere that were involved in nancing infrastructure construction did also
have their own vision of the role of transport infrastructure in development.
During this period, for example, the media division of the Directorate-General
for International Cooperation and Development of the European Union (Le
Courrier Afrique – Caraïbes – Pacique – Union Européenne) kept track of
21 Owen, Strategy for Mobility, pp. –.
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44 S C
this thinking in opinion pieces produced by European Union ocials. But it
was only in the US that we saw a systematic shaping of this belief in the form of
research projects, scientic articles, books, indicators and a eld of research in its
own right. Over the next few decades, the central importance of Washington
only increased, as the World Bank’s dominance in the production of devel-
opment knowledge became more signicant.
The Neoliberal Moment:
Transport and Free-Trade Infrastructures
e belief in a link between development and the construction of transport
infrastructure continued to form the basis for justifying transport infrastructure
projects, even though it may have been the subject of heated discussions. e ways
in which this belief was expressed modied though to accommodate changes
in the developmental paradigm, especially with the advent of the Washington
Consensus.
At the end of the s, the myth that associated the construction
of transport infrastructure with development was perpetuated through the
notions of ‘transport corridors’, ‘economic corridors’ and later ‘development
corridors’. e formation of transnational spaces in which goods would be able
to circulate unhindered became one of the preferred paths to development.
More than mobility, it was now free trade that infrastructure had explicitly
come to support. is reformulation was essentially the product of World Bank
personnel, whose transport discourse dominated the s.
Apparently, the World Bank’s use of the term did not just signal the proximity
of the sphere of development to the economy, as it had in the immediate
22
Behind these seemingly rational narratives, it would seem that political interests
were at the forefront. Infrastructure was used as a way of buying African elites, who
were easily able to capitalise on their construction. See Véronique Dimier, Recycling
Empire, in particular p. .
23 See, for example, the birth of the Journal of Transport Economics and Policy in .
24 Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, ‘Le “Washington consensus”: Contribution à une
Sociologie de l’Hégémonie du Néolibéralisme’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences
Sociales, –, , pp. –.
25
For more on this subject, see Josa and Magrinyà’s review paper, ‘Patchwork in an
Interconnected World’, at p. . e role of this organisation in the formulation of the
logic that underlies a large number of development policies has been highlighted in
numerous studies. See, for example, Michael Goldman, ‘e Birth of a Discipline:
Producing Authoritative Green Knowledge, World Bank-Style’, Ethnography, :,
, pp. –.
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I, D N A 45
post-war period, but also to geography, given that the concept actually appeared
in that eld in the s. Little is known about the shi of this notion from
the scientic to the decision-making sphere. In the best-documented North
American context, it seems to have been driven by the increased proximity of
certain experts in the eld to the federal administration aer the Second World
War. Jean Debrie and Claude Comtois are the only geographers who have
attempted to trace the genealogy of the concept of corridors and, to a lesser
extent, the conditions under which it made the shi from the scientic world to
government administration. In their view, the notion rst appeared in so-called
developed countries during the s. e concept of corridors was thus used
in the development eld as early as the s, and therefore at the same time
as in national bureaucracies. It was used in a loose sense, however, and the
word ‘corridor’ was primarily employed as a synonym for terms like ‘transport
sy s t em’. In fact, the word was applied mainly to refer to a simple chain of
dierent types of transport infrastructure.
As a sign of the progressive empowerment of the development industry,
the shi from the notion of US and European national administrations to the
development world could no longer be explained by the career path taken by
individuals such as Wilfred Owen two decades earlier. e porosity between
national and international bureaucracies remained, however, in the form of areas
that grouped their representatives together on specic topics. In the case of World
Bank personnel, which is the best documented situation, this was manifested by
the fact that employees of the organisation participated in numerous interna-
tional conferences, where they sat alongside ocials and experts involved in
making policies for Western countries. Similar spaces were also developed within
the World Bank itself, where weekly training for the organisation’s sta included
26 omas J. Wilbanks, ‘Geography and Public Policy at the National Scale’, Annals
of the Association of American Geographers, :, , pp. –. For a more recent
review of these relationships between government and geography, see National
Research Council, Rediscovering Geography: New Relevance for Science and Society,
Washington, D.C., , pp. –.
27 Jean Debrie and Claude Comtois, ‘Une relecture du concept de corridors de
transport: illustration comparée Europe/Amérique du Nord’, Les Cahiers Scientiques
du Transport, , , pp. –.
28
See, for example, in the case of Latin America: Debrie and Comtois, ‘Une relecture’,
pp. – .
29 Yann Alix (ed.), Les corridors de transport, Cormelles-le-Royal, .
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46 S C
North American or European experts, who were expected to provide potential
models for public development policies intended for developing countries.
It was only from the end of the s that the concept of ‘corridor’ became
the subject of a true denition and delimitation of studies. is moment in time
combined with two important turning points in the development industr y. First, this
theoretical elaboration was mainly produced by personnel from one organisation,
the World Bank. e construction of a discourse that legitimised infrastructure
projects no longer took place outside international organisations, as had been the
case in the immediate post-war era with think tanks in the US capital, but directly
within the bank. is shi in the location of expertise marked the beginning of the
international nancial institution’s armation as a knowledge producer. Second,
while reections on the link between transport and development had mainly focused
on Asia, and to a lesser extent Latin America, the concept of corridors was being
developed based on considerations that were germane to the African continent.
is change reected a move in the World Bank’s interests, and with it those of the
entire development industry, towards Africa.
When viewed through the World Bank’s archives, the process that led to the
reformulation of the link between transport infrastructures and development
emerges as being linked to the armation of the organisation’s so-called ‘technical’
sta at the end of the s more than to any sort of ideological upheaval.
A study
of the correspondence by the infrastructure division personnel, who were mainly
engineers, suggests that the commitment to the concept of corridors coincided
with a dwindling of the prior justications for the construction of transport infra-
structures in developing countries among this group, and the simultaneous rise
of a sense of weariness. e personnel questioned the nature of the projects that
30
In particular, the weekly Wednesday seminars at the organisation’s headquarters
during a part of the s come to mind.
31 is upheaval is represented by the expression ‘knowledge bank’, which has given
rise to a signicant body of literature. Teresa Kramarz and Bessma Momani, ‘e
World Bank as Knowledge Bank: Analyzing the Limits of a Legitimate Global
Knowledge Actor’, Review of Policy Research, :, , pp. –; Goldman, e
Birth of a Discipline; Olivier Nay, ‘International Organisations and the Production
of Hegemonic Knowledge: How the World Bank and the OECD Helped Invent
the Fragile State Concept’, ird World Quarterly, :, , pp. –.
32
John P. Lewis, Richard C. Webb, and Devesh Kapur (eds), e World Bank: Its First
Half Century: History, Vol. , Washington, D.C., , in particular pp. –.
33
S. Cissokho, ‘Reections on the Washington Consensus: When the World Bank
turned to free trade for its transport infrastructure projects’, Politix, :, ,
–.
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I, D N A 47
had been undertaken up to that point, and the recurring failings of infrastructure
construction despite the enormous investments that had been made.
At the same time, an internal reform of unprecedented signicance modied the
functions of these same individuals, giving them greater reach in the development
of projects. e new ‘task team leaders’ were responsible for the composition of
their teams, the development of the logic behind their projects, the sourcing of
funding within the institution to complete their projects and, of course, the task
of convincing the bank’s clients and their superiors of the merits of the project
they were taking on. In other words, they became real promoters of projects
within the new reticular organisation of the World Bank, which was unique to
the emerging management ideology. e bank’s engineers – who had once been
conned to technical expertise – seized this reform and the new roles it created
to change the meaning of transport infrastructure projects. is was reected
in the creation of a multi-donor research programme – the Sub-Saharan Africa
Transport Policy Program (SSATP) – which was closely controlled by the bank,
and brought economists and engineers together to produce an in-depth reection
on public transport policies in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It was notably in this area
that work on dening the World Bank’s transport infrastructure policies, as well
as that of all donors in Africa throughout the s, was carried out.
34 For a more detailed explanation of the role currently being played by the TTL,
see Lavagnon Ika, ‘Opening the Black Box of Project Management: Does World
Bank Project Supervision Inuence Project Impact?’, International Journal of Project
Management, :, , pp. –.
35 Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme, Paris, , pp.
–.
36
is situation would lead to a profound crisis at the end of the s and the partial
overhaul of the programme. John Bruce ompson, ‘Africa’s Transport: A Promising
Future. A Review of Africa’s Achievements’, SSATP Advocacy Paper, Washington,
D.C., , pp. –.
37 In his foreword to the history of the SSATP, John Bruce ompson, a former
European Commission ocial, writes: ‘e European Commission, as a leading
transport donor in Sub-Saharan Africa with activities covering countries, needed
a sectoral approach to sustain its major investments. SSATP policy principles and
good practices guided my development of the EC transport sector guidelines.
Similarly, SSATP experience was shared with the European Union member
states resulting in an EC Communication on promoting sustainable transport in
development co-operation. Lately, SSATP transport corridor expertise contributed
to the EC Communication on the EU-Africa Infrastructure Partnership, which
through a Trust Fund fosters interconnection along the Trans-African transport
corridors’: ompson, Aica’s Transport, p. vii.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
48 S C
ere was also a similar expansion in another, more ideological context,
however. The end of the s saw the institutionalisation of structural
adjustment policies. It emerges from the archives of the bank’s infrastructure
division that highlighting these policies and aligning them with those of the
World Bank and the objectives it set out jeopardised infrastructure projects
as they had previously existed. ‘Corridor’ projects allowed them to be placed
in a broader context than before: the promotion of free trade. is enabled
the infrastructure division to maintain the size of its budget, which had been
endangered during the s, aer an unprecedented growth during McNamara’s
presidency. In a series of letters to its operating teams, the infrastructure division’s
management encouraged corridor projects in the hope that thanks to this type
of project it would be able to show that it fully supported the organisation’s
joint eort to restore the recipient countries’ trade balances by facilitating
interregional trade, thereby beneting from the lines of credit associated with
structural adjustments.
It would be wrong, however, to believe that use of the word ‘corridor’ inside
the bank became a xture as soon as it rst appeared. According to the organi-
sation’s ocial documents, the notion of corridors was rst seen as a response
to the natural problem of landlocked countries. In the late s, therefore, it
was rst of all a question of enabling countries with no direct access to the sea
to limit their import and export costs by creating road or rail infrastructures
with links to one or more ports. At the beginning of the s, the problem
of regional integration, which is considered here from the economic point of
view alone, became part of the mix. e combination of infrastructures was
supposed to enable the creation of new roads, and thus facilitate the formation
of regional markets governed by common legislation. Later in the s, what
became known as ‘rst-generation regional transport and trade projects’ system-
atically accompanied the regional-scale infrastructure construction of institu-
tional reforms.
In this version of corridor projects, infrastructure remained the
basis for the projects, but served as a lever to trigger institutional reforms such
as the reorganisation of customs services, the harmonisation of laws, or even the
creation of public–private partnerships. In addition to the shi in meaning of
infrastructure investments, new ‘instruments of government’ emerged.
One sign of how the meaning and instruments associated with this solution
were solidifying, a ‘toolkit’ of all the reforms tied to this category was published
38 Abel Bove, et al., ‘West and Central Africa Trucking Competitiveness’, SSATP
Working Paper , Washington, D.C., , p. .
39 Christopher C. Hood, e Tools of Government, London, .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I, D N A 49
by the bank in . is type of document is common in the organisation.
It encapsulates solutions that are considered to be part of the bank’s classic
repertoire, and includes condensed government instruments that otherwise exist
independently, but that together form this category of public policy. Corridors
are seen as a set of measures, laws, institutions, customs reforms and infrastruc-
tures that combine to facilitate free trade at a regional level. is type of policies
within the bank was also crystallised in way the bank was organised, as starting
in the s, a working group specically dedicated to sharing experiences on
corridor projects took shape. Rather than by regular meetings alone, this group’s
existence was rst given substance in mailing lists across which so-called corridor
projects circulated so that they could be submitted for a joint review before being
examined by the bank’s management. ough intangible, these internal networks
helped spread these policies through the organisation beyond Africa and infra-
structure departments, and established peer reviews of these applications.
e concept of corridors thus allowed the faith in the links between transport
infrastructure and development to continue to thrive in a renewed form at the
end of the s. In a context in which neoliberal thinking now dominated the
developmentalist discourse, it allowed the World Bank employees responsible for
infrastructure projects to create a connection between the achievements of their
project, free trade and development. Once again, the centre of gravity of this
discursive production seemed to be Washington – or more precisely the World
Bank – thereby following a path that resembled the way development knowledge
was produced. is discourse has, however, now been taken up on several occasions
by a number of international organisations, whose policies it echoes.
Well-established Belief
e actions of the bank’s sta alone are not enough to explain why this category
and the tools of government it embodies still endure. In fact, they are also
supported by a network of actors stretching beyond the World Bank’s circle
of employees. Representatives of the European Union, national co-operation
agencies, the African Development Bank, regional economic communities
(RECS), all kinds of consultancy rm, national administrations, and even the
business community all form an ensemble of actors who exist because of this
solution just as much as they contribute to its existence. e challenge of this
last section, which takes the form of an epilogue, is not to create an exhaustive
40 Charles Kunaka and Robin C. Carruthers, Trade and Transport Corridor Management
Toolkit, Washington, D.C., .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
50 S C
mapping of this set of actors and the places where they come together.
It is
more modest than that: it is a question of using our interviews and observa-
tions in an attempt to sketch out a few hypotheses to explain what may have
governed the spread of this approach beyond World Bank programmes alone
since the s.
Hegemonic Discourse
e cultural hegemony of the bank’s discourse is rst and foremost the product
of the balance of power in the development world. In terms of corridors, this
hegemony is reinforced by the opaque nature of speeches on transport infrastructure
policy by donors such as the European Union. Although the European Union’s aid
policies focused on this type of achievement at the outset, ocials at DG DEVCO
adopted the instruments and discourse developed by the Bank during the s.
Subsequent sta cuts at the Directorate General for International Cooperation and
Development from the end of the s only increased the dependency of this area
of the European Union’s administration on the World Bank. e dominance of
the bank’s infrastructure discourse has been further enhanced by the growing value
of co-nanced project that have associated the bank with national co-operation
agencies such as those of Germany (GIZ), the US (USAID) and Japan (JICA),
for which the challenge is to use these collaborations as a way of magnifying the
impact of their own projects.
e success of this category may, however, be due to how it has been shaped.
In a context in which development aid is increasingly subject to measured
targets, the turnkey quantication instruments provided with this type of
public action facilitate its spread to other national co-operation organisations
concerned about being able to quantify their actions and impacts. e malle-
ability of the concept, and even the blurring that surrounds this category, is a
41 See for example on this subject, studies using social network analysis: SWAC/
OECD, Cross-Border Co-operation and Policy Networks in West Aica, Paris, ,
pp. – and –.
42 Dimier, Recycling Empire, in particular p. .
43
Kevin P. Donovan, ‘e Rise of the Randomistas: On the Experimental Turn in
International Aid’, Economy and Society, :, , pp. –; just like international
public policies: Patrick Le Galès, ‘Performance Measurement as a Policy Instrument’,
Policy Studies, :, , –. See, for example, the standardisation proposed
in Kunaka and Carruthers, Trade and Transport Corridor Management Toolkit, pp.
–.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I, D N A 51
‘catch-all’, making corridors ‘boundary objects’.
It unites professionals from
dierent development circles specialising in infrastructure, transport, borders,
regional integration and the free movement of goods, all of which can be found
in one or more of the components of this type of standard public policy.
e scale of regional actions this category embraces has a certain resonance
among a number of international organisations that lack recognition.
Representatives of the RECs and the African Union see promotion of the
regional level as a means of asserting their authority by strengthening the
regional integration process and providing their respective administrations with
the resources they lack. ey enable representatives of the continent’s regional
organisations to rely on the inuence of donors to make their respective organi-
sations’ regulatory production eective at a national level. In addition, we see
the production and dissemination of idealised representations of the continent
in the formulation of projects such as the Trans-African Highway, NEPAD,
PIDA and more recently the AfCFTA.
e notion has also been established in advocacy speeches by interest groups
representing the economic world, with the support of national co-operation
agencies in both West and East Africa. Over the years since , organisa-
tions like the Borderless Alliance in West Africa and the East African Business
Council in East Africa have seized on the notion in order to pressure national
governments and RECs and advocate for lower export taxes. e sensitivity of
national administrations to the discourse of business-oriented interest groups
has also been reinforced by the increasing importance of indicators such as the
‘Doing Business Index’, which is directly based on business perceptions, as well
as by the new conditionalities associated with International Monetary Fund
funding and the ‘improvement of the business climate’.
44 See also the seminal article by Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional
Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in
Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, –’, Social Studies of Science, :,
, pp. –. In the development eld, see the Camille Al Dabaghy’s work on
the Malagasy decentralisation programme: Camille Al Dabaghy, ‘Pour ou Contre
les Centres d’Appui aux Communes: Controverse sur les Instruments dans le Tout
Petit Monde Transnationalisé de la Décentralisation Malgache’, a presentation at
the AFSP congress in Bordeaux in .
45 Timothy Besley, ‘Law, Regulation, and the Business Climate: e Nature and
Inuence of the World Bank Doing Business Project’, Journal of Economic Perspectives,
:, , pp. –.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
52 S C
The Formation of a Small Community
Beyond these various reappropriations, the institutionalisation of this category
and the instruments of government it conveys depend on the forums in which
they are debated. Again, World Bank sta play a leading role in facilitating and
organising these networks. At a continental level, one of the major forums is
the SSATP, which is still hosted by the bank as we are writing these lines. Based
on the annual meetings of the programme, it was decided in to create an
annual conference that would bringing the various actors from the public and
private sectors that are supposed to be involved in the development of corridors
together at a continental level. is forum is known as the REC-TCC (Regional
Economic Communities Transport Coordination Committee). It is reinforced
by numerous other forums organised by business representatives in West and
South Africa.
While these may be less prestigious, they also see representatives
from the private and public sectors come together on the subject of corridors
with the same frequency.
According to our observations, these social spaces are undoubtedly areas of
confrontation between dierent visions of what corridors are or, more broadly,
the general level of interest in them. is includes opposition between repre-
sentatives of the private and public sectors, between the dierent areas of the
national administration, between regional and national administrations, and
even between competing regional bureaucracies such as between representa-
tives of WAEMU and ECOWAS in West Africa. However, they are also – and
perhaps above all – places where there it is possible to disseminate ideas and
good practices associated with this category policy. Against the backdrop of
PowerPoint presentations or less formal discussions in reception rooms or hotel
buets, the same arguments are repeated, the same examples circulate, and the
same people meet. e spread of this type of policy also ows from a certain
type of elite sociability that is re-created in these forums, akin to that of clubs,
and common to representatives of the private sector and the internationalised
public sector. is community is further reinforced by the existence of other
similar spaces at national and regional levels, where presentations are held and
debates are organised on related themes in the meeting rooms of the same hotels,
46 Borderless Alliance, East African Business Council.
47 Cissokho, S., ‘Fabriquer son “accès” à l’État: Ethnographie d’un espace de rencontre
international entre représentants du secteur privé et public (Afrique de l’Ouest)’,
Anthropologie et Développement, / (to be released).
48 Dominique Connan, ‘Une Réinvention de la Diérence Élitaire: Un Rotary Club
dans le Kenya de Mwai Kibaki’, Critique Internationale, :, , pp. –.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
I, D N A 53
and bring together representatives of the same national administrations, the
same international organisations and the same interest groups. ese sociabilities
are further perpetuated in the management organisations that embody most
corridors today.
ese spaces embrace certain skills and resources that enable the movement
of individuals from one organisation to another. National administrations thus
serve as a reservoir not only for international organisations, but also for expert
rms with which national co-operation organisations contract in order to set
up their programmes. is is the case with the most senior customs ocers,
who are particularly envied for the networks of ocers they have at various
border crossings and for their knowledge of the complex rules governing the
movement of goods. ey can thus be found in large numbers in both RECs and
organisations representing the interests of business communities at a national
and regional level, such as the Borderless Alliance in West Africa, or in funds
that bring together donors of all kinds, such as TradeMark East Africa. ese
forums are therefore also, and sometimes rst and foremost, places where
national administrative sta seeking to internationalise are recruited, as well
as places for discussion. As in other areas of public development policy, this
situation cannot exist without generating professionalisation, once again making
a contribution if not to the spread, then at least to the maintenance of this
category, which is now associated with the interests of a specic social group.
Conclusion
e story of the journey of the corridor concept in the development industry
provides more than just a reection on infrastructure or even the construction
of a category of policy: it oers a perspective on how the neoliberal agenda has
prevailed in the development eld. is process includes the already well-known
role of the World Bank, which, as in many other areas of development, is the
49 ese organisations exist for the Abidjan-Lagos, North, Central, Walvis Bay,
Maputo and Dar es Salaam corridors. For more information, see: Yao Adzigbey,
Charles Kunaka and Tesfamichael Nahusenay Mitiku, ‘Mécanismes Institutionnels
de Gestion des Corridors en Afrique Subsaharienne’, SSATP Working Paper ,
Washington, D.C., ; or John Arnold, Gerald Ollivier and Jean-Francois Arvis,
Best Practices in Corridor Management, Washington, D.C., .
50 See, for example, the recent ECOWAS Task Force project.
51 See, for example, the work on transitional justice by Sandrine Lefranc and Frédéric
Vairel, ‘ e Emergence of transitional justice as a professional international practice’,
ECPR International Congress, Reykjavik, Iceland, August .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
54 S C
main producer of the conceptual framework that is bringing this reversal about.
More unexpected, however, are the phenomena behind the dissemination of
this agenda. Across the transport infrastructure sector, they are not so much
the product of an ideological battle as of the armation of certain categories of
employees within the World Bank. In addition, the dissemination and mainte-
nance of this new framework is not a matter of conviction, but rather a set of
beliefs and institutions based on a certain type of sociability and expertise.
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57
C 3
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Temporal Layers
of Transport Corridors in Uganda
I S
Introduction
It is oen claimed that modern trade corridors are based on the colonial infra-
structures that were created to carry goods from the African interior to the
coast. When the Europeans arrived in Buganda in the mid-s, however, the
region was already part of a long-distance trading system made up of roads
and trade centres (market towns) that linked the Great Lakes Region and the
Eastern coast. When the British arrived and settled there, they recorded what
they found and used this remarkable transport system for their own colonial
interests. e British colonial road system was therefore built on top of the
pre-existing regional network. As has been the case in Europe, where the modern
trans-European networks are partially a consequence of the road system of the
Roman Empire, modern-day transport corridors in Africa are the result of a
system that was rst used centuries ago as a way to improve trade, move troops
and assert political control over the region. is chapter strips away the layers
of history and seeks to demonstrate that today’s trading space has a far longer
history than is oen thought. Its goal is twofold, therefore: rstly, to make a
contribution towards showing that long-distance trade in the interlacustrine
region was not an outside initiative, but was based on a combination of local
enterprises, the experience and global connections of coastal traders, thereby
demonstrating the complexity of the trade system in East Africa; and, secondly,
to show that as in Europe and Asia, transport corridors in Africa have a long
1
Debra Johnson and Colin Turner, Trans-European Networks: e Political Economy
of Integrating Europe’s Inastructure, London, ; Cèsar Carreras and Pau De Soto,
‘e Roman Transport Network: A Precedent for the Integration of the European
Mobility’, Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History,
:, , –.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
58 I S
historical trajectory that links dierent times and experiences in the form of
overlapping maps of transport networks.
Transport Corridors and Long-Distance Trade
Transport corridors are seen as a modern means of boosting economic devel-
opment and stimulating regional integration through trade. is concept and
argument has been widely applied to European integration and the use of the
road networks built by the Roman Empire aer BCE as ‘the rst inland
transport network in Europe and the basis of most national road systems in
the European nations over the centuries up to the present’.
In East Asia, too,
modern transport corridors have a long history of shared space with ancient
trade routes, whose shape and location depended on both the administrative
structures that controlled them and the commercial and economic needs of
those who used them. Describing what he saw when he arrived on the shores
of Lake Victoria in , John Hanning Speke described the Buganda system
thus: ‘e roads, as indeed they were everywhere, were as broad as our coach-
roads, cut through the long grasses, straight over the hills and down through the
woods in the dells – a strange contrast to the wretched tracks in all the adjacent
countries.’
Obviously, another major change was the technological advances
in transport techniques, such as the introduction of motor vehicles.
In some ways, all this is also true of East Africa. e main modern Northern
transport corridor in East Africa links the port of Mombasa to Rwanda and DRC,
passing through Uganda and connecting the states of the East African Community.
In fact, however, this corridor is actually mainly based on the colonial – and
in some cases pre-colonial – transport system that has been used for trade and
political purposes for centuries. e correspondence of the location of the corridor
in the Kenyan section from Mombasa to Lake Victoria (which can be seen by
simply superimposing a contemporary map on to a colonial map) is less obvious
in the Ugandan section. is is in part as a result of the very limited number
of available maps of the early transport system in Uganda (if any exist at all).
It is this area that this chapter will analyse, focusing on south-west Uganda as
the portion of the current corridor where local trading activities linking dierent
2 Carreras and De Soto, ‘e Roman Transport Network’, p. .
3 Asian Development Bank (ADB); UKAID; JICA; World Bank Group, e WEB
of Transport Corridors in South Asia, Washington, D.C., .
4 J. H. Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, Edinburgh and London,
. Among the rst accounts of Buganda, see also John Roscoe, e Baganda,
London, .
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T T L T C U 59
regions (cross-border trade) were not only inuenced by external events such as
the arrival of Europeans, but were also closely related to, and determined by, local
dynamics. Despite the very local characteristics of the trade routes we analyse here,
we can see that they answered – albeit indirectly – to external demands and stimuli,
as was the case in other parts of the world, such as South Asia.
Dubbed ‘untouched’ Africa by some authors due to its lesser level of
involvement in the slave trade, the Great Lakes Region has long been seen as an
isolated region that was not part of the trade system that connected the Swahili
region globally (albeit indirectly).
However, a few more recent studies have
established that the Great Lakes Region was linked to the coast by an extensive
and quite well-maintained mobility system.
e main aim of this chapter is
therefore to oer a contribution to a better understanding of the socio-economic
context of this region prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Among the key
conclusions of this chapter is that colonial structures and systems responded to
colonial needs, but were also built on to pre-existing networks.
Comparison and Organisation of the Chapter
In Africa, as in Europe, the modern transport systems that connect the various
regions of the continent were built on to the existing structures that linked
dierent regions, the Roman Empire’s road system being their most sophisticated
and widespread ancient antecedent. Studies on European commercial routes have
proved that the Roman Empire’s decision to build a road network was inuenced
by both economic and political reasons, as was the case in other regions such as
in Rome’s contemporary, Persia. e case of the Roman Empire’s transport
network provides us with an example of how transport infrastructures are
sometimes built in accordance with both economic and political logics, but it
also oers evidence of the relationship between roads and urban centres (spaces
of trade and political power), and how these strategies and locations can persist
over time, connecting both dierent places and dierent eras.
5 ADB, et al., .
6
Among others see Richard Gray and David Birmingham (eds), Pre-Colonial Aican
Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Aica before , London .
7 For example Karin Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation in Nineteenth-Century East
African Long-Distance Trade: Some Evidence from Missionary Sources’, Aica:
Rivista Trimestrale di Studi e Documentazione dell’Istituto Italiano per l’Aica e
l’Oriente, :/, , pp. –.
8 Carreras and De Soto, ‘e Roman Transport Network’.
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60 I S
In many cases, modern-day transport corridors are not a new invention,
just as they were not a colonial creation. In our case, we see the evolution of
an earlier trade and transport system that consisted mainly of paths, but also
included routes by water across Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika, connecting
the interlacustrine kingdoms with the Swahili region. is chapter is based on
both archival and published materials, and focuses on the nineteenth century
and the great transformations, both economic and political, that that took place
during this period. e s marked the beginning of the colonial era but, as
we will see, it was also a time of major changes in internal equilibria among
dierent kingdoms and peoples, when new ideas and technologies arriving
from outside Africa merged with internal changes and practices that persisted,
sometimes underground, despite colonial eorts to modify them.
Owing to
the breadth of the topic and the lengthy timeframe, this chapter focuses exclu-
sively on those routes (across Uganda) and markets that later became part of
the modern Northern trade corridor. Waterways, particularly those across the
lakes, will not be analysed for the same reasons. Using established historical
works such as those by Jan Vansina and David Newbury, it will show that this
region of Africa did not diverge very much from Europe and Asia (despite the
obvious dierences) as regards colonial and modern political and economic
attitudes towards building on existing systems to enhance or create modern
infrastructures and practices.
Another essential element of this story is markets, which were a crucial
component of the infrastructures that linked dierent kingdoms and opened
up the allegedly ‘untouched’ region to the rest of the continent. e importance
of markets also lay in the extra-economic role they played: as places where people
gathered, and which were oen located close to courts, they had a political, legal
and cultural function. ey were places where people found out the latest news
or gained access to the ruling powers. We have included markets in our analysis,
both as places and as a principal component in economic terms because of their
9 In this work, the author uses the term ‘interlacustrine kingdoms’ to refer to the
kingdoms that developed in the territory that is now Uganda, which were broadly
speaking situated between Lake Victoria, Lake Albert and Lake Edward. From east
to west, they are Busoga, Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro and Ankole.
10 ere are many examples of local practices that persisted despite colonial projects.
One interesting example that has received only limited academic attention so far is
the change in the currency used in the continent. Among others, see Karin Pallaver,
‘“e African Native Has No Pocket”: Monetary Practices and Currency Transitions
in Early Colonial Uganda’, International Journal of Aican Historical Studies, :,
, pp. –.
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T T L T C U 61
importance for proving that a commercial structure and trade infrastructures
existed before the arrival of either the coastal traders or the Europeans. In
this sense, roads and markets are essential parts of a trading system in which
local people were already actively involved in their trade with neighbouring
populations and polities (whether or not they were centralised kingdoms) before
outside traders and authorities arrived. is does not mean that we are denying
or underestimating the external inuences in any way, but simply that as they
expanded, upgraded infrastructures, and reorganised trading structures, the
Europeans built on existing structures that had been created by local authorities –
although they naturally responded to dierent needs and interests, and so the
structure was changed whenever it suited them.
While we have an abundance of sources describing markets and trade routes
in West Africa because of its long-standing links with the Mediterranean world,
which have led to a far lengthier and deeper knowledge of commerce in the
area, the existence of markets and trade links in the interlacustrine region was
only rst described by the Europeans who arrived in the area in the nineteenth
century. Most works on modern Uganda therefore focus on the two most
powerful (and antagonistic) kingdoms in the area: Buganda and Bunyoro. e
pre-eminence of the former during the nineteenth century is undeniable, and
it was also there that the rst Europeans to reach the region were accommo-
dated, but despite its ecient centralised system and regional role, it is not
the only protagonist of this chapter. Among the most important regional
11 On the debate on the concept of ‘market’ and the origins of marketplaces in Africa
see, among others: B. Turyahikayo-Rugyema, ‘Markets in Precolonial East Africa:
e Case of the Bakiga’, in Current Anthropology, :, , pp. –; G. N.
Uzoigwe, ‘Precolonial Markets in Bunyoro-Kitara’, Comparative Studies in Society
and History, :, , pp. –; B. W. Hodder, ‘Some Comments on the
Origins of Traditional Markets in Africa South of the Sahara’, Transactions of the
Institute of British Geographers, , , pp. –; Charles M. Good, ‘Markets
in Africa: a review of research themes and the question of market origins’, Cahiers
d’Études Aicaines, :, , pp. –.
12 Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, ‘Long-Distance Trade and Economic Development in
Europe and Black Africa (Mid-Fieenth Century to Nineteenth Century): Some
Pointers for Further Comparative Studies’, Aican Economic History, , , pp.
–, at pp. –; Alberta O. Akrong, ‘Trade, Routes Trade, and Commerce
in Pre-Colonial Africa’, in N. N. Wane (ed.), Gender, Democracy and Institutional
Development in Aica, Cham, , pp. –.
13 Good, Markets in Aica, pp. –.
14 John A. Rowe, ‘e Western Impact and the African Reaction: Buganda –’,
e Journal of Developing Areas, :, , pp. –; Buganda is usually described
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62 I S
kingdoms, Bunyoro has a twofold signicance, as the place where many markets
were organised, and as a centralised power that controlled a broad swathe
of territory, including essential areas that produced two vital items for inter-
kingdom trade – salt and iron. e kingdom of Bunyoro was what remained
of the earlier empire of Bunyoro-Kitara, which fell in the s. According to
Uzoigwe, Bunyoro-Kitara’s economy was reasonably diversied and specialised,
which led to a proliferation of markets that were later seriously aected when
the kingdom of Tooro proclaimed its independence from Bunyoro in the s.
is meant exclusion from direct access to the trade routes to the coast and
losing the salt mines of Katwe and Kibiro.
Two Elements of the Equation: Routes and Markets
e region’s trade system was made up of various levels and types of trade,
depending on the goods being traded (and their strategic importance) and the
distances covered. e model described by Jan Vansina in the case of trade in
Central Africa can also be applied to East Africa to some degree. ree types
of trade can be distinguished: local (from village to village, exchanging local
products in local markets), interregional (involving neighbouring people trading
in border markets or large trade centres and exchanging both local and long-
distance products), and long-distance (involving mainly non-African products
in exchange for slaves, ivory and copper). According to Charles Good, on the
other hand, the type of trade that connected dierent polities can also be referred
as a centralised kingdom, with the Kabaka as a clear central authority, but this
description overshadows the presence of dierent cultures and peoples within
Bugandan territory, particularly regarding its s acquisitions and at its periphery.
e nature of the kingdom is not the focus of this chapter, but it is important
to remember that these kingdoms were far more varied than they have oen
been described to be: Aidan Stonehouse, ‘e Bakooki in Buganda: Identity and
Assimilation on the Peripheries of a Ugandan Kingdom’, Journal of Eastern Aican
Studies, :, , pp. –.
15 Charles M. Good, ‘Markets in Africa’, p. .
16 On the history of Bunyoro-Kitara and its fall, see, among others: G. N. Uzoigwe,
‘Bunyoro-Kitara Revisited: A Reevaluation of the Decline and Diminishment of
an African Kingdom’, Journal of Asian and Aican Studies, :, , pp. –;
A. R. Dunbar, A History of Bunyoro-Kitara, Oxford, .
17 Uzoigwe, ‘Precolonial Markets’, p. ; Uzoigwe, ‘Bunyoo-Kitara Revisited’, p. .
18
Jan Vansina, ‘Long-Distance Trade Routes in East Africa’, Journal of Aican History,
, , pp. –.
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T T L T C U 63
to as the ‘king’s trade’: long-distance/interstate trade with other kingdoms, where
traders needed personal favours and permission from a king, for example the
Omugabe of Ankole. Alongside a classication of the various types of trade,
we also nd a category of the dierent types of market, even though it may
not have been created with evidence from Africa, such as the one proposed by
William Skinner for China, which was re-elaborated by Uzoigwe in .
In Uzoigwe’s study, we nd three types of market: () local, serving a village or
group of villages; () royal, situated near a palace in order to trade close to the
source of power; and () specialised, established close to where a certain product
is produced or manufactured.
Frontier markets, which are located between
two dierent authorities or two dierent regions, make up a special category.
In this case, markets appear near lines of cultural dierentiation, in transitional
and peripheral areas, to some extent in accordance with Igor Kopyto’s later
study on frontiers, and those proposing a wider pattern of buer zones that
become borders, and markets that become the focal point of border towns.
Following Newbury’s idea, markets were likely to crop up in peripheral areas,
where goods and people meet.
In modern Uganda, both the eastern and western regions were frontier zones
where there were no strong kingdoms to govern what are now borderlands. ere
were ‘buer’ kingdoms that traded very actively, however, and small towns with
good links to neighbouring areas and active markets. Conversely, peripheral
markets and towns in regions with strong or large kingdoms such as Buganda
seem to have been less important, as the central power had more control over
them, leaving them with fewer opportunities for growth.
Trade in the interlacustrine region expanded considerably in the mid-s,
due mainly to increased international demand for ivory and slaves to work in
the plantations of Zanzibar.
is meant that coastal traders played a newly
active role in regional commerce, not by creating a new trade network, however,
19 Charles M. Good, Rural Markets and Trade in East Aica. A Study of the Functions
and Development of Exchange Institutions in Ankole, Uganda, Chicago, , p. .
20 G. William Skinner, ‘Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China’, e Journal
of Asian Studies, in three parts), :, , , .
21 Uzoigwe, ‘Precolonial Markets’, p. .
22 Ibid.
23
David Newbury, ‘Lake Kivu Regional Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal
des Aicanistes, :, , pp. –.
24 Newbury, ‘Lake Kivu’, p. .
25 Good, Rural Markets.
26 Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation’.
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64 I S
but by using the one that was already there. At the time, there were three
main trade routes in the region: one in the south linking Kilwa to the interior,
one in the north towards the coast of Kenya, and one in the centre linking
Bagamoyo with Lake Tanganyika. is last one, the central caravan route, on
which coastal traders and the Nyamwezi were particularly active, is the most
important for our story. is new era of regional trade was not only the conse-
quence of new external demands for African goods, however: it was also the
outcome of new balances of power within the kingdoms and people of the
region, such as Buganda’s prominence and the development of a new class of
Nyamwezi traders, the wandewa.
e key area in all of this is south-west Uganda (Ankole and especially
Kigezi), which was the ‘frontier’ zone between or adjacent to some of the region’s
most important kingdoms in the nineteenth century – Bunyoro and Buganda
and Rwanda – and various economic zones, where trade oered a comparative
economic advantage. e presence of a number of dierent kinds of terrain,
production (agricultural, mineral and handcra) and polities made the region
particularly rich in terms of trade and exchanges, creating a special economic
and cultural environment in which the local and regional combined and were in
some way inter-dependent. Dierent people and polities met in these frontier
markets, creating the lively locations that remain a dynamic borderland to this
day. At the time, most of the goods that were exchanged between the interlacus-
trine region and the coast passed through Ankole and Kigezi, not from eastern
Uganda. Goods arrived from the Swahili regions thanks to merchants who used
27 John Tosh, ‘e Northern Interlacustrine Region’, in R. Gray and D. Birmingham
(eds), Pre-Colonial Aican Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Aica
before , London, , pp. –, at p. ; Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation’,
p. .
28 Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation’, p. .
29 Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation’, p. .
30 e Baganda were not particularly active in regional trade outside their kingdom
(despite some later attempts at sending expedition directly to Zanzibar, as in the
case of Mutesa in ). Before the mid-s, they tended to wait for merchants to
reach Buganda to trade, focusing their activities beyond their borders on demands
for tributes, conquests and plundering. Despite this, Buganda undeniably played
a central role in regional trade in view of their requirements of salt and iron and
their production of bark cloth.
31
On trade by Ankole see, among others, the always interesting Good, Rural Markets.
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T T L T C U 65
caravan routes that mostly began in Zanzibar.
According to Edward Alpers,
merchants from Zanzibar had been attracted by the possibility of exploiting
the region as a source of ivory since the early s, when the Sultan of Oman
moved its capital to Zanzibar. e ivory trade was especially lucrative during
this period, not only due to high demand from non-African markets, but also,
and in particular, because of the large numbers of elephants in the area and the
quality of their ivory, the so-called ‘so type’, which was ideal for carving.
Coastal traders set up their main stations in Karagwe (now north-west
Tanzania),
most of them close to the capital but some in the north near the
Buganda’s border, which was proof of their preference for the southern (land)
and Victoria (water) routes rather than the eastern (Kenyan) one as a way of
reaching the Indian Ocean – favouring what is now the Ugandan border with
Rwanda and Tanzania rather than the border with Kenya.
eir choice was
dictated by their need to be close to Buganda, which they entered in s,
and which became their main trading partner, thanks in part to the Kabaka’s
openness to outside opportunities. However, he was always careful not to give
them too much space or power, which is probably one of the reasons why
they were kept close to the court, and were not free to settle wherever they
wanted.
In an attempt to cut rival kingdoms out of the coastal trade, this special
relationship with Buganda in the second half of the s essentially became an
exclusive one, especially in the case of Zanzibar. is isolated Bunyoro, which
32
When referring to traders from Africa’s east coast, many sources refer to Muslim
traders, and others to Arab traders, in addition to Swahilis. ese terms are not
synonymous, and they oen refer to dierent peoples, but considering the objectives
of this chapter and to make it simpler, the author uses the generic term ‘coastal
traders’, when referring to merchants from the coastal region who were active in
long-distance trade.
33 Sayyid Said ibn Sultan, the ruler of Oman, moved its capital from Muscat to Zanzibar
in ; Edward A. Alpers, ‘e East African Slave Trade’, in Z. A. Konczacki and
J. M. Konczacki (eds), An Economic History of Tropical Aica. Volume One – e
Pre-Colonial Period, London, , pp. –.
34 R. W. Beachey, ‘e East African Ivory Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, e
Journal of Aican History, :, , pp. –.
35
According to Henri Médard, during the late s the region south of Lake Victoria
was the main route linking Unyamwezi and Zanzibar: Henri Médard, Le Royaume
du Buganda au XIXe Siècle, Paris, , p. .
36 Tosh, ‘e Northern Interlacustrine Region’, pp. –; Rowe, ‘e Western
Impact’, p. .
37 Good, Rural Markets, p. .
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66 I S
was Buganda’s principal antagonist at the time.
Despite this attempt, some
coastal traders visited Bunyoro in , bypassing Buganda and opening up a
new route, but they were not granted access to Rwanda until the s, when
the need for weapons overshadowed Rwandan suspicions.
Coastal traders reached Buganda from their base in Karagwe in the s,
and Ankole as late as the s. In fact, they did not cross into Ankole or
Rwanda for many years. Ivory was brought to them by others, probably from
Unyamwezi.
Unyamwezi was another key location in long-distance trade. It
lay at the junction of a number of dierent commercial routes, and was the
main place where porters were hired to take ivory to the coast.
It has been
estimated that half a million porters passed through Tabora every year and they
were preferred to slaves for transporting such a dicult, heavy and valuable
cargo. While Ankole had irregular and indirect trade contacts with Karagwe,
the Baganda, in a break with their usual customs, travelled to Karagwe to trade
before the coastal people arrived, and also maintained contacts with polities
along the southern shore of Lake Victoria. Buganda’s traders and envoys were
no strangers to using the lake to reach places such as the Speke Gulf on the
southern shore of Lake Victoria. Another factor that helped Buganda’s trade
was its relations with the Kooki kingdom. Kooki was situated at the south-west
periphery of Buganda, and had always been an important ally, but it only became
a part of Buganda in the late s. Buganda was its main trading partner, and
it was a key to commerce because of its privileged geographical position at the
junction of various dierent markets: Bakooki merchants traded actively with
38 Tosh, ‘e Northern Interlacustrine Region’, p. .
39 R. M. A. Van Zwanenberg and Anne King, An Economic History of Kenya and
Uganda, –, London, , p. ; Tosh, ‘e Northern Interlacustrine
Region’, p. .
40 Good, Rural Markets, pp. –.
41
Direct trade between Unyamwezi and Zanzibar dated back to the early s, if
not earlier. Sayyid Said ibn Sultan sent at least one large caravan to Unyamwezi,
mainly to trade in ivory: Alpers, ‘Slave Trade’, p. .
42 Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation’, p. .
43 Beachey, ‘Ivory Trade’, p. .
44
Good, Rural Markets, ; Gerald W. Hartwig, ‘e Victoria Nyanza as a Trade
Route in the Nineteenth Century’, e Journal of Aican History, :, , pp.
–.
45 Hartwig, ‘Victoria Nyanza’, p. .
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T T L T C U 67
Ankole (for salt) and Tooro (for ivory), and these coastal traders played a major
role in regional trade in the s.
To complicate the picture even further, the rivalry between Buganda and
Bunyoro played a relatively important role in the coastal traders’ inability to
expand their activities beyond Buganda.
is proved not to be an impediment
to regional trade, however, because, while coastal merchants were involved, they
did not control it. eir activity consisted in trading with locals, changing their
business partners if needed, and taking their goods to the coast. Despite the fact
that there is little evidence so far that there were any full-time professional local
traders (most were also involved in agriculture or in producing the goods they
were exchanging), locals did not give up their roles, and managed the organi-
sation of regional trade, apart from the transport of goods for long distances.
As we have seen, the network of regional trade formed the basis for, or a
small segment of, long-distance trade routes. In the case of interlacustrine
trade (in modern Uganda) one of the main links to the outside world, heading
south through modern Rwanda, was the Nyamwezi and their trade network.
e Nyamwezi had long traded goods such as iron, salt, slaves, cattle and goats,
but they became particularly well-known on the east coast of Africa (particu-
larly Zanzibar) in the s as a link between non-African economies (Europe,
India and America) and the source of ivory in central Uganda. e Nyamwezi
mainly used two trade routes to reach the coastal region, one through Sangu to
Lake Tanganyika, and one through Unyanyembe (Tabora) to Lake Tanganyika,
or heading north through Rusubi and Busambiro.
What Goods? Salt, Iron and Ivory
As we have seen, the ivory trade was central to the development and expansion
of trade networks in the s. It had had a small local market before that
time, as it was mainly for non-African outside markets and was therefore less
signicant because of its limited value for the local population (it was mainly
restricted to being a symbol of chieainship).
Furthermore, the ivory trade
46 Stonehouse, ‘Bakooki’, p. .
47 Good, Rural Markets, p. .
48 Tosh, ‘e Northern Interlacustrine Region’.
49 Andrew Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, in Pre-Colonial Aican Trade, pp. –.
50 Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, pp. –.
51 Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, p. ; Beachey, ‘ivory trade’, ; e former is more or
less where the modern central railway line from Dar es Salaam to Tabora now runs.
52 Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, pp. , .
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also had the side-eect (besides the increased development of long-distance
routes) of helping trade in other local goods that were exchanged along the route,
particularly salt (such as that produced in Vinza, east of Lake Tanganyika) and
iron (produced north-west of Unyamwezi), which were used by long-distance
caravans as currency to pay tributes or buy food along the route, and in some
cases ivory itself.
Another local good with a key role in the ivory trade was
slaves. Most were initially taken to Zanzibar, but with the abolition of the slave
trade in the sultan’s dominions in the s, they became a commodity to be
traded locally, and were oen employed in the hunting of elephants as a source
of ivory.
While ivory became the principal commodity in long-distance trade (its
extraction was mainly a royal monopoly), particularly from the time of Kabaka
Semakokiro’s kingdom (–), because of external demand, the two key
goods in regional trans-kingdoms trade were historically salt and iron. Salt was
an essential and strategic commodity because of its scarcity (not many areas
produced a high-quality version) and the location of the main production
area, Kigezi (in south-west Uganda), which was a frontier zone between two
kingdoms that fought constantly for control of the salt elds. e salt trade was
therefore of particular importance for the region, above all as regards the salt
produced in Katwe, which linked the Lake Edward town to Congo, Rwanda,
Ankole and Buganda. Other sources were Kasenyi, on the shores of Lake
George, and Kibiro, on the eastern shore of Lake Albert, which was closer to
Bunyoro’s centre of power than Katwe, and more oriented towards the north
and east. e main salt producers areas were therefore in territories controlled
by Bunyoro-Kitara, which had a monopoly of both salt production and trade
routes until the early to mid-s.
53 Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, p. .
54 Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, p. .
55 Despite the signicance of salt production for Katwe, it is important to point out
that it was not its exclusive activity. Because of uctuating production levels, people
in Katwe engaged in other activities such as agriculture to ensure they could make
a living: Kathryn Barrett-Gaines, ‘e Katwe Salt Industry: A Niche in the Great
Lakes Regional Economy’, Aican Economic History, , , pp. –.
56 Graham Connah, ‘e Salt of Bunyoro: Seeking the Origins of an African Kingdom’,
Antiquity, :, , pp. –; Charles M. Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease:
Aspects of Development in Africa’s Northern Great Lakes Region’, e International
Journal of Aican Historical Studies, :, , pp. –, at p. .
57 Uzoigwe, ‘Precolonial Markets’, pp. –.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T T L T C U 69
A thriving salt trade was common to the entire western region, but the role of
Katwe is particularly important for the purposes of this chapter because it was
mainly the salt from there that went south, especially to modern-day Rwanda,
through Kigezi. According to Charles Good, the main land route from Katwe
crossed Ankole, ‘ultimately linking up with Kigezi, Ruanda and Karagwe’. e
feature of the route through Kigezi was that the trade in salt was supported by
exchanges with other goods through the intervention of part-time traders (who
were also involved in agricultural and pastoralist activities), making the route
particularly important (and sustainable) for the economy of the region. On the
other hand, Kasenyi’s salt became key in the late s, when the long-distance
trade route from the coast crossing Tabora reached Kitagwenda, east of Lake
George, where some of Kasenyi’s salt was traded. e situation changed in the
mid to late s, when a trade shi took place in the region for geopolitical
reasons: Tanganyika became more important, and the salt route shied south.
In some ways, there was already competition between the North and Central
trade corridors, as there is today.
Kigezi therefore played a special role. It formed a kind of buer zone
between the centralised kingdoms, with a long history of migration from the
south (Rwanda) and to central and southern Uganda. Because theirs was
a segmentary society, Bakiga markets were not politically controlled, unlike
in neighbouring Bunyoro and Buganda, where the king controlled the main
markets, usually keeping them close to the court and demanding a fee.
Despite
the lack of a central authority, ‘prominent people in society such as the elders,
medicine men and rain-makers were particularly important as the rulers of the
Basigi, especially before their migration from Rwanda in the s. e role of
the rain-makers and medicine men and Nyabingi priests becomes meaningful
in the context of their function as economic managers of their society’.
e
physical location of markets also depended on the availability of goods (mainly
the food and commodities needed for everyday life), which made them particu-
larly active during droughts or other times of shortages and important for their
role as a space where people could meet, come together and nd out the latest
58 Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease’, pp. –.
59 Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease’, pp. –.
60 Newbury, ‘Lake Kivu’, p. .
61 Grace Carswell, ‘Soil Conservation Policies in Colonial Kigezi, Uganda: Successful
Implementation and an Absence of Resistance’, in W. Beinart and J. McGregor
(eds), Social History and Aican Environments, Oxford, , pp. –.
62 B. Turyahikayo-Rugyema, ‘Markets in Precolonial East Africa’, p. .
63 Turyahikayo-Rugyema, ‘Markets in Precolonial East Africa’, pp. –.
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
70 I S
news. e economy of the area was mainly based on agriculture and trade: the
Bakiga produced a surplus of food crops (primarily peas and beans) that was
traded in neighbouring areas, proving that the dichotomy between food and cash
crops does not always apply. Its location was particularly favourable for this
purpose, due to the diverse agro-ecological neighbouring zones, the exibility
of its agricultural system, and the important trading route (mainly for Katwe
salt) that passed through its territory.
Kigezi was formally acquired by the British in as a consequence of the
Anglo-German-Belgian Boundary Commission of , which settled the claim
by the three parties that wished to gain control of Kigezi. When the British
found that there was no recognisable or usable system of government, they
established their own administration using Baganda agents, as they had in other
regions such as the Eastern Province, which altered the social balance.
Despite
their poor understanding of the size, shape and characteristics of the region,
the British recognised that Katwe’s salt and position was key to their situation,
and so, on his arrival in , Lord Lugard built a fort (Fort George) in Katwe,
which had always been disputed by various powers. Katwe’s importance was
later conrmed by the British decision to guard it as a means of combating
Kabarega (the deant King of Bunyoro) in order to prevent his invasion of Tooro
(which controlled Katwe at that time), and at the same time seeking to obtain
revenues for the government through trade. e British also maintained a
defence force in Tooro in the early s to ‘keep a watch on the salt lakes and
the Belgian frontier’. e British underestimated the local production of food
and cash crops, however, and unsuccessfully attempted to introduce new cash
crops for export, particularly coee, ax and tobacco. is colonial policy was
also impacted by a marketing strategy, because the newly-introduced cash crops
had to be sold through the colonial authorities, while other (pre-colonial) cash
crops were sold directly in markets. is stimulated the smuggling of coee to
the Belgian Congo, where sellers could obtain higher prices and avoid colonial
64 Turyahikayo-Rugyema, ‘Markets in Precolonial East Africa’, p. .
65 Grace Carswell, ‘Food Crops as Cash Crops: e Case of Colonial Kigezi, Uganda’,
Journal of Agrarian Change, :, : pp. –, at p. .
66 Carswell, ‘Food Crops’, p. .
67 Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease’, p. .
68 Carswell, ‘Food Crops’, p. ; Carswell, ‘Soil Conservation Policies’, p. .
69 Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease’, p. .
70 Barrett-Gaines, ‘e Katwe Salt Industry’, p. .
71 Reported in Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease’, p. .
72 On the reasons behind this failure, see Carswell, ‘Food Crops’, p. .
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T T L T C U 71
taxation.
Famers preferred to produce goods they could maintain control over
for marketing and consumption purposes, not least because the new cash crops
could not be eaten in the event of a poor harvest. In a nutshell, one might say
that the strength of local market and cash crop production made a powerful
contribution to the failure of colonial policies, a failure inspired by a lack of
knowledge of the local systems of production and trade.
Post-1800s: Colonial Infrastructures and Regional Trade
With the proclamation of the East African Protectorate (now Kenya) and the
Uganda Protectorate in the late s, Great Britain established a colonial
project founded on its capacity to build and control a feasible, working and
ecient transport system to connect the port of Mombasa, the main exit point
for African products, to the interior of the region. Of particular importance
was the need to link the interior close to Lake Victoria with the coast, thereby
seeking to make the most of possible waterways for the movement of goods.
ere was also the symbolic value of the lake and the sources of the River Nile
for the British colonial plan. One key element in the control of the trac of both
goods and people (mainly the troops required for the colonial enterprise) was
the construction of the so-called Uganda Railway. In colonial projects, railways
were not just a means of transport; they represented modernity and eciency,
and were a symbol of the process of civilisation that theoretically inspired the
colonial venture. While the railway is not among the topics of this chapter,
it represents another example of continuity in routes and infrastructures. It
was seen as a competitor to road-building at the time, but the two (roads and
railway) were actually complementary. e Uganda Railway is, in fact, one
of the colonial railroads that is still in use today (naturally aer modernisation
and in some cases rebuilding), not only because of a dependence on colonial
transport models but also – according to recent studies from the Centre for
Economic Policy Research – because it was constructed in the perfect location,
based on cost analysis reports. In colonial times, the railway line across Kenya
was considered to be the main competitor of road transport and trade, which
73 Carswell, ‘Food Crops’, p. .
74
Patrick Y. Whang, ‘Regional Derailment: the Saga of the East African Railways’,
Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , pp. –.
75 Rémi Jedwab, Edward Kerby, Alexander Moradi, ‘How Colonial Railroads Dened
Africa’s Economic Geography’, <https://voxeu.org/article/how-colonial-railroads-
dened-africa-s-economic-geography>, published online on March [Accessed
August ].
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
72 I S
was a system based on motor vehicles, and on porters before that, and diverted
part of the trade from the central caravan route (through Tanganyika) to the
northern one (through Kenya).
As we have seen, long-distance trade was not an invention of the colonial
rulers, and they did not organise it. e Great Lakes Region was already linked
to the Swahili region through a well-organised trade system that included the
active participation of local traders. ere was also a reasonably good network
of paths connecting the various areas of the Great Lakes Region and facilitating
the movement of people and traders all over the area. e local economies
and local trade in the area were also exible and reactive to external stimuli,
proving African initiative and ‘continuity from earlier processes of economic
change’. Finally – and this was probably the main change – there was the
marginalisation of African traders from the system. e other change was, at least
in part, the subsequent diversion of the trade route from Tanganyika to Kenya,
which inspired the more recent competition between the Northern and Central
corridors. All this happened outside Uganda, however, and within Uganda itself
colonial rule did not totally alter the pattern of trade and route networks. In
, in its Report of Enquiry into Road Transport Conditions in the Protectorate
of Uganda, which analysed the condition of the ‘Kampala–Masaka–Mbarara–
Kabale–Kisoro–Ruhengeri (Ruanda)’ route, the East Africa Royal Commission
stressed that ‘the route between Kampala and Kabale must in the future become
one of the most important in the Protectorate’, even though it was ‘clear that
this route will not be served by railway in the foreseeable future and therefore
every encouragement is present for the setting up of a reliable and adequate
service for passengers, mail and freight’.
Notwithstanding the initially good impression the British had of Ugandan
roads and its trade network, they soon realised that they were not suited to
their requirements and that they should encourage improvements, introducing
reforms to adjust the trade system to their needs. Aer a few years, however,
it became clear that the colonial investment had been inadequate and, in the
s, on the eve of independence, the British administration deemed the trade
system to be unsatisfactory for the development of the protectorate. Upgrading
the routes to roads suitable for motor vehicles was particularly problematic, and
Indian enterprises were favoured over African companies because they had more
76 Pallaver, ‘Nyamwezi Participation’, p. .
77 Roberts, ‘Nyamwezi Trade’, p. .
78
London, e National Archives, Commercial and Industrial Development, CO
//.
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T T L T C U 73
assets and greater access to cash and lorries. As reported in the Kigezi District
Annual Report for ‘there is no doubt that Indians are capturing much of
the trade which was formerly in the hands of natives, e.g. Katwe salt and locally-
caught sh’. For the British administrators, the scarce participation by African
traders was particularly worrying:
African traders are severely handicapped by the lack of organized transport
systems in the Protectorate resulting in unreliability of service and high
costs. It is considered that it would be of some assistance in the problem
if private enterprise could be encouraged to establish a Clearing House
system extending into up-country centres and providing the facilities
for the development of regular trunk and small trac services. is idea
has been discussed with the responsible Ocer of the Trac Control
Board and will be further pursued. It is considered important that as far
as possible the development of such a system should be based on private
enterprise in which Africans should play a prominent part.
Conclusion
As was the case with the Roman Empire, the road and waterway systems (such
as the canoes used in the Buganda Kingdom) the British found were used not
only to facilitate trade, but also as a way of asserting political control over the
region by the various kingdoms. One of the hegemonic polities in the area in
the nineteenth century was Buganda, which lay in what is now the southern-
central region of Uganda. Buganda was part of the trade network that linked
Lake Victoria to the east coast of Africa, which was mediated by local and coastal
traders.
e kingdom and its wealth (mainly its ‘access’ to ivory and slaves)
79 Good, ‘Salt, Trade, and Disease’, p. .
80
London, e National Archives, Report on African Participation in Trade, ,
Commercial and Industrial Development: CO //.
81
Abdul Sheri, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. Integration of an East Aican
Commercial Empire into the World Economy, –, London, ; Bashir
Ahmed Datoo, Port Development in East Aica: Spatial Patterns om the Ninth to
the Sixteenth Centuries, Kampala, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, ; Erik Gilbert,
Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar, –, Oxford, ; Richard
Gray and David Birmingham (eds), Pre-Colonial Aican Trade: Essays on Trade
in Central and Eastern Aica before , London, ; B. S. Hoyle, ‘Early Port
Development in East Africa: An Illustration of the Concept of Changing Port
Hierarchies’, Tijdschri oor Economische en Sociale Geograe, , , pp. –;
Karin Pallaver, ‘e African Native Has No Pocket’.
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
74 I S
were not unknown to the external world; they belonged to it as a result of the
kingdom’s widespread road system and a wider trade network that went beyond
the African continent, as was the case with the East/South Asian corridors of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
e communication routes of Buganda, Bunyoro and other kingdoms formed
the basis for controlling the commercial network, which was kings’ main goal for
gaining wealth and prestige. ey even promoted the development of a eet of
large canoes that was capable of crossing the lake, which was a target of expan-
sionist ambitions that were not limited just to the mainland. e backbone of
the trade and transport system in the area remained its land routes, however. e
pre-colonial routes, and the markets alongside them, were proof of how dynamic
the population of the area was in terms of exchanging goods and their interest
in an active trade environment in the s. South-west Uganda is of special
interest here because of its dynamic trade network, its frontier characteristics,
and the major changes it underwent over the course of a few decades. It was an
established trade hub controlled by local populations during the s, and it
was during the colonial period that Africans lost control of the system, especially
to Indian enterprises. is created an economic and social disruption rather
than a real change in the location of trade paths, however.
In conclusion, what is generally seen as a modern solution to boost African
economies and regional integration is not a recent invention at all. The
colonial powers did not bring integrated transport systems to East Africa: a
fairly detailed and widespread transport system (using water and land routes)
already connected the eastern coast of the continent to its interior. Indeed, the
well-known Swahili trade network linked up with a well-maintained network of
paths in the west to Congo, using the lake trade network, which was controlled
by local traders and connected by coastal traders. Another element that should
not be forgotten is the relationship between economic and political inuences in
maintaining an ecient communications network, which was conrmed by the
positions adopted by Buganda and Bunyoro in the s. Political opportunities
and geopolitical views are important factors for deciding the fate of modern
transport corridors today, but this also applied to their historical precursors.
Despite the dierences in time and space between the experience of the Roman
Empire in Europe and the road networks in East Africa in the s, we have
82
John M. Gray, ‘Ahmed bin Ibrahim—e First Arab to Reach Buganda’, Uganda
Journal, :, , pp. –; ADB, et al.
83
Richard Reid, Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda. Economy, Society & Warfare
in the Nineteenth Century, Woodbridge, .
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T T L T C U 75
seen that they both responded to economic/trade and political/military needs
(as Bunyoro’s attempts to control the salt trade demonstrate), reminding us that
if we only take the economic requirements of a given region into account when
we study and analyse transport corridors, and ignore history, we can only ever
have an incomplete picture.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
78
C 4
From Priority Projects to Corridor
Approaches: African and European
Transport Networks in Perspective
S O J F M
Introduction:
Are African and European Transport Networks Comparable?
In many ways, European integration has inspired African states to move towards
a more ambitious African Union, and there are clear parallels between the insti-
tutional arrangements of the AU and the EU. However, a number of authors have
warned of the limitations involved in making any comparisons, starting from the
fact that African states have ceded very restricted sovereignty at a supranational
level compared with Europe. In this chapter, we pose the question of whether
the African transport network and the Trans-European Transport Network
(TEN-T) are comparable. We want to see whether the criticisms of and lessons
learned from the European experience are applicable to the development of the
African Regional Transport Infrastructure Network (ARTIN), as supported
by the Programme for the Infrastructure Development of Africa (PIDA). By
reviewing the literature that highlights the methodological shortcomings in
the planning process of the TEN-T, we analyse the similarities and dierences
between the two continental ambitions from dierent standpoints: ocial
narratives, stakeholder analysis and planning and funding instruments. We
conclude that support for the transport sector is an appropriate way of strength-
ening African integration, but any ambitions to do so need to be balanced in
accordance with the existing resources. In particular, the completion of ‘missing
links’ can have signicant structuring eects, but it should not be done at any
cost, because planning errors can have very negative consequences. National
political interference, low cost-eectiveness and a high environmental impact
are common criticisms in the case of the TEN-T. Africa suers considerably
from the same drawbacks, with the additional problems of higher investment
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A E T N P 79
needs, insucient funding, a larger surface area to cover, lower densities and
lack of maintenance. By looking at the European experience, Africa may be able
to improve and accelerate its own process.
Transport is one of the necessary conditions for achieving Africa’s aspirations
as they have been set for , but it is not adequate in itself. It is one of the
sectors that has the most investment needs and the highest cost of mainte-
nance. It is also one of the key sectors of an economy in which the provision
of infrastructure is lower than it is on other continents. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
the population lives far from economic markets: on average, it is located
per cent further away than populations in other parts of the world. is gure
increases to almost per cent when compared to Europe.
out of the
countries are landlocked, and even some of those with direct access to the sea
have vast inland areas located far from the coast, as is the case with DRC.
e railway network has hardly expanded at all since colonial times, the lines
are unevenly located (they are mostly in Southern Africa) and density is low,
ranging from to kilometres per million people, or about . kilometres
per thousand square kilometres. In Europe, the density of the rail network is
between kilometres and , kilometres per million people, nearly
kilometres per thousand square kilometres. Similarly, road density in Africa –
. kilometres per thousand people – is less than half the global average, and
this is reduced to one-h when comparing its paved roads with those on
other continents.
In Europe, according to Eurostat, road density is about .
kilometres per thousand people.
1 In , Africa will commemorate years since the Organisation of African
Unity (OAU) was established: Africa Union <https://au.int/en/agenda/
aspirations>.
2 V. Foster and C. M. Briceño-Garmendia (eds), Aica’s Inastructure: A Time for
Transformation, e World Bank, , pp. –.
3 P. Manners and A. Behar, Trade in Sub-Saharan Aica and Opportunities for Low
Income Countries, Background Paper for the World Development Report :
Reshaping Economic Geography, Washington, D.C., , p. <http://hdl.handle.
net//>.
4 African Development Bank, An Integrated Approach to Inastructure Provision in
Aica, Tunis, , pp. – <https://www.afdb.org/leadmin/uploads/afdb/
Documents/Publications/Economic_Brief_-_An_Integrated_Approach_to_
Infrastructure_Provision_in_Africa.pdf>.
5 K. Gwilliam, ‘Africa’s Transport Infrastructure: Mainstreaming Maintenance
and Management’, Washington, D.C., , pp. – <http://hdl.handle.
net//>.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
80 S O J F M
In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a vicious circle of a lack of competitiveness,
poor domestic revenue mobilisation, low investment in transport infrastructure
and high transport costs. Transport prices are not the result of a lack of good
infrastructure alone, however; they are also related to a chain of defects caused by
non-physical barriers along the transport corridors, starting at the ports. Ports are
essential elements of the inter-modal connectivity of these corridors, as they are
giving access to inland areas and landlocked countries. Africa is highly dependent
on ports in order to have access to international trade. While it only contributes
to . per cent of global trade by value, its ports represent per cent of global
loaded tonnage and per cent of unloaded tonnage. In general, however,
they do not full their function satisfactorily. eir performance levels are poor,
and their infrastructures and services are not up to international standards. e
containerisation of African ports remains low, and globally they only receive
and dispatch per cent of containers, mainly to import manufactured goods.
Only four of the top global container ports are in Africa. e low level of
eciency is also reected by crane productivity and dwell times: while crane
productivity is – moves per crane per hour on average, in West Africa it is
only moves. Cargo dwell time is also high in Sub-Saharan ports: on average,
cargo spends more than two weeks at the ports, while on other continents the
average period is less than a week.
An increasingly challenging situation for African ports is their interface with
inland transport modes (road and rail). Many urban areas around ports are
becoming increasingly congested, and goods cannot be easily warehoused or
moved out of cities. Dry ports on the outskirts of densely-populated urban
areas would be vital to increase the eciency of the logistics chains. Overall,
poor infrastructure in urban nodes (by-passes, public transport, underground
railway systems, etc.) is becoming a major obstacle that must be added to the
already awed land transport.
A number of authors have looked at the challenges faced by African transport
networks and emphasised the inuence history and geography have on them.
ese two factors lie at the origin of the major dierences between African and
6
UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), Review of
Maritime Transport, Geneva, <https://unctad.org/es/node/>.
7 W. Naudé, ‘Geography, Transport and Africa’s Proximity Gap’, Journal of Transport
Geography, :, , –; J. Debrie, ‘From Colonization to National Territories
in continental West Africa: the Historical Geography of a Transport Infrastructure
Network’, Journal of Transport Geography, :, , –; S. Oliete Josa and
F. Magrinyà, ‘Patchwork in an Interconnected World: the Challenges of Transport
Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Transport Reviews, :, , –.
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A E T N P 81
European transport systems. e Sahara desert, the dicult living conditions in
the Equatorial forests and a lack of navigable rivers are some of the geographical
determinants that are considered to have had a historical impact on the devel-
opment of transport networks. Low density and sparse urbanisation have also
heavily inuenced their development. ese problems do not exist in Europe.
Furthermore, the way the borders of colonial empires were established created
terminuses for many roads and railways. e political legacy and poor economic
performance of the newly-independent states have also unquestionably made a
contribution towards holding back transport in Africa.
With all these substantial dierences, does it make any sense to compare
transport networks in Africa and Europe? As we will see in the paragraphs
that follow, the discourses in Africa are more about connectedness (connexité),
where the connections between nodes have not been completed yet (missing
links). As Dupuy has dened it,
the term connexité means the links between
subsystems. In Europe, the network is completed in most cases: it is more an
issue of connectivity (bottlenecks), understood in the sense of the existence of
a multiplicity of links within a connected network.
If one takes the historical context and technological progress into consider-
ation, it would be a mistake to assume that African networks will follow the same
path towards attaining full connectedness as Europe’s did. However, as many
authors have noted, there are common specicities and logics of transport
networks that correlate with territorial organisation. In this chapter, we argue
that despite there being major dierences, there are also similarities between
African and European transport networks, in particular with regard to recent
planning and decision-making processes. Good practices, as well as the errors
made, in the European context may help improve policy-making and project
implementation in Africa. We will rst analyse the dierences between transport
policies on the two continents and then assess the current infrastructure devel-
opment programmes in Europe and Africa.
8 G. Dupuy, ‘Propriétés des Réseaux’, Systèmes, Réseaux et Territoires. Principes de
Réseautique Territoriale, Paris, , pp. –.
9 E. J. Taae, R . L. Morrill and P. R. Gould, ‘Transport Expansion in Underdeveloped
Countries: A Comparative Analysis’, Transport and Development, London, ,
pp. –; Dupuy, ‘Propriétés des Réseaux’; B. Hoyle and J. Smith, ‘Transport and
Development: Conceptual Frameworks’, in B. Hoyle and R. Knowles (eds), Modern
Transport Geography (nd edn), Chichester, , pp. –.
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82 S O J F M
Transport Policies in Africa and Europe: An Apparently
Far-fetched but Useful Comparison
Before analysing the African and European programmes for developing their
respective transport corridors, it is important to examine more thoroughly
the process of regional integration in both continents and its consequences
for transport policies. Fioramonti and Mattheis have suggested a framework
for comparing the construction of the two continental unions that shows that
despite certain symbolic institutional similarities where the AU has been inspired
by the EU, the integration logics applied on the two continents dier. For
instance, in contrast with the African experience, Europe’s has been characterised
by a gradual process of integration starting out from six countries, restrictive
membership requirements and the transfer of signicant sovereignty roles to a
supranational level. However, the main distinction between the two processes
that inuences how the transport sector is addressed resides in ‘the drivers of
regionalism’. While European integration has been driven by trade integration,
market liberalisation and to some extent social cohesion, integration in Africa
has focused on peace and security issues. e low volumes of intra-African trade
(estimated to be . per cent of total African international trade) are funda-
mental when it comes to explaining the low level of competitiveness of many
countries. Except for certain limited experiences at a regional level, it was only
in that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) came into
eect, and it is still dicult to precisely anticipate the pace of implementation,
the increases in trade ows and the advantages of the AfCFTA for African
economies. Conversely, the project to connect Europe with transport corridors
is a ‘by-product of the European single market project’.
In view of this major dierence in terms of drivers of continental integration, it
is important to study how it aects transport continental policies in Europe and
Africa and if it has practical consequences for the implementation of their respective
infrastructure programmes. ree dierent aspects are considered and compared in
the following sections: the key players, the ocial narratives and the planning tools.
10 L. Fioramonti and F. Mattheis, ‘Is Africa Really Following Europe? An Integrated
Framework for Comparative Regionalism’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market
Studies, (), , pp. –.
11 M. Bosker and H. Garretsen, ‘Economic Geography and Economic Development
in Sub-Saharan Africa’, e World Bank Economic Review, (), , pp. –
<doi: ./wber/lhs>.
12 A. Aparicio, ‘e Changing Decision-Making Narratives in Years of TEN-T
Policies’, Transportation Research Procedia, , , pp. –.
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A E T N P 83
An Analysis of the Key Players
Overall, institutional arrangements seem to be similar on both continents:
planning is at a central level, while implementation is at a national level. In
Africa, PIDA ocially covers development of the transport network. In Europe,
the programme guiding transport infrastructure is the TEN-T. In theory, where
priority projects are to be adopted, the decision-making process is in both cases
the result of a bottom-up consulting process in which proposals put forward
by member states are validated at a high political level aer being reviewed by
experts. In Africa, the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government takes
these decisions, while in Europe they are adopted by the EU Transport Ministers
at the Council of the European Union. African regional economic communities
(RECs) oen play a more important role in the choice of priority projects than
do countries, as is oen the case in other areas (for example, monetary and
security). RECs usually have their own regional infrastructure master plans,
which have been the basis for the elaboration of the PIDA at a continental level.
In practice, the African and European institutional architectures are quite
dierent. Europe’s relatively longer experience has helped it reduce complexity
and provide more exible arrangements. ese days, the TEN-T is seen more
as a policy than an infrastructure programme. e development of the Trans-
European corridors is guided by work plans that outline the objectives for
action up to . ey include investments, preparatory activities, studies
and policy-oriented actions. ey are updated regularly on the basis of stake-
holder consultations and new technical studies. For each of the nine corridors
and two horizontal priorities, the European Commission appoints ‘European
Coordinators’, high-level figures in charge of overseeing, facilitating and
reporting on the work plans. One important aspect of their mandate is consul-
tation with corridor forums, which are consultative bodies made up of member
states and signicant stakeholders. In addition, for more than a decade, TEN-T
Days have brought together ministers, members of the European Parliament, the
European Coordinators and representatives of the European Investment Bank,
the European Commission and TEN-T stakeholders to discuss progress on the
implementation of the trans-European transport network.
In support of these work plans, the European Commission has put in place a
number of funding instruments that combine grants, loans, guarantees and other
innovative nancial instruments. In particular, the Connecting Europe Facility
13
Generally, stakeholders include member states, infrastructure managers/authorities,
regional and territorial representatives, municipalities, metropolitan authorities and
transport operators.
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84 S O J F M
(CEF), which is managed by the Climate, Infrastructure and Environment
Executive Agency (CINEA), co-nances actions submitted by the various
stakeholders and selected through competitive calls for proposals. Nevertheless,
although several other funding sources exist, such as the European Structural
and Investment Funds and the European Fund for Strategic Investment, the
largest portion of funding comes from the member states’ national budgets.
In Africa, the current Institutional Architecture for Infrastructure
Development in Africa (IAIDA) governing PIDA is the result of a series of
attempts to accommodate numerous initiatives that have emerged with the aim of
eecting a rapid reduction of the infrastructure decit. Many of the initiatives in
recent decades have been proposed by charismatic African presidents like Mbeki
and Zuma in South Africa, Wade in Senegal and Kagame in Rwanda. Once a
political action of this kind has been launched, it has been extremely dicult to
reach a compromise to avoid adding institutional complexity. When these new
structures are created at a national level, new management units are generated
that absorb agents and ocials. ese programmes are dicult to dismantle once
they have attained their objective or, as is usually the case, they are not considered
to be ecient enough and are superseded by new, and supposedly improved,
initiatives. A good example of this phenomenon is the frequent reforms that
the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has undergone since
its creation in . It is still hard for an outsider to understand the division
of labour between the NEPAD mandate and the AU Commission. e most
recent redesign and attempt at rationalisation was the transformation in
of NEPAD’s structures into the African Union Development Agency, which
is known by the acronym AUDA-NEPAD. is agency, together with the
African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB),
the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the RECs,
is now seen as the lead organisation supporting the member states in their imple-
mentation of the PIDA.
At a planning level, the AU has also made eorts to rationalise the myriad
consultative entities intended to assist the decision-making process. e most
recent unifying strategy was the Agenda , which was launched in ,
and sets out the AU’s long-term development vision. e PIDA is the conti-
nental framework for Africa ’s infrastructure development as decided at
the Malabo Conference of Ministers for Transport in .
Like TEN-T Days, the PIDA Week has been organised annually since
to co-ordinate and create synergies among the dierent stakeholders. Although
it is not a statutory AU event, it brings the PIDA’s leading implementing organ-
isations together with representatives from, for example, the PIDA Steering
Committee, the Council for Infrastructure Development, the Infrastructure
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A E T N P 85
Consortium for Africa, the Continental Business Network. Member states also
usually attend PIDA Weeks, oen in the form of representatives from ministries,
the private sector, civil society, bilateral and multilateral development nance
institutions, among others.
From Official Narratives to Special Interests
Modern inter-state initiatives for the development of continental transport
infrastructure are actually older in Africa than in Europe. e UN Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE) began to dene the E-Road network in
Europe in the s, but it was not until the s that Europe established a
common planning and funding scheme. In Africa in the early s, UNECA
dened a network of roads linking all the capitals of the continent to be known
as the Trans-African Highway (TAH), which consisted of nine main roads with
a total length of , kilometres (see Map .). e alignment of some of
them, like the Trans-Saharan Highway, had already been designed by the colonial
powers. Starting with the Lagos–Mombasa highway, implementation of the
TAH network was monitored by intergovernmental co-ordinating committees,
with UNECA leading the process as the executing agency. Since then, the TAH
network concept has been the prevalent accepted point of reference for African
states, RECs and donors. For instance, since the establishment of the TAH,
the project appraisal documents produced by many development agencies have
justied the choice of a specic road by the fact that it constitutes a section of a
trans-African highway. In , the TAH network was used as the basis for the
denition of the Africa Regional Transport Infrastructure Network (ARTIN),
which is the reference point for the PIDA. e ARTIN consists of the TAH
network, which now has axes, plus key corridors.
As mentioned above, European integration was driven by the goal of the single
market, and the notion of a trans-continental transport infrastructure was closely
connected to it. Likewise, in the case of Africa, the motivation behind the initial
TAH network was economic integration and increasing African trade, with
one noteworthy dierence from Europe: ‘opening up new areas with promising
agricultural and mineral potential’.
In both cases, however, besides the trade
angle, other interests and arguments have emerged to drive development of the
transport agenda. In the rst place, there is the pursuit of political legitimation
14 Economic Commission for Africa, Resolution Adopted by the Conference of Ministers,
(l): Trans-Aican Highway, Tenth Session, Conference of Ministers, Tunis, –
February .
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Map 4.1. Trans-African highways as dened in .
(Source: Ousmane Gueye, Bangui Conference on Transport and Communications,
UN Economic Commission for Africa, .)
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A E T N P 87
by regional organisations. In Africa, in the early decades following independence,
there was a strong rivalry between the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the
UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNECA. For the latter, the TAH
network, and later the UN Transport and Communications Decade in Africa
(–), were initiatives that made it possible for the organisation to bring
advisory and co-ordination functions together on issues of major importance for
the African states. Later on, as we explained in the previous section, this role was
gradually transferred from UNECA to NEPAD and the AUC.
In Europe, like agriculture and the free movement of people, services and
capital, the common transport policy was introduced by the Treaty of Rome,
which created the European Economic Community in . However, it was
not until the Maastricht Treaty was signed in that the Trans-European
Networks were adopted as an integral part of Community policy. is was
because for the member states, the TEN-T policy de facto represented a transfer
of critical decisions on important aspects of their territorial sovereignty,
and they only agreed to move forward when the European Court of Justice
intervened. As a result, by adding long-term planning responsibilities to the
TEN-T, the European Commission gained signicant power and visibility
vis-à-vis European citizens.
Another narrative besides economic integration is the contribution made
by transport networks towards strengthening a shared continental identity. In
Europe, this coalesces around the cohesion policy, of which the TEN-T is a
central tool for reducing regional disparities. Behind the ocial rhetoric of
‘harmonious development’ promoting balanced and sustainable growth,
Europe has faced the need to rally citizens from poorer countries that are suering
from the consequences of liberal policies inherent in the single market. In this
sense, cohesion has been presented as an expression of solidarity, as a policy
to make Europe’s values a reality. In practical terms, it results in the choice
15 S. Misteli, ‘Gardiner, Robert Kweku’, IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-
General of International Organisations, Bob Reinalda, Kent J. Kille and Jaci Eisenberg
(eds) <www.ru.nl/fm/iobio> [Accessed August ].
16 F. Piodi, ‘ e Financing of Trans-European Transport Networks’, Directorate General
for Research, Working Document Transport Series E-, Brussels , pp. –.
17 A. Faludi, ‘Territorial Cohesion Policy and the European Model of Society’, European
Planning Studies, :, , pp. – <DOI: ./>.
18 Article of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
19
D. Peters, ‘Cohesion, Polycentricity, Missing Links and Bottlenecks: Conicting
Spatial Storylines for Pan-European Transport Investments’, European Planning
Studies, :, , pp. –.
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88 S O J F M
of priority projects based on political commitments and not on cost-eective
considerations. In Africa, where insucient internal trade and low levels of
inter-state trac make it hard to justify the economic feasibility of some of the
trans-African highways, recourse to pan-African ideals can easily be discovered
behind the ocial storylines. From an economic point of view, linking all the
African capitals by road makes little sense in some cases, in particular where long
distances have to be travelled across the Sahara Desert or tropical forests. At
the same time, it is a reasonable political aspiration for Africa to think that all
its capitals can be joined by road from the neighbouring country. In fact, some
prominent African decision-makers, like Adebayo Adedeji, who was UNECA’s
Executive Secretary during the UN Decade for Transport and Communications,
have openly expressed their scepticism about focusing on trade to boost African
integration and have advocated backing it with infrastructure development.
As is the case with the European cohesion policy, the goal of opening up
landlocked countries and isolated regions is customarily included in ocial
African documents on transport. As a preparatory study for the PIDA
noted, continent-wide ambitions have proved to be hard to achieve: ‘Lack of
alignment with national and regional priorities is a primary failure factor, as
good ideas become orphan projects. For example, segments of the Trans-African
Highways that correspond to the priorities of the country involved have been
built, but segments that do not t country priorities have stagnated.’
is brings us back to the economic justication for trans-continental
corridors. In the case of Europe, Peters mentions other storylines, such as
polycentricity and bottlenecks. Polycentricity is a narrative that proposes compe-
tition and complementarity between cities and regions in the context of the
common market. is is a controversial line of reasoning because it might be
argued that it goes against cohesion policy. While the ‘EU’s cohesion policy
aims to strengthen economic and social cohesion by reducing disparities in
the level of development between regions’,
the principle of polycentricity is
that cities should be interconnected by high-speed transport, while many rural
areas and peripheral regions may be bypassed. In the case of Africa, even though
the concept of growth poles is oen utilised at the national level, the logic of
polycentricity is not on the agenda at a continental level, probably because of
20 S. K. B. Asante, Aican Development: Adebayo Adedeji’s Alternative Strategies,
London, , pp. – and pp. –.
21 SOFRECO, Study on Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa
(PIDA), Phase I Study Summary. Clichy, .
22 Peters, ‘Cohesion, Polycentricity, Missing Links and Bottlenecks’, pp. –.
23
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/what/glossary/c/cohesion-policy.
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A E T N P 89
the small size of the market. e bottleneck storyline is evoked in the African
context, but almost exclusively to describe congestion in ports due to a lack of
appropriate infrastructure, and more especially to their management failings.
In Europe, by contrast, the concept is far more widespread. It is associated with
the insucient capacity of already existing connections, in particular between
or through urban nodes. Again according to Peters, the bottleneck is a concept
that is not exempt from controversy. Policy-makers have not dened it accurately,
and it raises environmental concerns as to the limits to which infrastructure
capacity can be expanded. In addition, it is a notion that is associated with places
where infrastructure already exists, and these are normally the wealthier ones.
A very common current argument is built around the notion of ‘missing links’.
It was introduced in ocial documents in both unions dating back to the s,
albeit with dierent implications. In Africa, as we mentioned earlier, it refers
mainly to matters of connexité: that is, sections of the trans-African highways that
really do not exist, or are surfaced with earth and gravel and need to be upgraded
to paved standards. In , according to the AUC’s estimates, TAH missing
links covered , kilometres out of a total of , kilometres. In Europe,
most links already exist in one mode or another, and the objective is to reduce
time or increase capacity, in particular on cross-border sections: it is simply a
matter of improving connectivity. In both cases, however, behind the rhetoric
of ‘missing links’ lies the need to justify signicant investments, the economic
returns from which are not evident. e choice of these priority projects is oen
political, as we have seen in the previous paragraphs but, as Peters points out
for the case of Europe, the construction industry also lobbies extensively in
favour of them. In Africa, while the interests of construction rms carry less
weight, the ‘missing links’ attract great interest from the ruling class, not only
due to political benets but also because of the personal gains they can obtain
in a corrupt procurement system. For their part, donors and development banks
play a central role in promoting the completion of inter-state infrastructure.
Firstly, the increase in intra-African trade is a top priority in aid agendas today,
even though, in many cases, the transport demand that will be generated will
be low in the short and medium term. Secondly, massive public spending on
infrastructure is still viewed as a stimulus for the economy. Last, but not least,
‘missing links’ can help maintain lending operations at satisfactory levels because
they are usually funded with regional allocations, which are easier to mobilise
(they come at the top of countries’ strategies and are not in competition with
other national priorities).
24 Peters, ‘Cohesion, Polycentricity, Missing Links and Bottlenecks’, pp. –.
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90 S O J F M
Planning Methods and Financing Tools
As we have seen in both Europe and Africa, planning of trans-continental corridors
is to some extent transferred to a union level, while the implementation of projects
remains the responsibility of member states. Although the decision-making concept
may be used in ocial documents, notably by the AU, the word ‘planning’ seems
to be more appropriate in both cases because the inclusion of a project in the
PIDA or the TEN-T does not mean that it has actually been ‘decided’. In practical
terms, there is a major dierence between the two processes: the AU does not
provide funds for investment in infrastructure from its own budget; at most, it
mobilises grants from international donors and channels them to certain projects
or uses them for institutional support.
e absence of AU funding instruments to
support the PIDA is an institutional weakness that limits its capacity to inuence
how member states prioritise trans-continental projects. In Europe, the situation
is rather dierent, and the existence of various sources of funding facilitates the
elaboration of work plans as an inclusive decision-making process with a high
likelihood of being implemented. However, some authors have criticised the
European planning process for not taking eciency and environmental aspects
into adequate consideration and exaggerating the added value of some projects.
Instead of promoting sustainable, balanced and genuinely pan-European projects,
the TEN-T decision-making process is, according to these studies, not transparent
enough, and is heavily biased by corporate demands and national politics.
In any case, one common occurrence that has a major impact on the materiali-
sation of both the PIDA and the TEN-T is the lack of sucient public funding
to reach the envisaged infrastructure levels. In addition, debt sustainability is a
crucial issue, whichever continent is being considered. In the case of European
national governments, their contributions to the EU budget, which in turn are
invested back through the TEN-T funding instruments, is one way of achieving
improved compliance with public debt and decit requirements, but it is still
not enough. is is why there has been a global emergence in recent years of
new nancial instruments with the purpose of creating leverage of public budgets
and acting as a catalyst to attract additional funding from the private sector. For
instance, many public–private partnerships (PPP) have been conceived in order
25
For instance, see the activities of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy ( JAES) Reference
Group on Infrastructure (RGI) <https://au.int/fr/node/>.
26 Peters, ‘Cohesion, Polycentricity, Missing Links and Bottlenecks’, pp. –;
Aparicio, ‘e Changing Decision-Making Narratives’, pp. –.
27 M. Turro, Going Trans-European: Planning and Financing Transport Networks for
Europe, Oxford, , Pergamon, pp. –.
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A E T N P 91
to contain public debt: the private operator contracts for a loan, while the public
stakeholder pays those costs that cannot be recovered from the users directly. In
practice, PPPs create scal risk and, in the case of Africa, low technical capacity
is a major constraint to developing PPPs in fragility contexts. According to the
World Bank, the global transport sector received US$ billion in public-private
investment between and , and , projects reached nancial closure.
During the same period, Sub-Saharan Africa received only US$. billion across
projects. Private nancing in Sub-Saharan Africa has mostly been channelled
into the ports sector, which has seen over per cent of the investment volume.
We cannot end this section without mentioning two important actors involved
in the implementation of the PIDA and the TEN-T: the African Development
Bank (AfDB) and the European Investment Bank (EIB). ese two banks are
respectively viewed as the ‘African’ and ‘European’ banks. AfDB is the lead nancial
institution for the PIDA and its logo appears next to those of the AU, UNECA
and NEPAD in all ocial PIDA documents. What is more, AfDB denes itself as
the ‘Executing Agency’ of the PIDA. In the case of TEN-T’s ocial documents,
EIB is also explicitly, and almost exclusively, identied as the bank providing the
loans and guarantees that complement the European budget grants. However,
AfDB and EIB are neither AU nor EU institutions. EIB’s shareholders are the
member states, and their share of the bank’s capital is based on their economic
weight within the EU at the time of their accession. With regard to the AfDB,
per cent of the shareholders and ve of the top ten countries involved are
non-African. In both banks, the governing statutory bodies are accountable to the
shareholders, and not directly to the respective unions. is ‘independence’ is an
aspect that is worthy of attention. Banks’ strategies are driven by the credit risk of
their operations and the need to keep their turnover at certain levels. e choice
of projects to be nanced is not always aligned with ocial strategies, does not
appropriately respond to economic needs or does not fully integrate country debt
sustainability considerations.
In addition, in contrast to other multilateral devel-
opment banks, both the EIB and AfDB have the challenge of being dominated
by their borrowers in terms of voting share.
28 <https://ppi.worldbank.org/en/snapshots/rankings>.
29 <https://www.afdb.org/en/topics-and-sectors/initiatives-partnerships/programme-
for-infrastructure-development-in-africa-pida> [Accessed May ].
30 See, for instance, the European Court of Auditors, ‘Report on the European Fund
for Strategic Investments’, published in <https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/
Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=>.
31 N. Birdsall, e Dilemma of the Aican Development Bank: Does Governance Matter
for the Long-Run Financing of the MDBs?, Working Paper , Washington D.C.,
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
92 S O J F M
The Current TEN-T Policy and the PIDA Priority Action Plan
(PAP) for Transport: A Practical Comparison
As we mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, despite major dierences
between the transport systems of the two continents, there are some parallels
that merit analysis. In the rst place, the process for dening priority projects
has evolved in similar ways. In Europe, from its initial priority projects,
the TEN-T has adopted a multimodal corridor approach since with a
signicant emphasis on regulation and non-infrastructural aspects (Map .).
Similarly, the denition of the transport component of the PIDA in
expanded the trans-African highways concept and applied a corridor approach to
transport (Map .). On both continents, there is now a backbone network, the
ten trans-African highways in Africa and the nine European Transport Corridors
in Europe. Alongside this, there is a broader ‘second layer’ of transport infra-
structure that in Africa is made up of the remaining corridors of the ARTIN
and in Europe is known as the Comprehensive Network. Next to the physical
corridors, Europe also has two Horizontal Priorities – the European Rail Trac
Management System and Motorways of the Sea – themes that are also reected
in the most recent policy documents in Africa as a result of including a transport
strategy in the Agenda .
However, despite the ocial rhetoric on corridors, the rst PIDA PAP
still follows a patchwork approach, mode of transport by mode of transport,
and lacks coherence in many cases. For instance, the creation of a tenth TAH
is still not reected in some ocial documents and, in the PIDA database,
many projects are placed under programmes labelled as ‘multimodal transport
corridor’, but this denomination does not correspond to a specic TAH, as
in the case of the Abidjan–Ouagadougou–Bamako Multimodal Transport
Corridor. In fact, considerable doubt arises where in several AU documents
there is a dierentiation between the TAH and the (new) African Integrated
High Speed Railway Network (AIHSRN). In short, while African institutions
do not clearly dierentiate between the transport corridor and the transport
mode, the EU has reached a consensus about the notion of corridor. We should
also recall here that in the case of Europe this approach was to a large extent
adopted thanks to the reinforced competences that have been transferred to the
European Commission, in particular to CINEA.
As a consequence of this diverse interpretation of the notion of the transport
corridor in Africa, it is dicult to compare the current TEN-T and PIDA in
, pp. – <https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/les/dilemma-afdb-does-
governance-matter-long-run-nancing-mdbs.pdf>.
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A E T N P 93
terms of investment. However, we can compare the priority projects planned
for in Europe with the rst PIDA PAP, which was eective until . As
we have said, the priority projects have been replaced by a corridor approach
since , but they are still a valid point of reference for gaining a greater
appreciation of the order of magnitude of the investment in both continents.
e PIDA transport projects can be grouped into programmes whose
Map 4.2. e transport networks to be supported by the rst PIDA PAP by
and .
(Source: African Union . Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa.
(). Interconnecting, integrating and transforming a continent, Addis Ababa,
African Union, www.afdb.org/leadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-
Operations/PIDA%note%English%for%web%.pdf.)
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
94 S O J F M
scale is comparable to that of the European priority projects. Taking into
consideration the fact that the TEN-T priority projects were conceived to be
implemented over years and the PIDA-PAP is an eight-year plan, we can
32
<https://www.au-pida.org/pida-projects/>. ere are discrepancies in some ocial
documents. For instance, the PIDA Week concept note mentions projects
grouped under programmes.
Map 4.3. European Transport Corridors of the TEN-T as revised in .
(Source: European Commission (), Creating a green and ecient Trans-
European Transport Network, Factsheet, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/
presscorner/detail/en/ip__.)
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A E T N P 95
estimate that in Europe, yearly investments have reached about € billion, while
in Africa the investment is supposed to have been around € billion per year
(see Table .). e average size of a project/programme is close to € million
in Europe and € million in Africa.
Table 4.1 TEN-T and PIDA PAP transport priority projects.
TEN-T 30 priority projects PIDA-PAP 1 transport
Budget period – –
Overall investment €,,, €,,,
Investment per year €,,, €,,,
Number of priority projects
Investment per project €,, €,,
Total length – Priority projects
(km) , ,
Rail , ,
Road , ,
International waterways , Not mentioned
Sources: Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa,
<www.au-pida.org/pida-projects/> [Accessed February ]; € = US$..
More recently, it has been estimated in Europe that by the nancial
investment required for the completion of the TEN-T Core Network Corridor
alone is € billion a year, or a total of approximately € billion of investment
over years. In Africa, the AfDB estimates that transport infrastructure
development requires between € billion and € billion annually. ese
amounts include both the PIDA and national needs. If we take into account
the fact that yearly disbursements oscillate between € billion and € billion,
the nancing gap may be more than € billion, depending on the year.
However, two important points arise when placing African investment needs
and Europe’s requirements for the TEN-T side by side. e former is related
to the baseline for the calculation of infrastructure decit in Africa. While the
order of magnitude of nancing needs declared in ocial documents may be
comparable, Africa basically has two objectives: interconnecting capitals, ports,
border crossings and secondary cities with a good quality road network; and
33 African Development Bank, African Economic Outlook , , p.
<www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/African_
Economic_Outlook__-_EN.pdf>.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
96 S O J F M
providing all-seasons road access in rural areas. As we have said, the priority is to
provide full connectedness or connexité. At the same time, improved connectivity
through multimodal systems (for example, high speed railways) is acquiring
space on political agendas, which means that the threshold for estimating the
infrastructure gap will be raised, and funding needs will increase. Secondly, in
Africa, the operation, maintenance and rehabilitation costs of preserving the
investments are estimated to be per cent of total investment needs, and only
per cent is allocated to upgrading and new construction. e problem in
Africa is that the notion of connexité is very frequently breached because of a
lack of maintenance and road protection. is means that, in addition to missing
links, there are links that ‘disappear’ and need to be rebuilt several times. In
short, it is very dicult for Africa to begin investing in improved connectivity
when basic connexité is not guaranteed.
Conclusions
Among all the policies and programmes undertaken by the AU, transport is
one of the sectors in which it can rst engage in order to strengthen conti-
nental integration. is may seem paradoxical, since the internal market is not
large enough to justify many of the international links. At the same time, it is
claimed that interconnecting the continent will boost commercial exchanges,
another assumption that should be made cautiously. On this point, it is not
advisable to establish parallels between transport policies in Europe and Africa.
Transport infrastructure is tangible and politically attractive, and can act as
a catalyst for pan-African integration, but this process should in all cases be
begun between densely-populated nearby territories that have the capacity to
constitute a market.
e TEN-T’s planning and implementation modalities have evolved signi-
cantly over time, but the various institutional arrangements have not been
exempt from criticism. In particular, national and special interests seem to
have prevailed in the selection of a number of projects, a circumstance that
has been favoured by deciencies in the evaluation methods. As we have seen,
inadequate cost–benet analyses or poor environmental impact assessments have
contributed to the choice of projects whose added value has been exaggerated.
Nevertheless, the corridor approach adopted for the TEN-T in recent years
allows for a more coherent and participative framework in which governance
34 African Development Bank, Aican Economic Outlook , p. .
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A E T N P 97
involving an important number of stakeholders is clearer, and the territorial
impact better delimited.
In Africa, it is dicult to implement a similar corridor approach because
of the problems associated with connectedness or connexité. In this case, the
narrative of ‘missing links’ is still a valid one, provided that these links connect
points with minimum density levels. e impact of a two-lane asphalt road
connecting urban centres, which might seem marginal in advanced economies,
may have signicant structuring eects in developing countries. At the same
time, we have raised the question of whether full connexité must be achieved at all
costs, and whether it is more urgent than improving connectivity between nodes
where considerable levels of exchange already exist. In this respect, appropriate
planning tools, as well as a broadly participatory approach, are needed to guide
the decision-making process. Since reinforcement of the networks needs to focus
on places where there is a sucient population and the systems of the cities are
structured, the PIDA should prioritise interventions in those territories with
the highest density levels, such as the north of Africa, West African countries
and the region along the Indian Ocean (see Map .).
Expanding the notion of corridors and moving away from the patchwork
method, as has been the case in Europe, would be fundamental for increasing
transparency, better dening the scope of decisions and specifying the appropriate
level where they should be adopted. A sustainable and harmonious development
of African transport networks is exposed to threats similar to those identied
in Europe. However, because Africa suers from meagre public budgets and a
maintenance backlog, every eort should be made to avoid the proliferation of
‘white elephants’. In this regard, it is essential that corridor approaches should
rst target the consolidation of territories with a sucient network density.
Since the AU does not have funding of its own to develop the network, it
lacks the capacity to incentivise better planning instruments. In addition, readily
available funds without signicant social and environmental safeguards make it
particularly dicult for African countries to abstain from accepting oers of aid
from certain partners, notably China. ese external interests, which are oen
driven by mining industries, nd support among political and nancial elites
and prevent a thorough analysis to determine whether the overall conditions
of a particular deal are favourable for the country.
One asset the AU possesses, which does not exist in Europe, is the existence
of RECs, and current PIDA implementation relies heavily on them. e
35
B. Steck, ‘Transport et Développement’, in M. Brocard (ed.), Transports et Territoires.
Enjeux et Débats, Paris, , pp. –.
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
Map 4.4.
Above: Map of population
density in Africa, .
(Source: European Commission,
Joint Research Centre.)
Le: Map of the transport networks
to be supported by the PIDA PAP,
–, where the corridors
along the most populated areas
are marked by a thicker line.
(Source: Authors.)
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100 S O J F M
establishment of African transport networks should continue to be supported
by this intermediate level. At the same time, the AU should rationalise its project
preparation facilities and keep the focus on building the capacity of its member
states to plan and implement infrastructure projects. e second PIDA PAP
will present a good opportunity for addressing these issues.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
102
C 5
The Political Economy of West
African Integration: The Transport
Sector on Two Port Corridors
B B S W
Introduction
Studies have shown that transport and transit costs in Mali, Burkina Faso and
Niger are up to per cent higher than for countries with direct access to the
sea. High transport costs raise the cost of doing business and trading across
borders, hampering private investment, and undermining opportunities for job
creation and poverty reduction, particularly in the hinterland countries and
regions of West Africa.
Given an over-supply of small independent truckers who operate on
relatively thin margins, ‘the poverty and social impact of trucking reform will
be considerable’. While this may be the case on paper, given the political sensi-
tivities of such reforms, it is important to understand where the main barriers
and opportunities for transport reform lie, domestically and in regional terms.
Recent analysis and anecdotal evidence also suggest that user charges in West
African ports are above average, and may be inated. is is despite the rise in
‘landlord ports’ whose container terminal operations have been concessioned
to private sector operators, ostensibly to boost eciency and bring down costs
for users. ese high costs are surprising given the proximity of at least six ports
along the coast between Benin and Côte d’Ivoire.
While there is arguably ‘a good case for more co-operation between West
African countries on port reform, competition and regulation’, the challenge is
1 Frank Hollinger and John Staatz, Agricultural Work in West Aica. Market and
Policy Drivers, Rome, .
2 World Bank, Program Information Document, Concept Stage. Regional Trade
Facilitation and Competitiveness DPO, IV Poverty and Social Impacts and
Environment Aspects, Washington, D.C., .
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 103
to see where the interests for this might lie in reality – who currently collects
what rents in the current system; what is the distribution of gains within and
between countries; and who would incur losses from modernising the sector?
is chapter aims to respond to these questions for the ports and road
transport markets in West Africa. It focuses on the corridors connecting
Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Lomé in Togo, and to Tema in Ghana.
e analysis suggests that the interests of the hinterland population and
private sector in accessing cheaper goods and inputs through lower transport
costs are placed below the goal of ensuring Burkina trucks carry Burkina-bound
goods, with costs to overall eciency and to the detriment of eciency-seeking
reforms.
Intra-regional Competition or Collusion?
Foundational Factors Shaping Regional Transport Dynamics
Physical Factors
A map of the region with its ports and road and rail connections is sucient
to see that, in principle, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo compete (along with
Senegal and Benin) to serve as gateways to Burkina Faso and the other Sahelian
countries, especially Niger and Mali. In principle, importers and exporters in
the hinterland have a choice of which corridor and port to use (Map .). e
resulting competition would be expected to help lower transport prices for
hinterland consumers.
While corridors vary in length, road quality, and the choice between road and
rail, ports also vary in depth – this determines the size of ships that can dock,
with larger ships oering the potential to ooad more goods in one visit. Lomé
is regularly cited as the deepest natural port in the region at metres, with
Tema and others in the region requiring regular dredging. At the same time, an
in-depth study by JICA nds that though the route with the longest section in
a poor state to Ouagadougou, the Lomé Corridor has the least roadblocks and
is the least expensive in the region – this has also made it the most frequented
in terms of trac volume.
3 World Bank, Western Aica. Making the Most of Ports in West Aica, Report No:
ACS, Washington, D.C., .
4 Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Projet du Plan Directeur de
l’Aménagement des Réseaux Logistiques pour l’Anneau de Croissance en Aique de
l’Ouest, Rapport d’Avancement, Tokyo, .
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
Map 5.1. Map of the region and ports.
(Source: World Bank, Western Africa. Making the Most of Ports in West Africa, Report No: ACS,
Washington D.C., .)
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T P E T S 105
ese all potentially aect the cost equation for transporters and therefore for
shippers from hinterland countries like Burkina Faso. In principle, the country
that manages to best align public and private sector actors around its port and
facilitating trade should be able to reap benets along with hinterland trans-
porters and shippers.
But these physical aspects are only some of the factors that determine which
goods travel along which corridor. Tufour cites the following: direct transit cost,
transit time and the reliability of the corridor, safety and security, as well as
language diculties or incompatibility between stakeholders in given countries
as equally important factors that determine corridor choices. For instance, at
dierent times, the Côte d’Ivoire civil wars in the rst decade of the s, strict
Ghanaian axle load limit enforcement, Togo road damage and Benin customs
procedures all aected trac volumes on the dierent corridors, thus aecting
the corridor choice of shippers.
Port and terminal strategies also shape trade ows and shipper decisions.
Security is particularly important with there being a pressing need to nd alter-
native routes when tensions in coastal countries aect transit, as in Côte d’Ivoire
from to or Togo from the mid-s until . us, the choice of
corridors for Burkina Faso and other hinterland countries ostensibly promotes
competition but also provides alternative routes when instability erupts.
Regional Port Strategies
While the continual drive for economies of scale in global shipping leads to
large ‘hub’ ports that serve as gateways and trans-shipment hubs, the interest in
maintaining corridor and port options in West Africa also aligns with interests in
each of the port countries. Together these lower the level of port consolidation
that might otherwise take place.
Beyond interests in maintaining national ports, only a small number of private
companies dominate the sub-region’s ports. Bolloré Africa Logistics is a major
player with signicant presence in all major ports. ey operate terminals in joint
ventures with APM Terminals in Abidjan and Tema, while the Mediterranean
5
Augustine Kwabena Tufour, ‘Critical Factors that Inuence the Attractiveness of
Ghana’s Corridor to Stake-Holders Engaged in the Transit Business of Landlocked
Burkina Faso’, Aica Development and Resources Research Institute Journal, :,
, pp. –.
6 World Bank, Western Aica.
7 Jean Debrie, ‘e West African Port System: Global Insertion and Regional
Particularities’, EchoGéo [online], , , no page<http://journals.openedition.
org/echogeo/>.
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106 B B S W
Shipping Company (MSC) operates terminals in Lomé. Debrie points to the
network strategy used by companies around key ports and corridors with port
concessions. According to one view, Bolloré expects to lose money on serving
the remote ends of its ‘vital corridors’, but believes maintaining the network
will put it in a better position to bid for supplying lucrative mining projects.
World Bank describes a ‘region-wide quasi duopoly of two dominant TOCs
(terminal operating companies, namely Bolloré and APM Terminals), which
compete or co-operate in dierent ports and together control around per
cent of container throughput’.
While diversication across ports can be seen as a legitimate strategy for
private operators in view of past instability, the market structure for port
terminals limits competition. As such, even with concessioning and growing
trade volumes, ‘prices for end users have not gone down and have increased
signicantly in some cases, generating substantial prots for ToCs’. e same
report also highlights that ‘shippers have far less service options and far less
bargaining power, and therefore face greater risks [than shipping lines, the other
port user]’. Combined with the understandable lack of willingness of countries
to rely on a port in a single neighbouring country, there is a ‘continuation of
multiple, sub-optimal size facilities which are naturally monopolistic and suggest
the need for economic regulation’. Recent scrutiny of terminal concession
processes both in the countries analysed here and elsewhere suggest that Bolloré
is particularly seen as wielding political power both through its importance as a
French overseas interest, and its role in supporting political campaigns (further
discussed below). is suggests that shippers’ interests have limited inuence
on vested interests, with political considerations trumping eciency concerns.
Economic Structures, Political Consequences
Underlying economic factors are also important in shaping transport patterns
and costs: ‘e structural imbalance of West African economies … results in an
equation which is dicult for the shipping lines to solve’. e major market
imbalance between transit imports and exports clearly aects costs due to empty
return journeys, whether from the port for exports or from Ouagadougou for
8 Debrie, ‘West African Port System’, no page.
9
Economist, Network Eects: Connectivity and Commitment Pay Dividends in Aican
Transport, October <www.economist.com/node/> [Accessed
April ].
10 World Bank, Western Aica.
11 World Bank, Western Aica.
12 Debrie, ‘West African Port System’, no page.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 107
imports. e types of goods owing south along corridors (e.g. livestock, cotton,
minerals) are dierent from those owing north (consumer goods and capital
goods), creating trade imbalances but also oen requiring dierent types of
trucks. is aects the protability of trucks, particularly newly imported trucks,
also leading to practices of overloading to raise the value of each trip. is model,
with low revenues of truckers, appears to undermine the argument made by
Teravaninthorn and Raballand, for example, that while transport prices are high
to shippers, the costs to transport rms are low.
But more than the economic challenge this poses, these imbalances have
political repercussions. Burkina Faso’s reliance on access to inputs and consumer
goods in particular, and the threat of instability in neighbouring countries,
creates political pressure to minimise reliance on the trucking industries of other
countries. is amplies the political importance of the Burkinabè trucking
industry, its transport unions, organisations such as the Conseil Burkinabè
des Chargeurs (Burkina Shippers Council, CBC), and their relations to the
coastal country transport actors. e importance attributed to transport is
also reected in government strategies that refer to the importance of regional
infrastructures and transport to support planned growth poles and the priority
sectors of agriculture, mines, cras and SMEs and ‘promotion of economic
integration and Foreign Trade’. It is also seen through the priority given by the
government to renewing the truck transport eet, with a recently adopted decree
to allow duty-free and VAT-free importation of vehicles over a period of
two years from May , the fourth such exercise since .
is is similar for Togo, where the economic weight of the port is large in
a small economy. at diers from Ghana (or Côte d’Ivoire), where domestic
markets are much larger, reducing the relative importance of transit trac.
13 Supee Teravaninthorn and Gaël Raballand, Transport Prices and Costs in Aica: A
Review of the International Corridors, Directions in Development; Infrastructure,
Washington, D.C., .
14 The Burkina Transport Minister is also responsible for Infrastructure and
‘Disenclavement’.
15 R. F. Dandjinou, ‘Burkina Faso: Conseil des Ministres – Importation de
Véhicules de Transport Exonérés de Droits de Douanes et de Tva’, AllAica [online],
May . <https://fr.allafrica.com/stories/.html> [Accessed
April ].
16
G. Raballand, et al., Why Does Cargo Spend Weeks in Sub-Saharan Aican Ports?
Lessons om Six Countries. Directions in Development—Trade, Washington, D.C.,
; they then associate this with Lomé oering exceptionally long free time for
trac in transit.
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In transport services as a share of commercial service exports represented
. per cent for Togo, compared to . for Ghana and . for Côte d’Ivoire.
e seasonality in trade also adds to the economic and political challenges.
While there can be transport shortages at certain times of year such as harvest
time for export crops, and Ramadan when imports of basic goods such as rice
and sugar to hinterland countries go up, imbalances reportedly also lead to an
oversupply of trucks at quiet times of year. is puts pressure on the unions
operating at the ports and on transport contractors in terms of distributing the
little freight there is.
‘Rules of the Game’
Formal Institutional Factors
A range of both formal and informal institutions also govern the transport
sector in West Africa, where ‘institutions’ are interpreted as ‘rules of the game’.
ese include unwritten rules about ways of working and expected practices
that nonetheless govern behaviour.
At a formal level, Togo and Burkina Faso are members of eight-member
West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), while all three plus
Ghana are part of the -member Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), which includes all UEMOA members. e two francophone states
are also part of a loose network of ‘like-minded’ nations under the Conseil
d’Entente, again not including Ghana. While ostensibly this creates some
hurdles for transit through Ghana given its distinct currency, administrative
language and regulatory processes, Ghana is nonetheless an observer of UEMOA
and indeed was one of the rst to implement the UEMOA axle load limit, a
17 World Development Indicators, last updated February
18 When doing interviews for this study with the Togo transport union, only ve
containers were available for transporting, compared to a list of more than
trucks waiting for freight.
19 For example, see: Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and
Economic Performance, Cambridge, .
20
e Conseil de l’Entente (Council of Accord or Council of Understanding) is a
West African regional co-operation forum. It was established in May by Côte
d’Ivoire, Niger, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Dahomey (now Benin), and
joined in by Togo, having grown out of the short-lived Sahel–Benin Union, a
successor to the dissolved French regional colonial federation of French West Africa.
Since the Council has possessed a permanent administrative secretariat based
in Abidjan. A mutual aid and loan guarantee fund exists to assist poorer members
from a common pool <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_de_l%Entente>.
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T P E T S 109
key issue aecting costs between corridors today. Paying bribes in Cedi is
also reportedly cheaper than the CFA Franc bribes expected along the other
corridors.
Bilateral Freight Quotas
In addition to regional regulations, the transport sector has long been shaped by
bilateral arrangements to share transit freight between the arrival and destination
country: two-thirds of each consignment of containers should go to Burkinabé
transporters, and one-third to the coastal country transporters. e issue of
freight quotas between Burkinabe and coastal truckers is a major component
of the system that limits competition in the transport sector, thus aecting
prices in the region.
Given that ‘the CBC has the responsibility of ensuring that this rule is
enforced’ through agents in each port, this puts considerable power in the hands
of the CBC to determine freight allocation across transporters, even if rules are
not always applied. Importantly, the quota applies to shipments on a case-by-
case basis, not to the average overall volume of goods or number of containers
over a day or week. is means that for each consignment of three containers,
two must be carried by Burkinabè transporters, or negotiated over with the
CBC. Where formal agreements do exist, cabotage is not allowed, meaning
that no foreign truckers can be involved in the transport of domestic cargo.
e origins and validity of these agreements across the corridor countries are
not clear. Terevaninthorn and Raballand state that the ‘bilateral treaties are in
place because aer a crisis that followed the transport deregulation, the
government of Burkina Faso signed an agreement with all its corridor partners
(Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Benin) to establish quotas’. But while
other studies refer to a bilateral agreement between Haute Volta (now
Burkina Faso) and Togo to limit haulage of transit freight imported to Burkina
Faso through Lomé to Togolese and Burkinabè trucks in the ratio one-third,
two-thirds respectively, more recent information suggests that Ghana has in fact
no such formal agreement.
21 While UEMOA countries adopted regulation (règlement) on axle load and
harmonisation of standards and procedures across countries, this has not been fully
enforced, with no systematic sanctions for noncompliance.
22 Teravaninthorn and Raballand, Transport Prices and Costs.
23 Teravaninthorn and Raballand, Transport Prices and Costs.
24 Protocole d’Accord de Transports Routiers entre la République Togolaise et la
République de Haute-Volta, Lomé, April ; West Africa Trade Hub (WATH),
Transport and Logistics Costs on the Lomé-Ouagadougou Corridor, Report #,
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110 B B S W
ough the Burkinabé would like such an arrangement with Ghana, Ghanaian
truckers are reluctant to acquiesce. According to Luguje, Ghana’s ports handled
no (from the late s to early s), or only negligible amounts of transit
freight (until the second half of the s).
Perhaps for this reason, freight
sharing along that corridor was never fully formalised. Nonetheless, in July
Burkinabè concerns about loss of access to their own transit freight led to the
border being closed and renewed pressure on Ghana to accept an agreement
stipulating that Burkinabé truckers carry two-thirds of shipments and coastal
country truckers one-third.
Whether formal or informal, the system in place gives the CBC monopoly
power in the way freight is distributed. According to interviews this is to secure
Burkinabè access to necessary imports, but also to address concerns about
employment and the ‘social dimension of the sector’ leading them to protect
their transport sector. is then promotes close linkages between CBC and
OTRAF (Organisation des Transporteurs du Faso), representing a key aspect
of the way the sector is governed. In eective terms, the sector is organised so as
to protect Burkinabè truckers at the expense of the wider population. is is a
fundamental reality that must be taken account of in any attempts to encourage
trade facilitation and transport sector reform.
no place of publication, , also cites Burkina Faso ministerial decree number
–/CMRPN/PRES/MTP.T.URB.
25 Luguje, .
26 For example, see Les Echos du Faso, ‘Altercation entre Chaueurs Burkinabè et
Ghanéens des Problèmes de Chargements Évoqués’ July on recent tensions
between Ghanaian and Burkinabe drivers over freight sharing <http://lesechos-
dufaso.net/altercation-entre-chaueurs-burkinabe-et-ghaneens-des-problemes-de-
chargements-evoques/> [Accessed April ]. Interviews in the eld suggest
that little has changed since Teravaninthorn and Raballand’s report of : ‘e
unocial rules in a port in West Africa are as follows: A shipper informs the CBC
it has a shipment to be transported to Burkina Faso. e CBC then informs the
OTRAF, the Burkinabè truckers union, about this shipment and all its details. It may
or may not negotiate the tari with the shipper. OTRAF turns to its constituents
and assigns the load on a rst come–rst served basis. is tour de rôle is updated
in real time: when a truck arrives in the port, the driver goes to the OTRAF repre-
sentative to be added to the waiting list. Once the contract is established, the trucker
pays its due to the association (FCFA ,) for the service it provided and to the
CBC (FCFA,) for the loading authorisation.’ e only dierence, discussed by
corridor, relates to the rst-come-rst-served basis, which is also reportedly subject
to exible, informal arrangements.
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T P E T S 111
Additional ‘informal’ or unwritten rules also shape the transport sector and the
political weight given to strengthening regional connections. ese relate to the way
that ‘formal’ rules and agreements are applied – axle load limits have been a ‘rule’
since the s but not fully applied, leaving application open to abuse and by those
monitoring transport along the corridors. e freight-sharing quota agreements are
also reportedly only applied at certain times, when tensions mount or when volumes
are highest, and open to negotiation between shipper and OTRAF.
Overall, a range of dierent foundational and institutional factors underlie
regional relations, all aecting the way in which the transport sector is organised
within each of the aected countries. While there is the potential for competition
between corridors, this is dampened by the structure of the ports market and
relations between transport operators between countries. e broad structural
and institutional factors felt at the regional level then aect the political weight
of the transport sector across countries, with implications for the political power
of dierent actors within the countries.
Corridor Actors and Interests
The Lomé–Ouagadougou Corridor
Given the importance of the port in Togo for the broader Togolese economy,
what takes place around it is also politically important. While donors like GIZ
see Togo as being on the path of democracy, the IMF highlights that ‘political
risks hinge on the government’s capacity to deliver its promises of economic
growth, social spending and job creation’. As this section discusses, this has
led to policies to encourage investment and reforms in the port and beyond
that ostensibly aim to improve the eciency of the economy. ese reforms
have met with some resistance and strikes that have so far been overcome.
Port Dynamics
Togo’s port at Lomé has long played an important role in the country’s economy,
reportedly responsible for per cent of overall customs revenues and indirect
taxes. Its importance to the economy is also highlighted in various formal
27 ‘Le Pays se Trouve Aujourd’hui dans une Phase de Démocratisation’, Deutsche
Gezellscha für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), ‘Togo Website’ <www.giz.de/
en/worldwide/.html> [Accessed March ]; International Monetary Fund
(IMF), Country Reports /, Togo: Article IV Consultation-Press Release;
Sta report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Togo, p. , Washington,
D.C., .
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112 B B S W
documents including the government’s national development strategy. Further
underpinning the corridor approach, Togo Invest Corporation was established
as a state-owned enterprise in to implement Togo’s corridor vision for
economic development. is company is meant to become a major actor around
the corridor and in shaping interests relating along the corridor.
e vast majority of Lomé’s transit trac is destined for Ouagadougou.
is raises the importance of Togo–Burkina relations at a political level, but also
between actors in the freight chain. Further, the government growth strategy
highlights the role of the port authority given that ‘ per cent of Togo’s foreign
trade passes through the PAL [Port Autonome de Lomé]’.
ere is also considerable unrecorded trade to countries in the region. It is
among the largest ‘under-invoicers of export proceeds’, with illicit outows from
Togo reportedly averaging per cent of GDP between and – peaking
at per cent of GDP in , more than four times the annual budget.
e Lomé port falls under the authority of the PAL, which handles clinker,
wheat and hydrocarbons, while container trac comes through two terminal
concessions. One of these was awarded to Bolloré Africa Logistics under a
-year concession that was awarded in ; and another to a joint venture
between MSC and China Merchant Holding International (CMHI) also under
a -year concession since October , with options for ten more years to
operate the brand-new Lome Container Terminal (LCT), reportedly repre-
senting the largest private sector investment in Togo. ough the ‘concessions
have provided Governments with millions of dollars in revenue through entry
tickets, annual fees and royalty payments on trac handled by concessionaires’
the exact level of nancial contributions of the port to government coers is
hard to gauge.
e concession process has not been without controversy. ere is anecdotal
evidence suggesting that the awarding of concession contracts has been used
as an instrument to help the incumbent regime, also supported by business
28 JICA, Projet du Plan.
29 IMF, Country Reports /, Togo: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, p. ,
Washington, D.C., .
30 Dirk Kohnert, ‘Togo Country Report’, in D. Kar and J. Spanjers (eds), Illicit
Financial Flows om Developing Countries: –, New York, . Informal
trade with Nigeria in cars, fuel, rice and fabrics is substantial. ough on a smaller
scale compared to Benin, this shapes political dynamics around the port.
31 Christopher Clott and Bruce C. Hartman, ‘Supply chain integration, landside
operations and port accessibility in metropolitan Chicago’, Journal of Transport
Geography (), –.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 113
networks operating in France and Togo. At the same time, Bolloré’s interest in
the port of Lomé is seen by some as a defence of its interests elsewhere in the
region, with articles citing internal communication at Bolloré concerned about
how investment in Lomé might undermine their investments elsewhere, most
notably in Abidjan.
News reports cite opposition party members complaining
about the insignicant ‘crumbs’ that the port contributes to the budget.
MSC’s entry into Lomé is seen as ‘an entry point into a closed market’ that
may alter port dynamics and indeed the role of Togo in the region. LCT,
aiming for a capacity of . million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) in the
long run, is intended as a hub port for MSC. Its move into Lomé in
followed a previous investment in San Pedro, Côte d’Ivoire in , but which
was disrupted by Côte d’Ivoire’s subsequent instability, again highlighting the
role of peace and security in determining port investment choices. Lomé is
intended principally as a hub port for transhipment services linking to nine
ports in the region, serving its Africa Express service arriving from key Asian
ports via Durban and Cape Town, and potentially helping to lower prices. e
intention is thereby to oer a hub and spoke service to deep-sea West Africa
liner services.
e MSC-run terminal being deeper (. metres) than Bolloré’s (–
metres), larger ships can dock. Moreover, future price cuts may favour greater
containerisation, for example for mining and forestry products. Anecdotally,
high-level political discussion and external pressure also led MSC to promise
to focus on transhipment, not gateway trac, which was to be le to their
32 R. Lecadre, ‘Bolloré et Dupuydauby, Deux Requins dans les Ports Africains’,
Libération, June .
33 K. Mensah, ‘Togo, un Pays en Faillite qui Enfante des Milliardaires, TOGO-online,
February <https://togo-online.net/togo/togo-un-pays-en-faillite-qui-
enfante-des-milliardaires/> [Accessed April ].
34 Hartman ; Olivier Caslin and Andrew Lynch, ‘À Lomé, MSC inaugure un
nouveau concept’, Jeuneaique, December <https://www.jeuneafrique.com/
mag//economie/andrew-lynch-a-lome-msc-inaugure-nouveau-concept/>
[Accessed April ].
35 Kohnert, ‘Togo Country Report’.
36 e ports are: Abidjan, Cotonou, Douala, Freetown, Lagos (Tin Can), Libreville,
Monrovia, Takoradi and Tema; PortStrategy, From Famine to Feast, February
<www.portstrategy.com/news/world/africa/w-africa-article#sthash.
PmWxFBV.dpuf> [Accessed April ].
37 JICA, Projet du Plan.
38 JICA, Projet du Plan.
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114 B B S W
competitors. While this may be the case, the MSC decision to invest was also
shaped by interest in Lomé as a gateway port connecting to the regional rail
ring foreseen for the region. Since , the volume of its container trac
has tripled.
Beyond private sector interests, President Faure Gnassingbe has reportedly
also put forward his country as the ‘West African staging point for China’s Silk
Road initiative, as countries on the continent begin to warm up to the Asian
giant’s plan to be a major geopolitical player’. Transformation of the transport
and logistics sector into a modern industry has become a rst strategic priority
in its National Development Plan –. e entry of MSC into Lomé
port and their direct line from East Asia appear to at least partially conrm this.
Again reecting the broader reliance on transport in Togo, the PAL has a
strategy targeting transit trac with Lomé as a gateway port: while domestic
goods can remain for free in port for only four days, Raballand et al. say that this
rises to days for transit goods – ‘the Port Authority of Lomé seems reluctant
to use pricing to lower dwell time for fear of losing competitive advantage over
other ports’.
However, transporters and the port authority complain of a wide range of
costs and charges that they say lowers the competitivity of the Lomé Corridor.
In particular, UEMOA regulation is seen as a key challenge for the sector.
Reportedly (according to interviews) due to its recent heavy investments in
road infrastructure, the Togolese government began to strictly impose the
UEMOA axle load limit as of January , seen by some interviewees as
having undermined Lomé and its transporters’ competitiveness. As the West
African Trade Hub (WATH) state: ‘Trucking prices are basically a function
of load—the more tonnes carried the lower the cost per tonne—and whether
the cargo is containerised or not.’ While June was agreed on as the
date to implement regulation across the region, it is not yet clear what has
happened in this regard.
Another frequently raised concern of transporters and the PAL is the so-called
Bordereau Electronique de Suivi de Cargaison (BESC) or electronic shipment
39 Caslin and Lynch, ‘À Lomé, MSC Inaugure un Nouveau Concept’.
40 Abel Bove, et al., ‘West and Central Africa Trucking Competitiveness’, SSATP
Working Paper No. , Washington, D.C., .
41 President Faure Gnassingbe in interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/–//c_.htm>.
42 Bove, et al., Trucking Competitiveness.
43 Raballand, et al., Why Does Cargo?
44 WATH, Transport and Logistics Costs on the Lomé-Ouagadougou Corridor.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 115
form. Formally speaking, the BESC is meant to provide statistics, identication
of merchandise, transport cost control and traceability of goods.
Various elements have led to controversy around this shipping requirement
that is reportedly not required along the other corridors. While initially managed
by the Togo Shippers Council (the Conseil National de Chargeurs Togolais,
CNCT), under President Gnassingbé’s brother, ‘opacity’ around how it was
being managed led the government to put its management out to tender, won
by a Belgian company and leading to a four-fold cost increase to CFA,
per container.
In addition, Burkinabe importers reportedly already pay the
BESC for tracking by the CBC, leading to double-payment of this charge for
which there is little understanding of the benets.
Other issues raising costs along the Lomé Corridor relate to: deposits for
containers that remain high, encouraging destung and axle overloading;
customs scanning, where goods periodically appear as ‘unreadable’ due to
specic packaging materials, opening the way for perfectly ‘readable’ goods being
classied as unreadable and container stripping, opening up opportunities for
corruption; a droit de passage (DDP) imposed by the Chambre du Commerce
du Burkina Faso (CCBF) to nance the bonded warehouse it operates; charges
to use rest areas by truckers (around US$ for a night); GPS tracking to avoid
transit goods going missing en route to Ouagadougou where nes are imposed
due to batteries running down either due to not being charged, or because of
unexpected delays caused by technical faults etc. Drivers also report the
of these transmitters, which is suspected as being done in collaboration with
Cotecna sta.
To add to this, trucks reportedly do too few trips to allow protability –
the OTRAF president is quoted as saying that ‘while in developed countries
the truck does ,–, kilometres per month, Burkinabe trucks do a
maximum of , kilometres per year’. Transporters therefore complain of
the underlying low protability of trucking despite the high prices they charge.
45 See more at <www.lexportateur.com/faq.asp?id_page=#sthash.ILfpNDy.
dpuf>/.
46 Conseil National des Chargeurs du Togo, ‘Trac General’, <https://cnct.tg/
wp-content/uploads///Trac-General-.pdf>.
47 Interviewees, various.
48 WATH, Transport and Logistics Costs on the Lomé-Ouagadougou Corridor.
49 Interview, Lomé, May .
50 ‘Crise à l’OTRAF: Les Chaueurs Transporteurs Interpellant le Premier Ministre
Yacouba Isaac Zida’ aOuaga.com, July <http://news.aouaga.com/h/.
html> [Accessed April ]. While these average gures for developed countries
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116 B B S W
Freight Distribution
As the discussion thus far suggests, the costs involved in transporting goods from
Lomé to Ouagadougou result from a range of dierent practices, by dierent
public and private agents. is encourages a range of practices to recuperate
costs, not least through overloading trucks. However, a key issue in the cost
calculation is also access to freight, where the system described above lowers
competition among truckers, protecting inecient, single-truck operators at
the expense of the wider population.
A recent JICA report estimates that between and per cent of freight
is transported as break-bulk, rather than in containers. e WATH also cites
similar gures, estimating that – per cent of transit containers are stripped
(unloaded) and the goods trucked to landlocked countries as break bulk, while
– per cent of transit containers continue to Ouagadougou, per cent of
them under a ‘through bill of lading’.
e through bill of lading implies that the
shipper pays for door-to-door delivery with a transport company, encouraging
the use of containers and thus reducing axle overloading. However, the through
bill of lading does not guarantee that the contracted company will carry the
goods, as described below, with all goods essentially subject to rules on access
to freight, managed by the CBC and the transport union OTRAF.
In essence, while CBC is informed of all information regarding transit
trac, this is then passed on to OTRAF for distribution among carriers.
OTRAF themselves see their role as protecting the two-thirds vs one-third
quota, as reected in interviews and their report from the rst quarter of ,
for example. at means that OTRAF is essentially the gatekeeper to transit
trac, imposing the two-thirds one-third rule on freight that arrives without
a predetermined carrier (the through bill of lading), leaving UNATROT
(L’Union Nationale des Transporteurs Routiers du Togo, the Togo union) to
allocate freight to its truckers on a rst-come-rst-served basis: the infamous
tour de rôle.
Perhaps more interestingly, even when freight arrives with a through bill of
lading, implying that the shipper has already taken out a contract with a trans-
porter to ensure door-to-door delivery of goods, this shipment is nonetheless
may be exaggerated, the main point made by Yssouf Maïga, President of OTRAF,
remains valid.
51 JICA, Projet du Plan.
52 WATH, Transport and Logistics Costs on the Lomé-Ouagadougou Corridor.
53 ‘Transport Routier: L’OTRAF Appelle Ses Membres au Respect Scrupuleux de la
Charge à l’Essieu’, LeFaso, August <http://lefaso.net/spip.php?article>
[Accessed April ].
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 117
subject to the quota. Take for example a shipment of nine containers bound
for Ouagadougou with a through bill of lading. Six of the nine containers are
the responsibility of a logistics company, with a contract with one transport
company, and are subject OTRAF demands. For the remaining three containers,
the same companies may be able to carry one or two, depending on negotiations
with UNATROT.
Further, the driver chosen for a load pays a fee to the transporters’ associations
from both countries for the allocation service and assistance when travelling
along the corridor, and also to drivers’ unions from both countries, the OTRAF
and the UNATROT. is is defended as being for assistance during the trip.
is system then implies that a contracted transporter must fully carry the
risk of using the transporter allocated by OTRAF or UNATROT. In cases
where unionised individual truckers have not enough insurance to cover the
merchandise being carried, it is known for contract transport companies to take
out additional insurance, charge this to OTRAF or UNATROT, in order for the
transport to take place. Companies have been known to refuse trucks deemed
not to be in good enough condition, but this then also risks hold-up from
OTRAF or UNATROT who essentially wield power in the ports by blocking
entry or exit of specic goods or trucks. At the same time, contracted companies
can be held responsible for poorly maintained trucks imposed by the unions that
then break down on their way to Ouagadougou, implying substantial additional
costs and losses than then must be negotiated with the union in question.
is means that, in practice, the quota, freight distribution system and goods
with through bill of lading are subject to negotiation between transporters,
OTRAF and UNATROT. Freight distribution also depends on the availability
of trucks, and the levels of freight passing through the port. It can happen that
a contracted transport company manages to carry its full consignment (e.g. of
nine containers), but this would mean that in a future consignment it might
be obliged by OTRAF and/or UNATROT to forego freight to ‘pay back’ for
what it was allowed to take.
While little of this is formally stated or established, in spite of the formal
bilateral agreement around the quota, what emerges is that regardless of the
contracts established, UNATROT and OTRAF manage to hold transporters to
ransom in order to gain access to freight. While in interviews the unions defend
their practices as defending the access to freight of single-truck, driver-owner
54 Interview, Lomé, May .
55 WATH, Transport and Logistics Costs on the Lomé-Ouagadougou Corridor.
56 Interviewee.
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118 B B S W
transporters, and thus what one might call inclusivity, critics from within the
transport sector also point to preferential treatment within the unions – more
powerful or inuential members of UNATROT can pay to be put at the front of
the queue. Similarly, interviewees suggest that import agents are known to take the
fee for importing goods but then selling the access to these goods to the highest
bidder (who may then also sell this on to another person) introducing additional
transaction costs and lowering the price ultimately received by the transporter.
While Burkina Faso has been going through important political changes,
with President Compaoré driven from oce by popular protests in December
, demands for political change also carried over to OTRAF. Protesting
truckers forced the previous OTRAF head to resign in December aer
being in position for years, amid accusations of nepotism, taris charged and
preferential distribution of freight to the OTRAF president’s family and close
acquaintances. News articles from July continued to refer to the issue of
OTRAF distributing freight in Lomé and Tema according to payments made
by their truckers to the detriment of Burkinabe truckers, reecting the internal
incentives at OTRAF to maximise payments rather than necessarily ensuring
freight distribution to their members, leading Burkinabe truckers to close the
frontier in .
According to Gueh-Akué, the environment for unions, or syndicats, in Togo
is characterised by fragmentation, ‘permanent social tension’, use of strikes as
the only collective negotiation tool and a decit of other alternatives. Drivers
and transporters therefore use blockages at truck parks and around ports and
towns to arbitrarily demand contributions. While there is an implicit under-
standing that the unions wield political power to create instability, it may be
that recent reforms have reduced previous hostility – one report suggests that
57 ‘Les manifestants ont pris d’assaut les bureaux de l’organisation qu’ils ont presque
mis à sac. Ils reprochent au président Sankara d’occuper son poste depuis ans et
d’avoir placé des membres de sa famille et connaissances aux postes inuents. Les
chaueurs se plaignent aussi des tarifs appliqués sur les voyages. Boukaré Sankara et
ses proches, selon toujours les manifestants, se partageraient les bons de transport,
occasionnant un manque de travail et de revenus réguliers pour le reste des transpor-
teurs’; Stella Nana, ‘Ouaga: Les chaueurs et transporteurs exigent et obtiennent le
départ du président de l’OTRAF’, Burkina, December <www.burkina.
com////ouaga-les-chaueurs-et-transporteurs-exigent-et-obtiennent-
le-depart-du-president-de-lotraf-/> [Accessed April ].
58 N. Goeh-Akue, ‘Etude sur Le Paysage Syndical au Togo’, <https://library.fes.
de/pdf-les/bueros/benin/.pdf>.
59 Ibid.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 119
though strong in with unions managing to bring mass protests, unions are
far more divided today with certain key gures joining the government ‘regime’
and government quickly managing to point to a minority ‘privileged handful’.
e impact of the current system is to limit the amount of freight available
among transporters, therefore raising the pressure to carry as much freight as
possible in one trip, bringing the discussion back full circle to axle regulation
imposition and transport costs. e combination of factors is reportedly
shrinking and closing several formal transport companies in Togo.
Current strategies underway to promote formalisation include the formation
of co-operatives. However, rather than numerous co-operatives emerging,
UNATROT created one co-operative for all of its members, CNATROT (La
Coopérative Nationale des Transporteurs Routiers du Togo), formed in February
with the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport ‘inviting’ transporters
to join.
As the above discussion suggests, there are many internal bargaining processes
and power games within UNATROT that therefore also seem likely to aect
the impact of this initiative.
Tema Corridor Storylines
Although the port sector in Ghana is also considered a vehicle for economic
growth, Tema Port lags behind its main regional competitors, Abidjan and
Lomé, in terms of competing for transit trac to landlocked West African
countries. While investments such as the US$. billion expansion project at
Tema announced in reect an interest in attracting more transit trac
and positioning Tema Port as a regional hub, growing domestic trade volumes
provide another rationale for such investments. Certainly, the vast majority of
trac passing through Tema Port (Table .) is accounted for by Ghanaian
imports and exports. In , for example, only per cent of the million
tonnes of freight that passed through Tema was transit freight. at stands in
contrast to Lomé, discussed above.
60
Olivier Rogez, ‘Togo: le Systéme Faure’, RFI, May <http://www.r.fr/fr/
afrique/-togo-systeme-faure-gnassingbe-eyadema-unir-jean-pierre-fabre-
anc-cap--election-> [Accessed April ].
61 Hélène Dubidji, ‘Les Transporteurs Routiers en Coopérative pour Faire Face
aux Dés du Secteur’, iciLome.com, February <https://news.icilome.
com/?idnews=> [Accessed April ].
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
120 B B S W
Table 5.1. Freight trac through Tema Port, – (tonnes).
Year Vessel
calls
(units)
Total
freight
trac
Export Import Transit
Transhipment
Container
trac
(TEUs)
, ,, ,, ,, , , ,
, ,, ,, ,, , , ,
, , , ,, ,, , , ,
Source: GPHA; <www.ghanaports.gov.gh/Files/TEMAPORTPERFORMANCE-
.pdf>.
The Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor is key to growing transit freight
volumes, as per cent of transit traffic through Ghana is accounted for
by Burkina Faso (see Table .). Transit trade with Niger and Mali has
declined in recent years and given the geography of the region, there is little
obvious potential for growing the currently marginal volumes of transit trade
with these countries. It does seem, however, that the focus in Ghana is
much more on satisfying the domestic market than on growing transit trade
volumes. For example, stakeholders at Tema Port claim that the port – and
Ghana in general – does a bad job ‘marketing’ the Tema–Ouagadougou
Corridor to shipping lines, and does not make enough effort to attract
transit traffic. This is despite the fact that the port offers some advantages
over other ports in the region.
Port Dynamics
e Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) is a public company
established under the Ministry of Transport to build, plan, develop, manage,
maintain, operate and control Ghana’s ports. GPHA acts as a landlord at Tema
Port, but also provides a number of services at the port, including marine services
(pilotage, towage and mooring), stevedoring (and allocating private stevedores),
cargo handling and security. In addition, GPHA sets maximum port taris. e
fact that GPHA acts as both an operator and a supervisory authority at Tema
Port means that it plays a complex role. While such a situation could in theory
lead to ineciencies and conicts of interest, interviewees in Ghana did not
suggest that the position of GPHA was a major contributor to the challenges
highlighted at the port.
62 JICA, Projet du Plan.
63 Discussion at Tema Port (CBC, BAL).
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T P E T S 121
In August , the concession for the development and operation of a
container terminal was awarded for years to Meridian Port Services (MPS),
a partnership between the companies APMT and BAL ( per cent each) and
the GPHA ( per cent).
e terminal became partly operational in April
, with an annual capacity of . million TEUs, which was expanded in June
to million TEUs. Around per cent of container trac is handled in
multipurpose berths run by GPHA and other local operators.
A recent study noted a number of advantages of Tema Port vis-à-vis its
competitors in the region. ese include: relatively competitive (ocial) port
taris; daily departure of loaded trucks; safety of freight cargo in the port;
electronic tracking along Ghanaian corridors; and dedicated infrastructure for
handling transit freight.
Security at Tema Port is generally thought to be better
than in other ports in the region. Interviewees also noted the relative stability
and reliability of the port (including the fact that it is ‘never closed’), the port’s
responsiveness to users (a transit shipper committee meets every quarter to
address challenges), and the eectiveness of the ‘berthing window’ at the port.
Conversely, relatively long clearance times at Tema Port represent a major
bottleneck on the Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor. One of the main reasons for
the long clearance times is the complexity of administrative procedures and the
number of agencies involved. ere used to be regulatory agencies involved in the
clearance chain, but through engagement with stakeholders and the government,
GPHA was able to successfully push for the number to be cut down to by
December (with the hope that the full implementation of the single window
will improve the situation even further). According to GPHA, the impact of this
reduction has been noticeable for port users. Other factors contributing to long
clearance times at Tema include the ineciency of customs clearance procedures
(which, according to some, is used as a tactic to solicit unocial payments); the
fact that agents clearing cargo at the port are oen servicing multiple clients; the
fact that the ‘single window’ is not yet fully operational; persistent congestion
problems resulting from a lack of storage (something that should be addressed by
64 World Bank, Western Aica.
65 JICA, Projet du Plan; It should be noted, however, that while ocial taris at Tema
are competitive relative to neighbouring ports, unocial payments, including to
service providers, consolidators, clearing agents and customs ocials, add to the
cost of moving goods through Tema Port.
66 Discussion – CBC, BAL.
67 Interview, Danish Embassy.
68 JICA, Projet du Plan.
69 Interview, GPHA.
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122 B B S W
ongoing and planned investment in the expansion of the port); and the ‘lack of
professionalism’ of many shippers, who are oen unfamiliar with relevant require-
ments, leading to delays in clearing freight.
Transport Sector Dynamics and Other Factors Affecting
Corridor Competitiveness
In discussions with stakeholders in the Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor, two
factors stand out as signicantly inhibiting the competitiveness of the corridor.
e rst is that the regulatory environment for the market for cross-border
freight transportation between Ghana and Burkina Faso results in shippers
not being able to benet from competitive transportation services. Shippers
in Tema agree that the Ghanaian trucking industry is relatively more compet-
itive than that of Burkina Faso, as although it is made up largely of private
individual operators, with small eets and limited capacity for upgrading, it
also comprises a number of well-established freight companies with a greater
capacity for oering a professional service. However, due to practices around
cargo allocation and restrictions on Ghanaian truckers carrying goods from
Burkina Faso, shippers utilising the Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor are forced
to make use of the relatively less competitive services of the Burkinabe trucking
industry. e trucking sector in Ghana itself is also constrained by the fact
that the country strictly regulates axle-load limits, unlike other countries in the
region, putting its trucks at something of a competitive disadvantage.
e second factor inhibiting the competitiveness of the corridor is the large
number of ocial and unocial costs involved in moving goods from Tema Port
to Burkina Faso. ese include a US$ transit charge levied by the Ghanaian
Central Bank on goods transiting Ghana from Burkina Faso, numerous illicit or
informal payments demanded by ocials at the numerous checkpoints along the
corridor and at the border crossing between the two countries and a CFA,
payment demanded by informal ‘agents’ at the Paga border to act as interme-
diaries between the truckers and customs ocers (apparently truckers are not
allowed to give their documents directly to customs ocers). Previously, eorts
by advocacy groups such as Borderless Alliance to monitor the checkpoints
along the corridor and the demand for informal payments demanded by ocials
had led to a reduction in the extent of such demands, but more recently this
monitoring has been scaled back, and there is anecdotal evidence that demand
for such payments has again increased.
70 Interview, Danish Embassy.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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T P E T S 123
Transit Freight Allocation
Unlike the Abidjan–Ouagadougou and Lome–Ouagadougou Corridors, there
is no formal agreement in place between Burkina Faso and Ghana setting out
bilateral quotas for the allocation of transit freight destined for Burkina Faso.
However, the CBC and OTRAF have been able, through their monopoly right
to issue a bon de chargement (loading note) at Tema Port for transit freight
destined for Burkina Faso – this de facto enforces a quota system in practice.
CBC describes the bon de chargement as a tool that gives them back control
over cargo allocation to ensure that two-thirds of transit freight is allocated to
Burkinabe transporters, in line with norms and practices along othe r corridors in
West Africa. Indeed, apart from possibly allowing for improved data collection,
the bon de chargement does not appear to have any other purpose. CBC is also
clear that ensuring cargo allocation to Burkinabe truckers is an important part
of its mission.
According to CBC, the bon de chargement system has been in place at Tema
Port since the s, and it is true that tensions over transit freight allocation
practices on the Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor – as well as CBC and OTRAF’s
role in these practices – have arisen periodically since at least the early s.
Nevertheless it appears that transit freight allocation and the use of the bon de
chargement became particularly contentious issues during and , while
the system continues in . is is possibly due to the fact that prior to
that, CBC and Burkinabe customs/border authorities were less concerned with
enforcing freight-sharing quotas.
71 According to data collected by the Joint Association of Port Transport Unions
(JAPTU), the umbrella body at Tema Port representing Ghanaian transporters, in
recent months about % of transit freight has been allocated to Burkinabe trucks;
Interview, JAPTU, Ghana Haulage Transport Owners Association (GHATOA),
and Ghana Haulage Transport Drivers Association (GHTDA).
72 Interview, CBC and OTRAF, May .
73 Interview, CBC and OTRAF, May .
74 Romuald Ngueyap, ‘Burkina Faso: Le Gouvernement Met de l’Ordre dans la
Gestion du Fret en Provenance et à Destination du Pays’, Agence Econ [online],
February <www.agenceecon.com/transports/–-burkina-faso-
le-gouvernement-met-de-l-ordre-dans-la-gestion-du-fret-en-provenance-et-a-desti-
nation-du-pays> [Accessed April ].
75 It was also suggested by ocials of the Ghana Shippers Authority that enforcement
was tightened up following the signing of a decree to that eect by a minister in
the previous Burkinabe government.
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124 B B S W
is concern for enforcing freight sharing comes from CBC claims of increas-
ingly unhappy Burkinabe truckers due to Ghanaian truckers carrying ‘everything’
to Burkina Faso, while they were having to wait up to a couple of months at
Tema Port to be allocated freight. is situation reportedly led to Burkinabe
truckers ‘attacking’ the OTRAF head oce in Ouagadougou.
CBC also claims
that its role in ‘organising’ transit freight allocation is partly to address the fact
that the system at Tema Port lacked transparency and had become ‘corrupted’
by ‘coxeurs’, well-connected middlemen who are able to use their connections to
ensure freight landing at Tema Port is allocated to their preferred transporters,
much as in the other ports.
CBC claims that, in the case of transit freight, such
a situation was not, and would never be, acceptable to Burkina Faso.
In practice, the use of bons de chargement to enforce bilateral quotas raises
the cost of transporting freight through the Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor, as
the prices demanded by the Burkinabe transporters assigned by OTRAF are
generally higher than the market rate (i.e. what Ghanaian transporters would
charge). In addition, forwarders at Tema complain that Burkinabe drivers are
less professional than those provided by the Ghanaian (or Burkinabe) transport
companies that the forwarders would prefer to work with, and cause delays due
to their dealing with ‘their own people’ at the Ghana–Burkina Faso border.
Some have noted that these issues never arose under the previous government
in Burkina Faso (under Blaise Campaoré), which may point towards changes
in political economy dynamics in Burkina Faso. Interestingly, Burkina Faso
periodically seeks to renew road haulage eet and, to this end, in May ,
the Burkinabe government temporarily suspended VAT and import duties on
haulage and road transportation vehicles. According to CBC, however, the
enforcement of the bon de chargement requirements has nothing to do with
attempts to promote the trucking industry in Burkina Faso, and is simply
about fairness.
76
A situation CBC describes as ‘unacceptable’ and as prompting a need to take action
to ensure fairness for Burkinabe truckers. Interview, CBC and OTRAF, May .
77 Interview, CBC and OTRAF, May .
78 Interview, CBC and OTRAF, May .
79 e reference price that for Burkinabe transporters to transport freight from Tema
to Ouagadougou is CFA , per tonne.
80 ‘Le Pays’, GIZ.
81 Interview, CBC and OTRAF, May .
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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T P E T S 125
Conclusion
Although in principle governments, transporters, shippers and port operators
all seek to improve the eciency of the transport sector, in practice this cannot
always be assumed to be the top priority. Many dierent parties benet from
current inecient practices in dierent ways and at dierent scales – including
low-income individuals.
Burkinabe interests and concerns about maintaining a strong Burkinabe
transport sector shape much of the transport sector dynamics that we see,
with concern for transport jobs and maintaining a ‘national transport sector’
apparently overriding considerations for the price to importers and exporters.
e Burkina transporters union, OTRAF and the CBC between them shape
the use (or not) of the bilateral freight cargo quotas between countries, while
the transporter union in Togo governs freight distribution among transporters.
e unions in Ghana are seen to be less inuential or eective in asserting the
interests of Ghanaian truckers with regards transit trac, also reecting a more
market-based system.
In the ports, Bolloré Africa Logistics and the Maersk Group – through
its port subsidiary APM Terminals – apparently carry considerable political
inuence in the countries in which they operate, despite some competition from
MSC as the one other major terminal operator in the region. Beyond these, a
lot of inuence is held by customs authorities, whether as a distinct revenue-
raising body, or as part of an autonomous revenue authority (the OTR in Togo).
Nonetheless, the inuence and importance of the transport and transit sectors
vary in weight across countries. In Ghana, eorts to professionalise the private-
operator segment of the trucking industry are hampered by stricter enforcement
of axle-load limits, which puts Ghanaian truckers at a competitive disadvantage
e interests of shippers – consumers, producers and traders – are conspicuous
by their absence in discussions of regional transport, with only a few cases
emerging of coalitions of reform among citizens or rms, though ports appear
more aware of the need to respond to shippers’ needs to promote port interests.
One major game changer may be the envisaged rehabilitation of the Abidjan–
Ouagadougou Railway Corridor, and the planned investments in the railway
belt linking Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin and nally Togo. Yet, such
major multi-country investment programmes suer from a range of institutional
dysfunctions and political uncertainties in dierent belt countries.
While the focus here is on the port and the transport corridors, the study
also points to the strong linkages between narrower corridor development
reforms and the broader transport sector reforms, part of which are aimed at
professionalising the trucking industry and modernising the trucking market
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126 B B S W
over time. Context-specic foundational factors such as being landlocked, and
contextual variables such as economic imbalances between countries, insecurity
or the inuence of dominant private stakeholders shape the institutional and
incentive background against which coalitions prioritise sector reforms or
problem solving.
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Corridor, Report #, no place of publication, .
World Bank, Program Information Document, Concept Stage. Regional Trade Facilitation
and Competitiveness DPO, IV Poverty and Social Impacts and Environment Aspects,
Washington D.C., .
— World Bank, Western Aica. Making the Most of Ports in West Aica, Report No:
ACS, Washington D.C., .
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129
C 6
The Dakar–Bamako Corridor:
Between Boom and Contradictions
J L
‘Among the challenges to overcome in order to ensure the successful imple-
mentation of the Plan for an Emerging Senegal (PES) it was noted that
some fall under the infrastructure and transport sector, notably roads,
through the reduction of the infrastructure decit and the strengthening
of regional interconnection.’
Introduction
Among the assumptions underlying the PES (Plan for an Emerging Senegal) is the
need – if not the obligation – to have high-quality infrastructure and transport,
which requires the construction of new roads and, above all, the development of
interconnections with neighbouring countries. With the PES, the tone has been
set. Senegal is developing its new infrastructure programme, which was launched
in by the president of the republic, Macky Sall, and has the goal of inserting
itself more eectively in international, continental (and intercontinental) trade
networks. In view of the importance of the Autonomous Port of Dakar (Port
Autonome de Dakar, PAD), eorts are focused in particular on strengthening
the Dakar–Bamako axis, especially the road network, while waiting for the
railway to regain its former glory. What matters to the government of Senegal is
the possibility that goods will be able to circulate more easily between Dakar and
Bamako, which is the basis of Senegal’s attractiveness to international donors,
shipowners and logistics operators.
1
Ministère des Infrastructures, des Transports Terrestres et du Désenclavement,
Plan Stratégique de Développement de l’AGEROUTE Sénégal –, Dakar,
, p. .
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By focusing on interconnection, Senegal is playing the modernity card, for
which mobility has been regarded a watchword for more than a decade. Like
the new city of Diam-Niadio, the new airport of Ndiass and the Dakar–iès–
Mbour–Touba motorway, the Dakar–Bamako axis, which has been renamed
the ‘corridor’, must in the short term characterise the country’s entry into a
new era and highlight a process of radical change, making Dakar an ‘infra-
structure metropolis’.
What works in favour of Senegalese policy-makers, port authorities and
international donors (increased trac and transit along the axis in question)
raises a number of questions, however. Aside from the fact that no credible
alternative to road transport seems to be in the making, the impact of increased
road trac on the spaces crossed and on towns and villages seems to have barely
been taken into account. However, already-old work has cast doubt on the
structural eects of transport infrastructure on the space. More recent analyses
highlight the fact that the transport facilities located between central areas and
territorial peripheries have deepened inequalities. Olivier Ninot insists on
the need for much more empirical work in order to better understand what is
being achieved by infrastructure, and what falls under public policy, stakeholder
strategies and local decision-making. Along the Dakar–Bamako Corridor,
the question of the growth-generating eects is still being raised. Policy-makers
seem to be obscuring it, however, even as trac increases and the axis polarises
economic and social activity.
In this chapter, we will begin by discussing the role of the port of Dakar
in Senegal’s economy. We will then look at the current claims about the place
occupied by the Dakar–Bamako Corridor in Malian transit and the compe-
tition represented by other locations. Finally, we will re-explore the conicted
relationship between the uidity of international trac and local development
of the spaces crossed by the corridor.
2 Peter Adey, Mobility, London, .
3 C. Prélorenzo and D. Rouillard, La Métropole des Inastructures, Paris,
pp. –.
4
J.-M. Oner, ‘Les « eets structurants » du transport : mythe politique, mysti-
cation scientique’, L’Espace Géographique, , , pp. –,
5 Danny MacKinnon, Gordon Pirie and Matthias Gather, ‘Transport and Economic
Development’, in R. Knowles, J. Shaw and I. Docherty (eds), Transport Geographies,
Oxford, , pp. –.
6
Olivier Ninot, ‘À propos des relations entre transports, territoire et développement’,
L’Espace Géographique, , , pp. –.
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T D–B C 131
Senegal, Gateway to the Countries of the Interior
e Dakar–Bamako road axis has seen unprecedented growth since the early
s, which it owes to the geographical location of the port of Dakar on the
network map of shipping lines as the rst unloading platform on the west coast
of Africa. e continuous improvement of roads in Senegal, particularly those
leaving the agglomeration of Dakar to the east, also promotes the development
of national and international communications.
The Privileged Situation of the Port of Dakar
Senegal’s reputation was built on the presence of a ‘good port’, which was
developed in the early decades of the twentieth century due to its geographical
location on the ‘fork in the lines of communication leading to South America in
one direction and to the Indian Ocean in the other’. In , Assane Seck was
the rst geographer to emphasise the importance of the port of Dakar for the
development of Senegal’s international relations. Until recently, it was still the
main entry and exit port for Mauritanian, Gambian or Guinea-Bissau trade. In
the s, the government justied its necessary adaptations of the Senegalese
economy due to ‘deterioration in terms of trade’. is phrase is part of the
regime’s ideological framework for explaining economic problems and having
the solutions for emerging from them accepted: ‘According to the Senegalese
government’s analyses, the new economic policy implemented is essential for
ensuring economic development, participatory growth and a reduction in social
cost that forced adjustment does not allow.’
e country then found a new slogan for development: without mobility,
there is no salvation. In the name of adjustment programmes, development
requires the support of all economic actors and the population to connect the
country to the world and locate it on the best international trade and transport
routes. In a speech delivered in January , the president of the republic
presented the new philosophy guiding the country:
In this race for economic progress and social welfare, placed in this global
context, Senegal, a country largely open to the Atlantic Ocean, a trac
distribution hub, the hub for the continent, has the assets required to join
7 Frederick Cooper, L’Aique depuis , Paris, , p. ; André Siegfried, ‘Les
routes maritimes mondiales’, Les Études Rhodaniennes, :–, , pp. –.
8 Assane Seck, Dakar, métropole ouest-aicaine, Dakar, .
9
Momar Diop and Mamadou Diouf, Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf: État et société,
Paris, , p. .
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132 J L
the NPI club tomorrow …. With the prodigious development achieved
by means of communication, the question is no longer conned to inter-
African trade and extends to the whole world, and our country could
become one of the oshore centres of the world economy.
e programme stresses the need for good tertiary services to boost the
Senegalese economy in its internationalisation phase in a pragmatic way.
As we enter the post-industrial era in most countries, regardless of
their level of development, the service sector will become increasingly
important in the economic game. To this end, our country and its capital
at the extreme tip of West Africa have a privileged role to play as a centre
of production and trade and shining home of a rapidly expanding array
of services.
In view of Senegal’s position on the world map and in Africa itself, international
transport is vital for the country.
From , investment in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD) by the new president of the republic, Abdoulaye Wade, conrmed the
Senegalese authorities’ desire to tie the country to Africa as a whole. Conceived
as a long-term programme to eradicate poverty and integrate the continent into
world trade, NEPAD emphasises the elds of telecommunications and transport,
repeatedly stressing the strengthening of infrastructure, improved accessibility,
public–private partnerships and regional connections.
It is President Abdoulaye Wade’s intention to strengthen the pre-eminent
position of the port of Dakar in West African maritime transport, with the
objective of making Dakar a global hub for maritime trac and a compulsory
point of passage for all shipping lines active along the West African coast. e
nautical conditions and the situation of the basins on the eastern part of the
Cape Verde peninsula are remarkable assets. Modernisation of the port is being
led by a director-general who is close to President Wade and has experience
working on ports, and who, following foreign leaders in shipping, is driving
unprecedented development. Until the early s, the container terminal was
mainly reserved for vessels registered by the companies belonging to the Union
of Transport Auxiliaries of Senegal, which were Sdv and Saga (subsidiaries of
10 See the Senegalese daily newspaper Le Soleil of January , quoting the speech
delivered the previous day by the outgoing president, Abdou Diouf, at the extraor-
dinary congress of his party establishing him as a candidate for the presidential
election in February .
11 Ibid.
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T D–B C 133
Bolloré), Maersk Sealand, Simar and even Msc. e major new development
of the Wade presidency is to break with this past. In , Dubai Port World
was awarded the new concession for the terminal for a renewable period of
years, with an investment commitment of CFA francs billion (Photo .).
International competition requires new arrangements if Dakar’s place in the
extensive growth in containerised trac in Africa is to be consolidated.
In , Dubai Port World began the construction of a new terminal called
the ‘Port of the Future’, which will have a capacity of . million TEU (twenty-
foot equivalent units).
Increased Port Traffic
In the s, an acceleration of the growth in imports led to an increase in port
trac from four million tons in to more than nine million tons in ,
out of a total of almost million tons. Progress has continued steadily, and
12 Autonomous Port of Dakar, .
Photo 6.1. Dubai Port World container terminal at Dakar port, .
(Source: J. Lombard, .)
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
Figure 6.1. Trac trend in the port of Dakar, – (Tons).
(Source: Dakar Port Authority; ANSD, .)
Figure 6.2. Container trac at the port of Dakar, – (TEU).
(Source: Dakar Port Authority.)
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T D–B C 135
in the overall volume reached . million tons (Figure .). Development
of the terminal has also boosted container trac, which now exceeds ,
TEU. is only includes a small portion of the volume destined for Mali (at
best per cent, according to the SSATP study on road transport in West and
Central Africa).
Much of it is made up of goods that arrive in containers leaving
for Mali on conventional trailers (Figure .).
e growth of the Senegalese population (from seven million in to .
million in ), especially in the capital (from . million in to .
million in ), is one of the main drivers behind the development of the
port of Dakar. e urban logistics within the agglomeration are an increasing
element to which the port must constantly adapt.
e other challenge is to
consolidate its role in serving Mali. e Ivorian crisis of the s stepped up
the process of bringing West African ports into competition with each other,
leading to the emergence of outgoing Malian trac from ports in Ghana or
To g o .
e Senegalese Corridor also strengthened its grip on Malian transit,
making Dakar the leading service port for Mali (Figure .). Fluctuating between
, and , tons in the decade beginning in , Malian transit
through Dakar jumped aer , reaching more than . million tons today.
Despite Senegal’s ambitious port policy over the past two decades, the port
of Dakar must still constantly seek to strengthen its attractiveness, lest trac
be lost. Notwithstanding the improved local services and remarkable nautical
conditions, its location at the heart of an urban fabric limits the possibilities for
expansion and hinders its ability to compete with its most serious competitors.
A new port is also expected to be established further east in Rusque Bay. e
condition of the road on part of the route connecting Dakar to Bamako (not to
13 Abel Bove, et al., Le transport routier en Aique de l’Ouest et Centrale, S SAT P
Working Paper No. , Washington, D.C., .
14 Africapolis <www.africapolis.org/data> [Accessed April ].
15 N. Mareï and Olivier Ninot, ‘Transformation des transports en Afrique: Vers des
systèmes à plusieurs vitesses?’, Questions Internationales, , , pp. –.
16 In , Côte d’Ivoire was split in two, with its northern part occupied by bellig-
erents considered by the Abidjan authorities to be rebels. Economic activity slowed
down and rail transport was interrupted completely. International transit to and
from the port of Abidjan was partially suspended until , forcing shipowners
to move to other West African ports.
17
ISEMAR, Enjeux et position concurrentielle de la conteneurisation ouest-aicaine,
, , p. .
18
Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances, Situation Économique et Sociale du Sénégal.
Édition , Dakar, ; Port Autonome de Dakar, , .
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136 J L
mention that of the railway) is variable, increasing transport times and forcing
operators to opt for diversifying their logistics solutions and not favouring the
Senegalese route at the expense of others. e extension of the motorway to
Kaolack ( kilometres east of Dakar) should reassure operators for a time.
Finally, the transit times at the port of Dakar are still a disadvantage for the
rapid clearing of containers.
e growth of port trac in Dakar benets both the Senegalese national
market and Malian trade. e geographical advantage of the Dakar peninsula,
which is the rst major stopping point for ships operating on the Europe–
Africa lines, is accompanied by active lobbying by the port authorities and the
Senegalese powers in an extremely competitive West African landscape.
The Dakar–Bamako Corridor in Regional Competition
Service to Mali from the port of Dakar evolved throughout the twentieth century.
Road transport has now overtaken river and rail, making the Dakar–Bamako
19
Jérôme Lombard, Benjamin Steck and Sidy Cissokho, ‘Les transports sénégalais:
Ancrages internationaux et dérives locales’, in M.C. Diop (ed.), Sénégal, –:
Les institutions et politiques publiques à l’épreuve d’une gouvernance libérale, Dakar,
, pp. –.
Figure 6.3. Transit trac to Mali at the port of Dakar, – (Tons).
(Source: Dakar Port Authority.)
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T D–B C 137
route the number one trade route with the outside world for Mali; however,
competition from other transport routes and West African ports is a constant
threat to Dakar’s leadership.
From Rail to Road
e diculties involved in transport by rail between Dakar and Bamako have
made the need for a quality road axis more pressing. Since , the completion
of the asphalting of the dierent sections has allowed Senegalese and Malian
operators to circulate their goods more easily.
The Virtual Disappearance of the Railway Line
In the Senegal–Mali international arena, trade was rst conducted by the
river infrastructure, which from the nineteenth century served as an axis of
penetration for the colonial conquest towards French Sudan and supported
all the fortied towns, from Dagana to Kayes. is golden age was short-lived,
however. From , with the iès–Kayes rail link, the waterway saw its trac
decrease and ‘enter, from that moment on, a period of sleep which endures
t o d a y ’. During the rst years of the twentieth century, the railway operator,
whose network covered the entire Groundnut Basin, responded to the economic
development challenges of the colony and then of the independent state. e
shi of economic activity from the Senegal River Valley to the centre of the
country reinforced the railway’s primary role in west–east relations. In , the
trac between iès and Kayes amounted to , passengers and ,
tons (civil servants, military personnel, traders); in , freight trac was
approximately , tons.
In the last years of the twentieth century, international rail trac grew
signicantly (reaching , tons in ). However, operational diculties
coupled with the dilapidated condition of the railway caused accidents and
derailments, which resulted in a rapid deterioration in rail activity, and by
trac had dwindled to , tons.
With the privatisation of the
operation in and its takeover by an international consortium with
Canadian and French capital (Canac–Getma), international ows of goods
20 ‘Inauguration de la route Didiéni-Diéma: un boulevard sur Dakar et Nouakchott’,
L’Essor, – July .
21 R . Keita-Ndiaye, ‘Kayes et sa région: Étude de géographie urbaine au Mali’, unpub-
lished PhD thesis, Université Louis Pasteur, , p. .
22 Ministère de l’Équipement et des Transports, Mémento des Transports Terrestres du
Sénégal, Dakar, .
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138 J L
appeared to be rising again – by approximately per cent in , due to
an increase in trac in the Senegal–Mali direction. In , Transrail was
acquired by the Advens group of Franco-Senegalese businessman Abbas Jaber,
and was managed on a day-to-day basis by Vecturis, which specialises in rail
transport in Africa. However, the volume of trac failed to take o, falling
below , tons in ,
and continued to decrease thereaer, to ,
tons in , , tons in , , tons in and , tons in
. In , operation of the line by Advens was terminated, and in ,
Transrail was replaced by the Dakar Bamako Railway (DBF), a transitional
manager until a permanent solution could be found.
The Dominance of Road Traffic
Since the end of the s, roads have played an important part in the
transport of goods to and from Mali as a result of the end-to-end completion
of an asphalted route between Dakar and Bamako.
Rapid changes have been
seen over the course of years. Observations made at the customs post on
the Senegalese–Malian border (Photo .) or the Kayes bridge in Mali (Photo
.) conrm the upward trend. In , nearly lorries weighing between
and tons, mainly loaded with hydrocarbons, building materials (lime and
cement) and foodstus (salt, sh and various others) crossed the border from
Senegal towards Mali every day. In , according to the Malian press, more
23
Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances, Situation Économique et Sociale du Sénégal.
Édition , Dakar, .
24
Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances, Situation Économique et Sociale du Sénégal.
Édition , Dakar, .
25 ANSD, Situation Économique et Sociale du Sénégal en , Dakar, . e
decrease in freight trac is creating real nancial diculties for Transrail. See
Sidy Dieng, ‘Transrail. Le plan de sauvetage vaut milliards’, Wal Fadjri, May
<http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/.html> [Accessed April
].
26 e fall in international passenger rail trac has been going on for several decades:
in , , passengers travelled by train between Senegal and Mali, while in
, there were only ,. Over the period from to , the decrease was
%. Since , passenger rail trac has been totally interrupted on the interna-
tional line and the internal link between Bamako and Kayes.
27
Road passenger trac is also steadily increasing between the Malian capital and
Dakar: , travellers in compared to , in . In , no fewer
than ten coaches with approximately seats le Bamako every day for Kayes,
with some continuing on to Dakar. In the other direction, several vehicles le the
Senegalese capital for Mali every night.
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Photo 6.2. Queue of trucks waiting at the Malian border, 2001.
(Source: J. Lombard, 2001.)
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Photo 6.3. Convoy of tankers in the city of Kayes, Mali, 2009.
(Source: J. Lombard, 2009.)
Figure 6.4. Malian import trac by road and rail on the Dakar–Bamako
Corridor, 2005–2012.
(Source: Malian Port Authority in Senegal, 2013.)
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T D–B C 141
than lorries from all over Mali and its neighbouring countries (including
Burkina Faso .and Niger) crossed Kayes daily towards Senegal. In ,
according to the prime minister of Mali, this number stood at more than .
Today, according to the aforementioned SSATP study, nearly vehicles use
this corridor on a daily basis.
Between and , the total volume transported along this corridor
(imports and exports), road and rail combined, increased approximately .
times, from , tons in to ,, tons in . Road transport
accounts for almost per cent of Mali’s overall trac passing through Senegal,
compared to per cent by rail. Table . and Figures . and . illustrate the
dominance of road over rail supply.
Table 6.1. Evolution of freight trac on the Dakar–Bamako Corridor (in tons,
–).
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2 010 2 0 11 2012
Imports
by rail , , , , , , , ,
Imports
by road , , ,, ,, ,, ,, ,,
, ,
Exports
by rail , , , , , , , ,
Exports
by road , , , , , , , ,
Source: Entrepôts Maliens au Sénégal (EMASE), .
The Introduction of Competition between Corridors by Mali
Although the Senegalese Corridor is the main route of choice for Malian
operators, other African corridors are equally advantageous. e development
of the Entrepôts Maliens (‘Malian Warehouses’) organisations abroad has
promoted competition among states on the Atlantic Ocean, for the benet of
28
‘Kayes amorce son décollage: Le soleil se lève à l’Ouest’, L’Essor, September .
29 Bove, et al., Le transport routier en Aique de l’Ouest et Centrale.
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142 J L
Mali, whose isolation is thereby diminished and its dependence on any one of
them reduced.
‘Closing the Gap between the Coast and the Interior’31
In a context characterised by the opening up of African economies to imports
and the capitalisation of their exports, the landlocked West African states
(Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) have opted for policies that diversify their supply
and shipping routes. Rather than relying too heavily on the strategies of
port authorities in the context of increasing competition among maritime
entities that can sometimes benet from political instability in order to gain
market shares, these states have adopted a logic of pitting dierent platforms
against each other. e aim of this is to restore the balance of power, and to
make port authorities more attentive to – and even dependent on – national
strategies. In Mali, as in Burkina Faso or Bouaké in the north-central part of
30 ere are also Entrepôts Maliens in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Togo (EMACI,
EMASE and EMATO respectively).
31 According to the expression of a Malian ocial interviewed in in Bamako.
32
Jean Debrie and Sandrine De Guio, ‘Interfaces portuaires et compositions spatiales:
Instabilités africaines’, Autrepart, :, , pp. –.
Figure 6.5. Malian export trac by road and rail on the Dakar–Bamako
Corridor, –.
(Source: Malian Port Authority in Senegal, .)
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T D–B C 143
Côte d’Ivoire, ‘dry port’ projects located within the borders or closer to the
barycentre of national territories demonstrate the desire to circumvent the
congestion problems of coastal ports, to reduce transit times by eliminating
customs operations on landing, and to develop storage facilities in the territory
of the destination country, ‘to ensure regular supply to the population as well
as the main sectors of the economy’.
e existence of transport corridors should be seen as more than a means of
reducing isolation, and as the horizon of national and international transport
policies. In Mali, the Shippers’ Council (Conseil Malien des Chargeurs, CMC)
seeks to develop winning strategies to improve the country’s land-based services and
support industrialists and traders, and to take on some of the logistics and transport
operations by attracting them to Mali and entrusting them to national operators.
The First Transits of Malian Freight through the Port of Dakar
Observations of the evolution of the links between Mali and the Atlantic Ocean
highlight the existence of multiple possible routes. e link to Côte d’Ivoire
has been added to the route that has passed through the west of Mali toward
Dakar since , which since has linked the railway between Abidjan
and Ferkessédougou, and then the track and road to Bamako, via Sikasso.
ese routes have long dominated Mali’s land transport and communications
landscape, with the link to Côte d’Ivoire overtaking the route to Senegal in
the s because of operational problems encountered on the Bamako–Dakar
railway and the Ivorian port’s eorts to attract Malian operators. With the
coup in Côte d’Ivoire and the country’s split into two separate parts, the
situation changed completely in favour of Dakar. Malian operators also look
33 Jean Tape Bidi, ‘uelques réexions sur l’existence d’un port sec à Bouaké en Côte
d’Ivoire’, in K. Fodouop and J. Tape Bidi (eds), L’armature du développement en
Aique. Industries, transports et communications, Paris, , pp. –; Harouna
Cisse, ‘La création des ports secs au Mali’, Communication to the International
Workshop Systèmes de transport de marchandises en Aique de l’Ouest, World Road
Association, Ouagadougou, – June , p. .
34 e CMC brings together an assembly of more than industrialists and traders
each year. While the secretary-general is a Malian sate ocial, the president and
vice-presidents are business leaders.
35
In , the Abidjan–Mali axis handled almost , tons (imports and exports
combined), while the Dakar axis handled only , tons: Entrepôts Maliens au
Sénégal and the Senegal Department of Transport.
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to Togo (Lomé: per cent of Malian transit in ) and Ghana (Tema and
Takoradi: . per cent).
Over the past years or so, the Senegalese corridor has made gains over its
competitors (Figure . and Map .). At the end of the s, the Dakar–
Bamako axis took per cent of Malian trac, but this percentage grew
steadily from , rising to nearly per cent in . Malian transit trac
has continued to decline at the port of Abidjan, by almost per cent in the
s, but by only per cent in . As for Ghana’s ports (Takoradi and
Tema), which were able to capture per cent of Malian transit for a time, their
share fell to less than per cent because of long waiting times at the port and
diculties with access (untimely roadblocks).
The advantages of the Dakar–Bamako Corridor are still undeniable.
According to importers we interviewed in as part of a study on the
36 See Jacky Amprou, Crise ivoirienne et ux régionaux de transport, Paris, .
37 Herve Deiss, ‘Afrique de l’Ouest: Le portuaire joue la carte de la solidarité avec
les pays enclavés’, Ports et Corridors <https://portsetcorridors.com//ports/
afrique-de-louest-le-portuaire-joue-la-carte-de-la-solidarite-avec-les-pays-enclaves/>
[Accessed April ].
Figure 6.6.
Distribution
of road trac
to Mali by
West African
corridors,
–.
(Source:
Malian Port
Authorities,
.)
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T D–B C 145
transportation of Senegalese goods by road, the corridor beneted from the
Ivorian crisis and the resulting insecurity on the roads. e distance between
Bamako and the other ports (Cotonou, Lomé and Accra), which are located
about , kilometres from the Malian capital, is turning into an advantage
for Dakar, which is only , kilometres away. In addition to providing an
alternative to the northern corridor, the implementation of the southern corridor
(Tambacounda–Kédougou–Saraya–Kita–Bamako) in shortened the
38 State of Senegal and the European Union, .
Map 6.1. Total trac and share of transit trac in West African ports,
–.
(Source: Port authorities.)
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
146 J L
Dakar–Bamako road link to , kilometres. According to the oil carriers we
interviewed, there are also other factors that favour the Senegalese corridor,
including the section of road that passes near the gold mines of the Kayes region
(which are heavy consumers of diesel) and the reduction in waiting times at the
Dakar renery, which allows four monthly rotations per tanker truck, compared
to two in Abidjan.
For almost two decades, the policy adopted by the port of Dakar and the
construction of additional roads have consolidated Senegal’s place in trade
with Mali. Competition from Abidjan, which is in search of its former glory, is
currently below what it might have been until the end of the s. e current
challenge for the Dakar–Bamako Corridor is to maintain its attractiveness for
international transport operators and the populations residing along its route.
When the Dakar–Bamako Corridor Emancipates
Itself from the Territory
Eorts by Senegalese actors to make the Dakar–Bamako axis the main choice
for transport and logistics operators are increasing. With the opening of the
second axis toward the Malian border, which crosses Senegalese mining areas, the
corridor has become a national issue for the country. e aim of this policy, which
is supported by international donors, is to improve trac ows along this double
axis. One question remains unresolved, however: is this objective becoming
exclusive, or can it accommodate a more balanced territorial development?
Prioritising Fluidity
e development of international trade between Senegal and Mali is founded
on a favourable and long-standing backdrop of improving road links between
African capitals. Support for corridors linking ports to capital cities in landlocked
countries has become even stronger as one sees signicant declines in transport costs
along heavy trac routes. Donors, meeting the interests of landlocked countries
and the major domestic and international operators, are pushing to strengthen
corridors, with the goal of improving trac ows on major roads and minimising
39 Club du Sahel et de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, Atlas régional des transports et des télécom-
munications dans la CEDEAO, Paris, .
40 Supee Teravaninthorn and Gaël Raballand, Transport Prices and Costs in Aica: A
Review of the International Corridors, Directions in Development; Infrastructure,
Washington, D.C., .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T D–B C 147
existing barriers, including so-called abnormal practices. Improving trac on
the main West African roads is becoming the backbone of the development of
transport systems in Africa, and is one of the strategic axes of transport policies,
led by continental organisations such as NEPAD.
e focus on international infrastructure and the consolidation of interna-
tional corridors stems from the credit they enjoy in the dominant discourse
and the extensive projects envisioned for the continent. International donors
and global operators see this as an easy way of duplicating what is being done
elsewhere. e corridor is viewed as the only alternative to a lack of international
connections. In a sense, the prophecy of the corridor is self-fullling, in the
words of Robert King Merton, and is also referred to by J.-F. Staszak.
e notion of the corridor is presented as one of the elements of the
relationship between transport, regional integration and the development
process. e corridor promotes institutional integration, which enables the
development of international co-operation, the creation of public–private
partnerships, and changes in legislation and inter-state agreements. Logistical
and economic successes, which are given value by the prevailing narratives about
the future of transport in West Africa, establish it as a new paradigm.
As a
‘programming and governance tool’, it tends to be organised into a functional
(and ecient) space, concentrating infrastructures, ows, operators and public
41 Borderless Alliance <www.borderlesswa.com>; checkpoints (customs, police, etc.)
along international roadways have been identied as additional cost factors (due,
for example, to illegal taxes, bribes) and signicant delays. ey are monitored
by a collective of public and private interests called ‘Borderless’, which aims to
improve trade and transport conditions in West Africa. See comment prepared
in by a Senegalese representative of the Observatory of Abnormal Practices
(OPA – Observatoire des Pratiques Anormales): <www.dakaractu.com/Corridor-
Dakar-Bamako-D-excellents-resultats-ont-ete-enregistres-en--Mbaye-Chimere-
Ndiaye_a.html> [Accessed April ].
42 West Africa Trade Hub, Coûts du transport et de la logistique sur le corridor Lomé–
Ouagadougou, Report #, no place of publication, ; Jérôme Lombard, Olivier
Ninot and Benjamin Steck, ‘Corridors de transport en Afrique et intégration terri-
toriale en questions’, in A. Gana and Y. Richard (eds), Les intégrations régionales
dans le monde, Paris, , pp. –.
43 Robert King Merton, Éléments de théorie et de méthode sociologique, Paris,
/; Jean-Francois Staszak, ‘Prophéties auto-réalisatrices et géographie’,
L’Espace Géographique, :, , pp. –.
44
Vivien Foster and Cecilia Briceno-Garmendia, Inastructures aicaines: Une trans
-
formation impérative, Paris, , p. ; Yann Alix (ed.), Les corridors de transport,
Cormelles-le-Royal, .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
148 J L
and private authorities. Its operation is reduced to the establishment of simple
accelerators of ows: that is, roads connecting two points – in this case capitals
such as Dakar, Bamako, Ouagadougou, Abidjan, Accra and Lomé. ese conti-
nental hubs exert their inuence over the entire area being served and ensure
the redistribution of goods in their inland areas. e pursuit of the technical–
economic logic of corridors leads to territories dominated by uidity and only
slightly structured by the diversity of the transport systems. e example of the
Maputo Corridor is emblematic of the development of this type of heavy axis
in Africa, which benets only international trade, and only rarely local trac.
What are the Effects for the Territories Crossed?
e quest for uidity on the Dakar–Bamako Corridor raises certain questions.
e tunnel eect is oen the rst outcome of the concentration of eorts on a
single axis. It results in low interdependence between long-distance trac and
local spatial dynamics. As transit trac grows, small towns scattered along the
axis become no more than milestones for drivers and exit and redistribution
points for freight and passengers.
e corridor is designed by globalised economic actors as a logistical axis,
which under optimal conditions must enable ows of trac and ensure the
maximum protability of these ows, dictated by the needs of both shipping
customers and consumers of the products being transported. At the same time,
it is presented by institutional leaders as a development tool that benets the
territories crossed and as a resource for improving the accessibility of inhabited
areas. ere is no guarantee, however, that these populations will notice any
positive impact, with the discourse on the structural eects obscuring the
negative aspects, which include inconveniences such as pollution and accidents,
and even insecurity and land pressures.
45 Jean Debrie and Claude Comtois, ‘Une relecture du concept de corridors
de transport: Illustration comparée Europe/Amérique du Nord’, Les Cahiers
Scientiques du Transport, , , pp. –.
46 Frederik Söderbaum and Ian Taylor (eds), ‘Competing Region-Building in the
Maputo Development Corridor’, in F. Söderbaum and Ian Taylor (eds), Ao-Regions:
e Dynamics of Cross-Border Micro-Regionalism in Aica, Uppsala, , pp.
–.
47
A former Senegalese driver interviewed in when he was the caretaker of a
transport company, who had le a small town in the centre of the country to settle
in Dakar, repeatedly told of seeing tanker trucks passing by on the road to Mali,
no longer stopping in what had been the company’s stronghold for years: “Even
breakdowns are repaired from Dakar”, he added.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T D–B C 149
In the s, one of Africa’s top transport specialists, the economist Xavier
Godard, underlined the importance of linking international and local ows.
e corridor can aid the process of bringing them together provided that it
is not thought of just as a uid axis of circulation, but is also viewed as an
interface space. e existence of secondary intermediate hubs, holders of relay
functions (transport, logistics, trade), and the polarisation of jobs and nancing
is one of the conditions. On the Dakar–Bamako Corridor, the question arises
of the role and future of the towns and villages located along the road axis. e
life generated by the ows results in a reduction of activities toward the axis,
where sustainable human settlements and the seeds of future agglomerations
emerge (Koumpentoum in the region of Tambacounda, in Senegal, or Diéma
and Didiéni between Kayes and Bamako, in Mali). Corridors become tools
of territorial reconguration, oering benets to the territories. On the one
hand, there is the possibility that people will benet from what is circulating
by oering numerous goods and services (fuels, various repairs, restoration and
accommodation) and, on the other, there is also the potential capacity to meet
travellers’ needs at the stops with food products, construction materials, energy
resources (for example charcoal) and handicras. e growing numbers of trips
made by government ocials and private companies, and even private vehicles,
are creating a trac market from which the local population can benet. Finally,
being located on a corridor means having easier access to health, education and
administrative services.
Another major issue is the destruction of infrastructures. Between
Tambacounda and Kedougou, the axis is in poor condition, as it also is between
Kedougou and the Malian border. The Kayes Bridge, which spans the
Senegal River, has been weakened by uninterrupted truck crossings for almost
two decades, as it was not built to take such a high level of trac. In , it
was even closed for reconstruction, forcing vehicles over tons in weight to
travel by the southern route. e main explanation for this was the systematic
48 Xavier Godard, ‘Transport local, transport global, quelle articulation ?’ in
SITRASS, Ecacité, Compétitivité, Concurrence: la chaîne de transport en Aique
Sub-Saharienne, Lyon-Arcueil, , pp. –.
49 See Boubacar Dembo Tamba, ‘Le corridor Dakar–Tambacounda–Bamako via
Kédougou se dégrade dans sa partie située entre Niéméniké et Moussala’, Radio
Tamba Online, December <www.tambacounda.info////
corridor-dakar-tambacounda-bamako-via-kedougou-se-degrade-partie-situee-entre-
niemenike-moussala/> [Accessed April ].
50 Since , a second bridge over the Senegal River relieves the old bridge of part of
its trac. See Aminata Sanou, ‘Inauguration du ème pont de Kayes: contribuer à la
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
150 J L
overloading of heavy goods vehicles in contravention of West African Economic
and Monetary Union (WAEMU) community regulations (to which Mali and
Senegal are subject), in particular regulation //CM/WAEMU, on the
harmonisation of standards and procedures for the control of the gauges, weights
and axle load of haulage vehicles. Overloading is oen used to compensate for
low freight prices and the almost constant empty return journeys. A study
on the state of road freight transport in Senegal indicated that at the Diam
Niadio weighing site at the exit from the Dakar agglomeration, per cent
of heavy goods vehicles were overloaded. e same study concluded that the
lifespan of the infrastructure has been drastically reduced (from to ve years).
e rail transport alternative represents one way of addressing the problem
of vehicle overloading and destruction of infrastructure. On the link between
Dakar and Bamako, however, despite repeated promises to boost use of the
line, no large-scale plan has been envisaged to permit the complete restoration
of the track or, presumably, widening it to standard gauge.
Moreover, there
is nothing that says that the revival of rail transport will benet the localities
crossed or their populations. In fact, the example of the Abidjan–Ouagadougou
line, which is operated by SITARAIL, a subsidiary of the Bolloré group, shows
the opposite: a reduction in the number of stops at passenger stations and a
concentration of investment in freight trains.
On the Dakar–Bamako line, the
impact for the territories has been disastrous: since the takeover of operations
by private funds in , residents have complained about the disappearance of
the passenger service, which was sometimes the only way available to them to
croissance économique et assurer la continuité du trac du corridor Dakar-Bamako
!’, Maliactu.net, March <https://maliactu.net/mali-inauguration-du-
eme-pont-de-kayes-contribuer-a-la-croissance-economique-et-assurer-la-conti-
nuite-du-trac-du-corridor-dakar-bamako/> [Accessed June ].
51 Khadim Mbaye, ‘Macky Sall réitère son plaidoyer pour le développement du ferro-
viaire en Afrique’, La Tribune Aique, September <https://afrique.latribune.
fr/nances/investissement/––/macky-sall-reitere-son-plaidoyer-pour-le-
developpement-du-ferroviaire-en-afrique-.html> [Accessed April ];
Michel Lachkar, ‘Moderniser la ligne de train Dakar-Bamako, un projet stratégique
pour le Sénégal’, anceinfo, August <www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/afrique/
senegal/moderniser-la-ligne-de-train-dakar-bamako-un-projet-strategique-pour-le-
senegal_.html> [Accessed April ].
52 Foussata Dagnogo, ‘Rail-route et Dynamiques Spatiales en Côte d’Ivoire’, unpub-
lished PhD thesis, Université de Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne, .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T D–B C 151
travel outside their isolated region. e revitalisation of the line has not been
integrated with transport/space interactions in mind, and the only underlying
goal has been the uidity of trac between the two terminals.
Conclusion: Senegal’s Corridor at the Tip of Africa
By focusing its energy on infrastructure development, particularly that of
the Dakar–Bamako road axis, Senegal comes across as a country committed
to change. e Dakar–Bamako Corridor is apparently a project that serves a
dominant vision of the economy, in which accelerating and securing intercon-
tinental trac are the fundamental principles.
However, Senegal’s territory lies at the ‘tip of the network’, at the far end of
the axis from Mali, and thus from central West Africa. Policies to strengthen
national infrastructure in the direction of Dakar, coupled with disagreements
with e Gambia, Mali and Mauritania, have highlighted Senegal’s focus on
itself and contributed towards distancing it from its neighbours, to the point
where international land connections remain dicult: the Tambacounda/
Malian border axis was only asphalted in and there is no bridge across
to Banjul in e Gambia or to Mauritania, while routes to Guinea or Guinea
Bissau are few and in poor condition. Nationally, therefore, Senegal is a country
that is turned towards its capital, while at a continental level it is relegated to
a peripheral position that is no more favourable in terms of better integration
into West African trade than that of landlocked Mali and Burkina Faso, which
seem to be more in control.
On the African chessboard, the question is whether the Senegalese economy
can turn the advantage the location of the port of Dakar represents for inter-
national sea routes into a permanent asset, and attract global and West African
53
See the two-part lm by Julien Merlaud, , who interviewed all the rail transport
actors in Mali and investigated the entire Bamako–Kayes train route: Bamako–Kayes
Parts I–II, lm, Julien Merlaud <www.dailymotion.com/video/xphtd_bamako-
kayes-part_news> and <www.dailymotion.com/video/xpgyq_bamako-kayes-
part_news> [both accessed April ].
54
See Olivier David, ‘Les Réseaux Marchands Africains face à l’Approvisionnement
d’Abidjan’, unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris X, on onions from
the Sahel exported to the Ivorian economic capital (more than , kilometres
away); Audrey Fromageot, ‘Dépasser l’Enclavement: Le Maraîchage des Savanes
et l’Approvisionnement d’Abidjan’, Espace-Populations-Sociétés, , , –, on
market gardening in the savannas of southern Burkina Faso, the production of which
is also intended for Abidjan (more than kilometres away).
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
152 J L
transport operators in spite of competition from other ports such as Abidjan,
Tema and Lomé, and soon Nouakchott and Conakry. In addition, the trade
between Dakar and Bamako makes an uneven contribution to the devel-
opment of national territories. While the two cities benet, other spaces such
as landlocked urban neighbourhoods and rural peripheries remain isolated from
the advantages that should come with the trac that passes through them.
e rhetoric of the structural eects of infrastructure mobilised by Senegal and
donors remains wishful thinking.
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Development Corridor’, in F. Söderbaum and Ian Taylor (eds), Ao-Regions: e
Dynamics of Cross-Border Micro-Regionalism in Aica, Uppsala, , pp. –.
Staszak, Jean-Francois, ‘Prophéties auto-réalisatrices et géographie’, L’Espace
Géographique, :, , pp. –.
Tamba, Boubacar Dembo, ‘Le Corridor Dakar–Tambacounda–Bamako via Kédougou
se Dégrade dans sa Partie Située entre Niéméniké et Moussala’, Radio Tamba
Online, December <www.tambacounda.info////corridor-dakar-
tambacounda-bamako-via-kedougou-se-degrade-partie-situee-entre-niemenike-
moussala/> [Accessed April ].
Teravaninthorn, Supree and Raballand, Gaël, Transport Prices and Costs in Aica: A
Review of the International Corridors, Directions in Development; Infrastructure,
Washington D.C., .
West Africa Trade Hub, Coûts du Transport et de la Logistique sur le Corridor Lomé–
Ouagadougou, Report #, no place of publication, .
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C 7
Privatising the Port: Harbouring
Neoliberalism in Lomé
N S
Introduction
e micro-nation of Togo is one of the poorest countries in the world. Situated
on the Gulf of Guinea, Togo’s coastline is a mere kilometres long. It is one
of the smallest countries on the African continent, a narrow strip that stretches
roughly kilometres north from the coast to Burkina Faso with a population
of approximately eight million. What is more, its highly protected national
labour code would imply that Togo is an unattractive locale for global capital.
How has this marginal place become a site of one of West Africa’s leading
transshipment container ports? Why is Togo so attractive to global (maritime)
capital despite its lack of natural resources? And what makes Togo an ‘investment
destination’ for new infrastructures of trade and transportation - a logistics and
maritime hub at the core of a new transport corridor – notwithstanding regional
competition from the ports of Tema and Cotonou, national unions and the
propensity for labour to strike?
is chapter explores the political economy of Lomé harbour to illustrate
why Togo, despite the aforementioned labour and economic conditions, is
so attractive to global capital. Since its colonial inception, the small Togolese
entrepôt nation has been an important economic frontier zone on the Gulf of
Guinea, a centre for capitalist commodication and a major hub in the coastal
corridor that connects Abidjan via Accra–Lomé–Cotonou to Lagos. e
chapter sketches how recent shis in port governance – the transformation of
the old state-centric port system to the new privatised port - have le a vacuum
for (corporate) capital to ll, while limiting the capacity of the state and labour
to place restrictions upon it.
A theory of the south story, this chapter analyses the relationship between
Togo’s postcolonial past and the neoliberal present. It starts from the premise
that if we want to understand the port’s current conjuncture we must move
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156 N S
beyond contingent explanations of the present to capture how the history of
the longue durée works itself out as the history of capital and the history of the
modern state. In so doing, the chapter argues for a political economic expla-
nation that shows why the counterintuitive of the port’s unlikely success has
occurred in the way that it has.
Received Explanations
In Togolese popular discourse, the media, the milieu of national and expat port
professionals, as well as scholarly work, four existing species of explanations-
ecological, geographical, global nancial and political economic - describe the
phenomenon of the port’s success.
Ecology
Perhaps the most common explanation given by World Bank technocrats, the
Togolese Port Authority, the media and Togolese citizens that accounts for the
success of the Lomé port concerns its naturalness. “Our port is the only natural
deep-water seaport on the coast between Senegal and Angola”, said the head of
the port authority’s communications department, to an audience of Burkinabe
traders visiting the harbour in August . “Other ports need expensive
dredging if they want to berth bigger ships with more cargo”, he continued
with no uncertain pride, “but our port is the only port in the region that can
handle the new megaships”. e port authority’s ecological explanation for being
the rst container port in West Africa is echoed by the private corporations that
operate the two container terminals, the press, as well as ordinary Togolese. For
example, an expatriate manager explained to me that a key reason for investing
in Togo was indeed techno-ecological: “e natural dra is metres, we only
had to dredge minimally.” Similar explanations on the implication of the deep
water can be found both in the local and international press: ‘Lomé, the rst
container port in West Africa… the only natural deep-water port in the region,
and currently the only port capable of handling the third generation of cargo
ships’.
It also features in World Bank reports and feasibility studies. For the
technocrat, the media, the professional and the port bureaucrat, the techno-
ecological explanation was one of the critical reasons the port is signicant today.
1
Nadoun Coulibaly, ‘Togo: Une Plateforme Logistique pour Désengorger le Port
de Lomé’, Jeune Aique, June <www.jeuneafrique.com/mag//
economie/togo-une-plateforme-logistique-pour-desengorger-le-port-de-lome/>.
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Accounts by ordinary Togolese were especially poignant, not least for the
way nature assumed a special quality that appeared to make Togolese subjects
who they are in space and time. “It’s nature’s gi to us”, said a taxi driver when
I asked him why the port had become so big in recent years as we could see the
massive crane infrastructure looming on the horizon. A trader in the market
also commented on the ecological dimensions, namely the ‘nature’ of both port
and nation: “Togo is a small country. It’s poor. We don’t have gold or oil like
Ghana, but we have been blessed with our port… it’s naturally deep and we
have trade.” As Togolese of dierent walks of life reected upon their national
port, the resort to the ecological and the natural was potent. For the trader,
nature indeed had two sides: the nature of the country (i.e. ecological) and the
nature of the nation (i.e. sociological). e port thus appeared to link the two
sides of nature, both its ecological dimension and the sociological reality of a
small nation bere of natural resources. What makes the Togo port intrinsically
Togolese in this account is ‘our nature’ in the dual sense of the term.
Geography
If the small size of a country has the capacity to naturalise the intrinsic nature of
Togo, its geographical position places it strategically in the West African region.
‘Togo, the Gateway to West Africa’, is a slogan the government frequently uses to
advertise Togo’s strategic location to, and in, the world. One such mise en scène
of the port’s geographic advantage was the African Union’s maritime summit,
recently held in Togo; here the harbour was presented as ‘the only port on the
West African coast from which you can get to several capitals in one day’.
e geographical explanation is also common to the discourse and the logic of
the shipping lines as they seek to secure regional hubs for the transshipment of
their cargo. Indeed, the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world’s
second largest shipping line, has made Lomé the centre for their transshipment
to the subregion. e strategic advantage of the Gulf of Guinea location, as the
company’s director in Togo explained, is that it “allows controlling regional cargo
ow, reduce transit time, and regulate port congestion”. For MSC, the Lomé
Container Terminal (LCT), a joint venture between MSC’s subsidiary TIL
and China Merchants Port (CMP), serves as a high-capacity hub for its eet
of feeders that go from Lomé to Lagos and Port Harcourt, Cotonou, Tema and
Takoradi, Abidjan and San Pedro, Monrovia and Freetown as well as Libreville,
Luanda and Durban. Explaining this system of transshipment, whereby so-called
2
‘Protect Our Oceans’ Summit, Lomé, Togo, October <www.african-union-
togo.com/en/togo/opportunites>.
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motherships from Europe and Asia arrive in Lomé, he recalls the techno-
ecological advantage of the container port terminal, namely its “depth of nearly
. metres” that accommodates “large ships of more than metres length”.
Indeed, for the shipping professional, the signicance of the geographical fuses
with the technical and the ecological.
en too, there are everyday explanations Togolese give about the way
they relate to their country’s geography, and thus to the world. Echoing the
trader’s comment about the smallness of Togo and its capacity for trade, many
spoke about the necessity to engage with neighbouring countries.
“ We h av e
no choice but to be open to the world, to Europe, to China, but also to be
connected to the sub-region”, said an accountant. For him, Togo’s economy
was tied to geography: “without Burkina Faso and other landlocked countries
in the Sahel, and Benin, Nigeria and Ghana, we couldn’t exist economically”,
he concluded. Others, still, spoke of the country’s historical triangulations,
namely the Black Atlantic and subsequent colonial economies of extraction.
While the geographical explanation of the Togo port phenomenon appears
straightforward, if not deterministic, the global nancial account takes us to
a dierent scale.
Global Finance
A French nancial director with a decade-long experience in the African
maritime sector explained the Lomé port phenomenon to me by way of its
nancialisation. Because port infrastructures are especially capital intensive,
there is a great deal at stake, not least in relation to how multinational corpo-
rations assemble nancial capital for maritime investments. “Corporations hate
government backed loan arrangements in developing countries”, he began to
explain. For him, the nancial capital that foreign corporations had eectively
mobilised and drawn into the privatised concessions of the Togo port was the
quintessential example of how to create the possibility of a magnet eect. Each
of the three corporations that had obtained the operating rights to the conces-
sions for plus years – namely, the Swiss terminal operator TIL, the French
group Bolloré Africa Logistics, and the Spanish maritime group Boluda - used
3 is trade economy explanation is not unique to Togo. It is an eective argument
micro-nations have successfully mobilised around the world. e most potent
example is Singapore, where the government popularised the term ‘small red dot’
as in Singapore is just a small red dot on the (geopolitical) map, without natural
resources, hence they had to be resourceful. But of course this is said from a position
of economic domination in the region.
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a distinct nancial model. TIL utilised multilateral nancial institutions and
development banks for the construction and commercial exploitation of Lomé
Container Terminal (LCT); later, it also drew on Chinese corporate state capital.
Bolloré, by contrast, used its own corporate holding to nance the infrastructural
and logistical upgrading of Togo Terminal (TT). Finally, the tugboat operator
Boluda used a mix of corporate and commercial capital to acquire the operating
rights for its lucrative concession. For the maritime nance expert it was the
conuence of these three models of port nance that made Lomé a success.
e nancial model of the port concession was a necessary condition to
revitalise and increase the port’s inuence in the region; this, in the absence of
the state’s capacity to leverage capital, and, importantly, to nancialise capital
amidst scal decit and debt loan repayments. Indeed, the nancialising of the
Togo port was advantageous to a Togolese government that was, on the one
hand, relieved of the commercial risk and nancial liability of operating the
port, while, on the other, extracting revenue from the concessions through taris,
royalties and taxation. e nancialisation of the port placed Togo rmly on
the map of global trade and shipping. A recent IMF report, for instance, praised
the role of the port in relation to growing GDP while emphasising the potential
for future growth of Togo as a regional logistical hub and a dynamic nancial
centre. us, according to this explanation, it was global nance that created
the conditions for the Togo port phenomenon.
e global nancial explanation also resonates with scholarly work. For
example, African ports have been described as ‘sites of nancial innovation’. In
the case of Tema’s multilateral funding context, Brenda Chaln suggests that two
types of capital, namely development capital and commercial capital, underwrite
each other, not least by combining the logics of ‘extraversion and statism’. In
Togo, by contrast, the state does not participate in the commercial governance
of the concessions, nor in the nancing of the port. A port manager in Lomé
made this clear: “e last thing you want is a joint-venture with a national
port authority slowing down each and every decision you need to make, it’s
a nightmare.” is was said on the basis of rst-hand experience, acquired at
several container ports in Africa and the Middle East where the national port
authority was part of the joint venture that managed the container terminals.
In Togo, government bureaucracy did not interfere with the decision-making
4 Whether these three models were developed in this specic context, which would
suggest that Lomé was precisely their experiential ground, is an open question.
5 Brenda Chaln, ‘Recasting Maritime Governance in Ghana: e Neo-De velopmental
State and the Port of Tema’, Journal of Modern Aican Studies, :, , p. .
6 Ibid.
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processes of the port concessions. Instead, the Togolese state has retreated from
the port as a passive landlord that administers the land while extracting rents
from its privatisation.
Political-Economy
From an analytical perspective, the most signicant explanation of the port’s
success is the political economic story. While other accounts merely oer
functional explanations, the political economic account exceeds in importance,
not least because it has dierent dimensions. Firstly, it concerns the retraction of
the state and the political vacuum; secondly, it has to do with the privatisation
of the port; and, thirdly, it relates to the discourse of informal transactions.
State Retraction
From the perspective of those Togolese who have long worked in the port system,
the transformation of the harbour has to do with the neoliberal moment: “Before
they liberalised the port, there was solidarity and hierarchy: it was Togolese
and we worked together”, summarised the driver of a medium-sized logistics
company. e freight-forwarding company he worked for was one of the few
that had maintained national ownership in the aermath of the crisis of the
state – that critical moment of the s when non-state actors stepped into
the political void of state retraction.
In fact, his company was created in the
early s, at a time when a strike had paralysed the port for almost a year
amidst political crisis and state violence. As ships abandoned the harbour and
the port city was emptied of its residents (eeing the army’s attack on an interim
government that had temporarily stripped the president-dictator of its power),
Eyadéma incentivised citizens to recapture port activity. Today, his company
struggled to maintain its position in a market increasingly dominated by interna-
tional corporations. “In the past”, he further explained “it was buzzing, there was
work, lots of it, but now? the multinationals have taken over.” e view of this
driver, who, like many, had seen his livelihood diminished and threatened in
contradistinction to the promise of democracy and liberalisation, was reected
by many in the maritime industry (private sector and public employees, low-wage
earners and top managers alike).
e retraction of the state is signicant as a political economic explanation
as to why the Togo port is a successful exception. At its most fundamental, state
retraction is the complement to nancialisation. Indeed, nancialisation would
not be possible without the withdrawal of the state from the management of the
7
Charles Piot, Nostalgia for the Future: West Aica aer the Cold War, Chicago, .
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harbour. From the perspective of corporate capital, the withdrawal of the state
allows for the emergence of private indirect governance, a form of ‘privatised
sovereignty’ in which state actors concede their authority to non-state actors,
namely corporations. Accordingly, the capacity to run a large and eective port
is made possible by virtue of nancialising the port in the political vacuum.
e political vacuum gets the state out of the way, and therefore capital can
lay its claim.
is neoconservative argument is not new. Nor is it specic to the African
continent. However, it is an argument that economists have long used to
celebrate the withdrawal of the state as the necessary condition that allows free
range to capital, which, in turn, creates the possibility for capital to operate a
successful entrepreneurial operation. is corporate argument is hardly echoed
in Togolese ordinary discourse. However, it genuinely resonates with the views
of corporate port managers. Many of them believe that for a corporation to
work in a country like Togo where skilled labour is scarcer, it best to not have
the state intervene. Togo oered just the right kind of environment where the
state gets suciently out of the way for corporations to open a space for, and
to protect, various projects of corporate expansion; aer all, corporations are
there to make money.
is political economic explanation of the political void is echoed in the
scholarly literature on the so-called shrinking of the state.
Charlie Piot
has
described the evisceration of the Togolese state in the context of the political
crisis of the s. For Piot, the unravelling of the Eyadéma authority complex
must be understood in relation to the end of the Cold War – i.e. the moment
when Western aid was terminated and the regime was pressured to liberalise the
political sphere. As national structures unravelled amidst market liberalisation,
this ‘post-Cold War moment’ became the critical turning point in the organi-
sation of political power. For Piot, reminiscent of Foucault, power shied
from a vertical patrimonial state to a horizontal neoliberal state, turning into
a regime that was rooted in the ‘logic of the market’ and the ‘rationality of the
8 Achille Mbembe, ‘On Private Indirect Government’, in On the Postcolony, Berkeley,
, pp. –.
9 Jean-François Bayart, L’État en Aique: La Politique du Ventre, Paris, ;
Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou, e Criminalisation of the
State in Aica, Bloomington, .
10 Piot, Nostalgia for the Future; Charles Piot, e Fixer, Durham, .
11 Piot, Nostalgia for the Future, p. .
12 Michel Foucault, e Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, –,
Michel Senellart (ed.), translated by Graham Burchell, New York, , p. .
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commodity form’. is new political moment under neoliberalism paved the
way for ‘private indirect government’. And it is in this space, where capital gets
nancialised, that corporations can do exactly what they want.
Privatisation
Another explanation is given from a scholarly perspective, the view of organic
intellectuals and global technocrats. For Beatrice Hibou,
privatisation is the
dialectical complement of the retraction of the state and the political vacuum.
is, of course, is a cherished argument that World Bank technocrats have long
advanced as they pushed African governments into modernising their outdated
(or ‘failing’) port infrastructures. e need for privatisation was conrmed by
many Togolese in the port system. Consider a supervisor at Lomé Container
Terminal who acknowledged the benet of privatisation: “e port had to be
modernised, it was all falling apart… we badly needed the investment to privatise…
the state is incapable of running the port, it was completely dysfunctional.”
e managing director of a tug boat company echoed the supervisor’s view by
conrming the port’s operating decit: “When we obtained the concession for
managing the port’s towage and mooring services in , it was operating at
a loss.” One of the tug boat captains, a Togolese who had previously worked
for the state-run towage service added critical nuance as he spoke about the
lack of maintenance and the that had made what should be a highly lucrative
business into a decient operation: “e tugboats weren’t properly serviced …
engines would break down and spare parts were oen unavailable and required
a lengthy bureaucratic process to order.” A high-ranking employee at the port
authority agreed with the captain’s assessment: “One day, we caught a guy with
his zemidjan (taxi-moto) lling his empty tank from the tug boat’s gasoline
container! We red him. But there are many other instances, and that’s why
things weren’t working before the harbour was privatised.” Still, another praised
the competition and alleged eciency that privatisation brings to the Togo
port sector: “African governance is not conducive to port eciency”, said this
Togolese private sector employee. For him, ‘African governance’ ought to be
replaced by corporate governance, namely its alleged structure of accountability
(i.e. structures that he considered incompatible with the former).
Many Togolese considered the privatisation of the port as a good thing, if not
the primary reason behind the success of a harbour that ought not to be especially
13 Mbembe, ‘On Private Indirect Government’.
14 Beatrice Hibou, ‘From Privatising the Economy to Privatising the State’, in B. Hibou
(ed.), Privatising the State, New York, , pp. –
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successful or important. is view resonates with the technocratic-developmen-
talist explanation for port privatisation. By World Bank measures, African port
governance has essentially been deemed decient for reasons that range from
port congestion, outdated infrastructures to managerial failure. In Togo, as
elsewhere, World Bank technicians prescribed the bank’s favoured ‘landlord
model’ to structurally adjust, i.e. liberalise, the port for greater eciency. While
the Togolese state began to privatise the port according to the Bank’s model
during the early s, large-scale private investments in the container port’s
infrastructure did not materialise until the early s. As foreign companies
took over port operations, the port authority’s role was scaled back to basic
administration as per the landlord model. e result was the privatisation of
state function for the said benet of national development.
Informal transactions
Some see informal transactions as an important variable that can facilitate the
success of a port. ere are two dimensions to the discourse of informal transac-
tions: rstly, informal transactions understood as informal economy (ordinary
licit informal transactions), and, secondly, informal transactions understood as
bribery and corruption (illicit informal transaction). Both occur, and both are
said to spark and energise economies. Discursively these two are fused but analyt-
ically they are of course separate. An accountant at a logistics company claimed
that most companies in Togo, foreign and national, have special accounts for
what he called “extra expenses”. Such expenses, or informal transactions, can
range from the transfer of monies to the ruling party during elections, sending
beverages for the annual Evela wrestling contest in the northern city of Kara (the
birthplace of the Gnassingbé ‘clan’), paying o union leaders for settling labour
resistances, to paying bribes to win bids for port concessions. In the port, he
suggested, such informal transactions are widely enacted if they do not constitute
the norm: “Everyone knows about Bolloré mingling in our election … we
know for a fact that the president has a per cent share in Togo Terminal
[i.e. Bolloré]”, he exclaimed without the slightest hint of hesitation. What this
accountant described is oen thought of as corruption (indeed, in , French
industrial magnate Vincent Bolloré was arrested in Paris over corruption charges
in the acquisition of container terminals in the ports of Lomé and Conakry).
But, from the perspective of capital it is thought of as the ordinary cost of
15
On the renaming of the illicit in the context of law laundering, see John L. and
Jean Comaro, ‘Law and Disorder in the Postcolony: An Introduction’, in J. L and
J. Comaro (eds), Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, Chicago, , pp. –.
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business. According to this corporate argument, the ordinary cost of business
(i.e. corruption taken as illegitimate distribution) actually facilitates the port
as a highly successful operation. If there were no such costs, it would be much
harder for corporations like Bolloré to get labour to do what it wants, or, for
that matter, to get government licences when needed.
e explanation of shadow transactions facilitating capital ow in the Togo
port economy was shared by a local legal counsel: “ere are always ways around
the law. You can see this all over the world, in some places it’s called corruption,
in others it’s called a fee of consolidation”, he stated sharply. ough highly
critical of Bolloré’s dealings in the Lomé port, he nonetheless acknowledged
that informal transactions can get around labour and capital blockages, such that
payouts guarantee maximum protability. Indeed, from the perspective of those
who see the port as an eciency problem, the payment of secondary order costs
constitute a form of capital management that makes the harbour functional to
the logic of capital accumulation. Of course, this is not unique to Togo. ough
compliancy regulations have changed the conduct of business in a shipping
industry with long-standing monopoly systems, customary pay-o transactions,
and various practices of nancial compensation, the odd corruption case breaks
the news ever so oen. Indeed, the recent example of German shipowners
taking multi-million euro bribes from a Danish marine paint manufacturer
is a case in point. us, the question of how tightly secret commissions are
governed by the law, as people rarely get arrested for insider trading or malfea-
sance, remains a murky one. In short, what these examples illustrate is that
secondary payments facilitate the wheels of capital and therefore make possible
things that otherwise trigger blockages in legal and regulatory systems.
16
e March Big Box Club meeting, an exclusive club of shipping magnates,
was intercepted by the FBI on the suspicion of antitrust violations. On the issuing
of subpoenas by the US Department of Justice to the CEOs of the world’s largest
shipping lines, see: JOC, ‘US antitrust regulators raid Box Club meeting’, JOC,
March <www.joc.com/maritime-news/us-antitrust-regulators-raid-box-club-
meeting-serve-subpoenas_.html> [Accessed April ].
17
On corruption, the HR director of a major European container terminal recounted
to me how in the age of pre-compliancy it was standard practice for suppliers of
personal protection equipment (hard hats, steel-toe boots, overalls) to throw lavish
parties for the port’s purchasing department. e latter’s managers were said to wear
the most elegant suits in the port.
18 Martin Kopp, ‘So Lau das Korrupte Geschae mit den Schisfarben’, Hamburger
Abendblatt, August <www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/article/
So-laeu-das-korrupte-Geschae-mit-den-Schisfarben.html>.
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Taken together, the dierent versions of political economic explanation
of the port’s success – the rst emphasising the retreat of the state and the
political vacuum, the second emphasising privatisation, and the third empha-
sising informal transactions – constitute three pieces of a broader category
of neoliberal political economy that we shall return to in the fourth part of
this chapter. e next section seeks to assess in what measure the four existing
species of explanations (ecological, geographical, global nancial and political
economic) are in fact necessary, incomplete and/or partial.
Received Explanations, Revisited
Ecology Revisited
e harbour’s natural deep seawater characteristic is a necessary condition for
the port to have achieved its current glory. Lomé is the only natural deep-water
harbour with a dra of . metres, which places it ahead of its immediate
competitors, specically the neighbouring ports of Cotonou (Benin) and Tema
(Ghana). Indeed, some of the large container ships that use the Lomé port
simply cannot enter its Benin counterpart; still, others are constrained to stay
at anchorage o the coast until the port’s access channel becomes navigable
with tidal changes.
When travelling on a fully loaded medium-sized container ship from Lomé
to Cotonou, I witnessed the signicance of the port’s dra rst hand. Our ship
had le the Lomé docks several hours late due to last-minute changes in cargo-
loading procedures. e captain, hence, was anxious to reach Cotonou in time
for the ship’s allotted berthing window; he was especially concerned about the
eects the tidal change would have on the dra of the navigation channel that
leads into the port. A captain’s biggest fear, I learnt, was not bad weather but a
ship hitting the seabed running aground. roughout the six-hour long journey,
he was busy calculating the commensurability of the ship’s dra with the depth
of the port access channel. And incommensurable it was. By the time we reached
Cotonou, the harbour master instructed a visibly irritated captain to spend the
19
I wish to thank MSC, and particularly MSC’s managing Togo director Grégory
Krief, for allowing me to embark as a passenger on MSC Angela. I am deeply grateful
to the ship’s crew, in particular its captain, Predrag Petzi.
20 To wit, there are three types of dras: rst, the ship’s dra (a measure of the
minimum depth of water a ship can safely navigate); second, the dra of the port’s
access channel (i.e. the channel depth); and, third, the depth of the port basin at
dock (i.e. basin depth).
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night at anchorage. Not only was the captain unhappy to not keep to the ship’s
schedule (anticipating further delays in the next port of Lagos, a harbour notori-
ously known for congestion and long dwell-times), but he was also wary of the risk
of piracy with the recent surge in this area of the Gulf of Guinea. By contrast,
in Togo – a low-risk piracy zone - large container ships do not encounter delays
related to dra.
From this perspective, the ecological explanation of the deep-water charac-
teristic of the Togo port holds true. However, it is not a sucient condition.
Nor is it the only reason accounting for its success. Certainly, a deep-water port
with a restrictive state would not produce the eect that has been produced in
Togo. What is more, the new Tema terminal with its dredged -metre dra
is likely to displace Lomé’s position as the rst container port in West Africa.
In sum, the functionalist explanation of natural deep-water is insucient in
accounting for the port’s success.
Geography Revisited
Government and corporate discourse ascribe the Togo port phenomenon to
its strategic geographical position. Indeed, the geographic explanation also
constitutes a necessary condition but it is not a sucient one. For sure, Lomé
is geographically well positioned at the core of critical coastal and hinterland
transport corridors: namely, the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor, the Lomé–
Ouagadougou Corridor, and the Lomé–Niamey Corridor. But there is much
competition between ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African
States) member states over the control of trade with Sahelian countries.
For
example, the Niger mining industry depends especially on the Cotonou transport
corridor, whereas Burkina Faso relies on both the corridors of Lomé and Tema.
But Lomé, unlike Abidjan, does not have a railway connection to Ouagadougou
despite recent governmental eorts to attract investors for the -kilometre
21 According to a Commercial Crime Services (ICC) report, the Gulf of Guinea
was the leading zone of piracy attacks in . For a detailed account, see <www.
icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/request-piracy-report> and <https://iccwbo.
org/media-wall/news-speeches/pirate-attacks-worsen-waters-o-gulf-guinea/>.
22 A joint venture between Ghana Port Authority (GPHA) and the corporate giants
APMT and Bolloré. e new container port is managed by Meridian Port Services
(MPS), in which all three shareholders have stakes.
23 Paul Nugeent, ‘Africa’s Re-Enchantment with Big Infrastructure: White Elephants
Dancing in Virtuous Circles?’, in J. Schubert, U. Engel and E. Macamo (eds),
Extractive Industries and Changing State Dynamics in Aica: Beyond the Resource
Curse, London & New York, , pp. –.
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H N L 167
railway project (Lomé–Cinkassé).
Similarly, Ghana is expected to begin the
Eastern Railway line project that will link coastal ports to inland dry ports.
e geographic explanation, therefore, is both partial and reductionist.
Indeed, if another port could be put in the next country and had the same
conditions it would, in all likelihood, displace Lomé. us, again, the expla-
nation of Togo’s geography is a supporting one but not a sucient one. It
certainly adds value to the port but it does not explain why it has become the
rst container port in West Africa. By contrast, the geography of a port like
Walvis Bay in Namibia is critical because Botswana is landlocked. Similarly,
the geographical explanation of Durban port is a critical one because there is
no other access for KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho.
Global Finance Revisited
e resort to global nance and foreign direct investment in port infrastructure
and technology was both critical and necessary to the harbour’s success. Global
nance is irrefutably a necessary condition, but its capacity to act as a magnet
eect would be much less eective in a political context where the state looms
large in the economy of the port. For foreign direct investment to be as eective
as it has been in Togo requires an eviscerated state that provides free range to
capital, namely attractive tax, property and investment codes. But the Togolese
state is not entirely withdrawn, much to the dismay of corporations. Indeed,
the foreign companies that operate the port have complained about the restric-
tiveness of labour laws and residence regulations.
Political Economy Revisited
e political economic explanation is the most viable of the four species of expla-
nations because it gestures towards a new political moment under neoliberalism.
What is more, the three elements of political economy capture the structural
aspects of the postcolonial past in the neoliberal present.
24 On the Togo railway project, see To go Invest <https://togoinvest.tg/en/the-projects/
rail-project/>.
25 For details on Ghana’s Eastern Railway, see <https://dailyguidenetwork.
com/–bn-eastern-railway-project-ready-to-take-o/>.
26
e new $ million China-backed container terminal at Walvis Bay port was
opened in August . Built by China Harbor Engineering Company (CHEC),
the port’s total capacity today is , TEU. Lomé Container Terminal alone
has a capacity of . million TEU. On the new Walvis Bay port see ‘New China-
Backed Africa Terminal Unveiled’, in Port Technology, August .
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State Retraction Revisited
ere is evidence that before the state withdrew from the management of the
port, its structure was less rhizomatic: “ere was a system in place, a system with
clear hierarchies, but now?” lamented a high-ranking customs ocer with
years of experience in the old state-centric port. Indeed, the work of customs has
increasingly been outsourced to non-state entities from cargo scanning to GPS
tracking technologies. As container movement is securitised through satellite
vehicle tracking systems, technologies of logistics slip into an instrument of
privatised governance à la Mbembe.
us, with the deinstitutionalisation of the
state and state sovereignty, corporate capital has inserted itself into the political
void of the state, eectively paving the way for capital to experiment. Its eects
were acutely felt by those working in the private port sector. Freight forwarders
and transport union members were worried about the future of their businesses,
which had long generated reliable returns. Now, they feared being sidelined by
the foreign logistics companies that private terminal operators privileged, had
stakes in, if they did not own them altogether.
Privatisation Revisited
It is common cause for those working in the harbour system to attribute the
transformation of the port to its radical privatisation: “ey sold our port”,
said a retired employee of a shipping agency. While some agreed that the port
had to be privatised, namely because its dated infrastructure required the kind
of nancial investments the port authority was unable to generate, others were
suspicious about the way this had occurred. Still, others were angry that the
authorities had not managed the port properly. In short, there is ample evidence
that Togolese were ambivalent about the port’s success; they questioned who was
beneting from its makeover, not least because some Togolese port businesses
were receiving less, instead of more, cargo. In eect, their assessment captured
the apparent contradiction of the port’s success: How could Lomé be at once
West Africa’s rst transshipment container port - as per the standard measure
for containerised cargo, the twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) - with the
highest regional cargo throughput, yet have less domestic cargo to transact in?
is explanation is underscored by what dockers had to say about the rationali-
sation of their labour amidst privatisation and global capital’s latest quest to replace
labour by intelligent, semi-automated machines. Crudely aware of their inherent
27
In her pioneering work on cargo inspection at Tema port, ‘Recasting Maritime
Governance in Ghana’, Brenda Chaln has powerfully shown how a process of public
knowledge making has morphed into a process of enclosure.
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H N L 169
disposability under current conditions of containerisation, they blamed the priva-
tisation of the port’s stevedoring operations and the port authority’s diminishing
power: “Why isn’t the port helping us to get work at Bolloré, at LCT? and why are
our wages so much lower than those paid by the terminals?” questioned a docker
with years’ port experience. e docker’s poignant observation points to the
port authority’s (in)ability to manage the uctuating (i.e. diminishing) labour
demands of the privatised port. is had two eects: rst, it suggests changes in
the management of labour regimes and their reorganisation along new metrics of
optimisation; second, it points to the erosion of the port authority’s power. Indeed,
the inuence of new ownership structures and foreign investment was ubiquitous.
Informal Transactions Revisited
If secondary order costs were seen to have enabled the control of the private in the
same of the public, they are also the result of the end of the longue durée of privati-
sation. As new forms of capital management were rationalised as ways of tackling
the port’s ineciency, private indirect governance was met with both suspicion and
critique. e Togolese press had long reported on port mismanagement, including
the embezzling of public funds: from stories of port monies going into private
bank accounts of politically-connected businessmen, illicit payments to shadow
companies, the over-invoicing of port services to the explosive uncovering of the
Bolloré corruption scandal. But does this narrative of illegitimate, yet necessary or
otherwise economically productive, distribution amount to a convincing account
of its historical workings? To wit, the political-economic explanation of the port’s
transformation has multiple dimensions. While in Togo the state was never a
Keynesian social-democratic state per se – i.e. not a metropolitan state but rather a
(post/colonial) ‘state sans nation’
– its tendency to reverse from a function of the
state collecting private funds for the collective good to one in which it distributes
public funds to the private sector, is nonetheless signicant. In sum, changes in
state function at this new political moment under neoliberalism - whence the
state is no longer the sole sovereign - enabled the privatisation of the port and,
hence, its ultimate success. To fully grasp how these changes came about requires
historicising the present moment of privatised/neoliberal port governance.
Taken together, the four species of explanations are compelling: some due
to necessary but insucient conditions (ecological and geographical), some,
in the case of the (il)licit economy, because they capture the reality of the
28 John L. Comaro, ‘Reections on the Colonial State, in South Africa and Elsewhere:
Factions, Fragments, Facts and Fictions’, Social Identities :, , p. .
29 Jean Comaro and John L. Comaro, e Truth About Crime, Chicago, .
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170 N S
presence, but because of their presentism they also dehistoricise a process that
is profoundly historical. erefore, the next section seeks to place the Togo
port phenomenon into historical perspective. In what follows, we thus move
away from a presentist argument – i.e. a view of the port’s success as contingent
event rather than historical product - to a dialectical account that attends to the
structural processes of the longer run.
The Future in the Past: Historicising the Problem
It is no historical accident that Lomé harbour has become a major transshipment
port on the African continent. Since its colonial inception, Togo has been a
particularly eective economic frontier zone extracting value from its borders.
In fact, it was the lucrative contraband trade with the British Gold Coast that
gave rise to the Lomé port-city, which, until the late nineteenth century, was
little more than a shing village. By the early twentieth century, Lomé and its
roadstead port became the centre of colonial capitalism.
e administration
of German Togoland ran an eective logistical operation from the Lomé
deep-water pier where steam cranes and railway tracks handled the bulk of
30
From to , Togo was a protectorate of the German empire. For an excellent
discussion of the history of the Togo–Ghana contraband trade, see Paul Nugent,
Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana–Togo Frontier, Athens,
; for an analysis of the production and circulation of Dutch genever (gin)
and German schnaps on the Guinea coast, particularly in precolonial Ghana, see
Emmanuel Akyeampong, Drink, Power and Cultural Change: A Social History of
Alcohol in Ghana, c. to Recent Times, Oxford, .
31 e rst German wharf was destroyed by a storm soon aer its inauguration in
. By , a metallic pier had replaced its wooden predecessor. Conceived by
imperial civil engineers and built by forced labour, the last vestiges of the metallic
pier – that German colonial relic par excellence – are still visible today. In fact, a
nearby beach bar, Le Wharf Allemand, carries its name. Popular among Loméans
who enjoy spending Sunday aernoons at the beach, the bar oers views of the
German foundation, as well as the adjacent, more visible, structure of the French
wharf. e latter was used until when the current port was inaugurated. While
Togolese hold highly critical views of the French today, the German era, surpris-
ingly, holds nostalgic currency in the Togolese imagination; this, despite Germany
having used the local population as a source of both forced labour and tax revenue.
For a detailed history of the German era, including a discussion of the wharf, see
Peter Sebald, Togo – Eine Geschichte der Deutschen ‘Musterkolonie’ auf der
Grundlage Amtlicher Quellen, Berlin, .
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the Musterkolonie (model colony) trade economy. Not surprisingly, the Lomé
wharf was the only port structure on the Gulf of Guinea that imported twice
as much as it exported.
e German colonial administration built roads, bridges and rail lines
linking coast to hinterland, thus eectively organising its empire through an
infrastructure of transportation. If the German colonial administration was
primarily geopolitical, in the sense that it invested in the territorial securing
of space, it was also what geographer Deborah Cowen has called ‘geoeco-
nomic’ in its eort to secure economic spaces, markets and commodity ows
by controlling key transportation corridors. is geoeconomic shi echoes the
way global corporations and investors today have been securing long-term lease
agreements (i.e. concessions) along the world’s key shipping routes. e history
of the Lomé port ts well into this model, rst as a site for colonial capital to
extract and secure territorial space, and later for corporate capital to experiment
at the geographical margin.
Multi-modal avant la lettre, as it were, the German port infrastructure
remained roughly intact until the late s when it was modernised by the
French colonial/mandate administration. e French structure featured a
longer wharf with additional steam cranes and rail tracks. However, by the
32 Bearing the traces of a crude history of colonial exploitation and forced labour,
the old Prussian railway system eventually connected the pier to Aného, the initial
capital of the German protectorate. Located roughly kilometres east of Lomé,
Aného was the centre of the booming palm oil trade that German traders had
come to control once they had sidelined the powerful trading clans of the coast.
See Nicoué Lodjou Gayibor, ‘Histoire des togolais, des origines à ’, Presses UB,
Lomé (), –; Sebald, Togo –. With the emergence of Lomé as
the new commercial centre of German Togoland, steamship liners abandoned the
Aného surf port. e latter was located o the shores of Aného, which meant that
goods had to be transferred from the steamer on to smaller pirogues for coastal
transport across the dangerous surf. is process was not only dangerous and time-
consuming, but it also led to the loss of merchandise and people (further railway
lines were built by Prussian engineers to transport cotton, rubber and cocoa).
33 Nicoué Lodjou Gayibor, ‘Histoire des togolais, des origines à ’, Presses UB,
Lomé ().
34
Deborah Cowen, e Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade,
Minneapolis, .
35 Togo under French mandate was no less economically viable. If Togo under German
protectorate was nicknamed Musterkolonie, it becomes France’s vitrine colonial. Tw o
factors explain its special status, rstly France had sent an elite of colonial admin-
isters to redress German Togoland and, secondly, it beneted from a particularly
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late s – amidst the nationalist movement and calls for independence from
France – the French pier lacked the capacity to handle larger ships. Indeed, the
invention of the container in the late s fundamentally changed the nature
of seaborn trade. As containerised shipping became the standard for the new
logics of multi-modal transportation systems – along with new management
systems and the ‘logistics revolution’ - port infrastructure had to accom-
modate the new imperative. Subsequently, an infrastructure of deep-water
berths and stevedoring cranes came to increasingly replace the manual dock
labour required for break-bulk shipping. Hence was born the project for the rst
commercial container port of independent Togo. In , Togo’s rst president,
Sylvanus Olympio, signed an accord of technical co-operation with the German
government for the construction of the deep-water seaport.
Legally created on April , the Port Autonome de Lomé (PAL), the
Autonomous Port of Lomé, was inaugurated in . Designed as a free port
zone that served as a major transit point for international cargo, it was initially
created to handle , tons of goods per year, including the shipping of
phosphates, one of Togo’s major products. A symbol of commercial prosperity
and independence, the national port was directed from the proud anchor-
shaped building of the central port administration. Its modernist architecture
captured the hopeful style of a postcolonial nation steering its economic future.
Soon, the Togo free port became an important maritime frontier in the region,
beneting from the protectionist trade policies of its Soviet-leaning neighbours
while pushing a pro-trade agenda.
Like other micro-states, Singapore being the most prominent example, Togo’s
postcolonial state had to be resourceful to make up for its lack of natural resources.
Presiding over a classic entrepôt economy, it continued much of the form and
structure of the colonial state, notably its ongoing ties to the metropole and a
focus on extracting value from its borders, including the lucrative contraband
trade. Because Togo never had a national economy, it had to Singaporianise
itself by way of mobilising its geography and history of colonialism. Instead
lax colonial commercial policy while important economic investments were drawn
into the new colony.
36 Cowen, e Deadly Life of Logistics.
37
But Olympio, the initiator of the port project, did not survive the port’s inaugu-
ration, nor its construction. Killed in a military coup by General Gnassingbé
Eyadéma, it was nonetheless Olympio who had negotiated and signed the
economic-technical co-operation agreement with the German government.
Executed by three German engineering companies, the construction of the port
began in .
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of building national industries, General Gnassingbé Eyadéma (in power since
) made the shadow economy essentially a state imperative. Indeed, by the
s, the Lomé port had become a regional platform for the narcotics and arms
trade, and soon Togo was characterised a ‘shadow’ and ‘smuggling state’.
is, of
course, is part of the immanence of the colonial and the history in the present.
Until the end of the Cold War, that critical moment of political rupture as
we shall see below, the port provided a stable source of employment for many,
ranging from low-skilled manual laborers and clerical workers in the port admin-
istration to big man style directors and customs ocers. For the latter, the port
also functioned as a site of unfettered personal enrichment and extraction. But
it also worked as a critical site of economic redistribution, not least through
the informal chain of workers (money brokers, mechanics, etc.) to the buzzing
market and makers’ spaces that emerged around the port. On one hand, the
regime’s barons had placed their people – from high-ranking customs ocers
and key administrators who, allegedly, helped funnel port revenues into private
accounts to providing special accommodations for wealthy businessmen and
women controlling various commodity trades (rice, second-hand cars, etc.) –
while, on the other hand, the freight-forwarding business was thriving, and,
along with it, the informal economy. During the s, when export prices
for phosphate (Togo’s key asset) quintupled, the dictatorial state was ush
with money and foreign investment. Lomé also became a nancial centre with
African banks establishing their headquarters in the capital. However, by the
mid-s, as world phosphate prices fell, several state-owned enterprises (the
infamous ailing white elephants) had collapsed. When the World Bank ushered
the Togolese government into structural adjustment programmes and austerity
measures that led to the privatisation of most state-owned companies (and the
opening of an export processing zone
), the state was essentially reorganised
through the market.
38 Bayart, Ellis and Hibou, e Criminalisation of the State in Aica.
39 Togo was nicknamed Africa’s ‘Little Switzerland’, a status that referred as much
to the concentration of banks as it did to money laundering, not least for French
political parties.
40
SAZOF was directed by Eyadéma’s son, Kpatcha Gnassingbé. SAZOF operated under
a less restrictive labour code, and authorised to hold foreign currency-denominated
accounts, stipulating that Togolese must be employed on a priority basis, foreign
workers cannot account for more than per cent of total workforce. ough SAZOF
is located in the port zone (with free trade zone sites, employing total of , people,
companies), the free trade zone status in fact applies all over the country, allowing
investors to benet from the free-trade zone status outside.
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Meanwhile, much of the s was marked by crisis, including capital ight
and the termination of Western aid. During this critical post-Cold War moment,
which Piot has described as a moment of radical rupture with both the colonial
and the postcolonial past, the organisation of state power/sovereignty changed.
Indeed, when President-dictator Eyadéma was pressured to liberalise the political
sphere by an international community that had long turned a blind eye to his
strongman ways, a period of political violence and strikes ensued that brought the
port to a standstill. Subsequently, ships were diverted to the neighbouring ports of
Cotonou and Tema. But, ultimately, Eyadéma broke the strike by fragmenting the
dock labour union on one hand, and, on the other, by incentivising the creation
of new maritime businesses consigning/chartering cargo ships to Lomé.
e IMF and the World Bank soon rated the Lomé port as decient. By the year
, following the bank’s prescription to reform and privatise the port, an increas-
ingly eviscerated state had ordered the harbour’s privatisation by governmental
decree. Soon, tenders were launched for dierent concessions, which ultimately
would be obtained by Bolloré and TIL (i.e. MSC). In this new era of privatised
governance, the splintering of sovereignty between state and corporations was
palpable. When Eyadéma died in and his ambitious young son, Faure
Gnassingbé, was put into power by the military, the relationship between port
governance, capital and the state changed further. In the post-dictatorship era, the
state increasingly worked like a corporate actor concerned with asset management
and the attraction of foreign direct investment – a shi that was further facilitated
by the return of foreign capital and international donor monies in .
e new president made the redevelopment of Togo’s maritime frontier one
of the centres of his political ambition. He eectively courted French, Chinese
and Middle Eastern capital, while his government created further tax incentives
for global port investment. But the young president and his ruling party also
faced opposition from civil society over his re-election campaign. ese
political contestations revived earlier arguments about the unconstitutionality
of Faure’s ascent to power, in , amidst allegations of election fraud. e
president’s weakness at this fragile pre-election moment was cleverly tapped into
by corporate giant Bolloré. In a strategic move akin to corporate state capture,
the Bolloré corporation nanced and executed Faure’s electoral campaign
through the group’s media structure (Havas). To little surprise, the container
41 Piot, Nostalgia for the Future.
42
ough the installation of Faure was unconstitutional (the speaker of parliament
should have led a transitional government and called elections within days), the
transition of power was carefully planned. It notably involved the resort to the law;
hence the constitution was amended to reduce the eligible age of presidency to .
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H N L 175
port concession was transferred to Bolloré just prior to Faure’s re-election.
Conceivably, this was corporate capital’s eort to engage with the state in order
to capture the public domain; or, perhaps, it was the eort to establish a form
of corporate sovereignty over Togo’s political economy tout court. Of course,
the state was also harnessing the corporation by privatising the port and then
demanding royalties. Indeed, from the perspective of the state, which had
outsourced the state function of running the port, the harbour is treated much
like taxation, i.e. as a site of rents.
e triangulated relationship between port governance, capital and the state
played out in a dierent key when a tender for a second container terminal
was launched in . e concession was for a so-called greeneld project,
which refers to the commercial exploitation of underdeveloped and, in this case,
partially reclaimed, land. But this time, Bolloré was not the only contender.
Bidders included the powerful shipping lines; indeed, the latter had begun
consolidating their activities in the aermath of the global shipping crisis,
which resulted in the merging of the world’s biggest shipping lines into powerful
consortiums (the ‘big alliances’), running ever bigger ships, consolidating their
services while also operating their own terminals. Following a long and murky
bid with many twists and turns – some companies were rumoured to have
exercised intense pressure on the Togolese government – it was the shipping
line MSC that obtained the contract for developing and operating the US$
million greeneld project through its subsidiary TIL. By , the new terminal,
Lomé Container Terminal, was inaugurated, and a new era of sovereignty, one
marked by competition between corporations, began.
43 In April , Vincent Bolloré was arrested in France for meddling in the Togo and
Guinea election campaigns. According to Le Monde, the allegations concerned
the Bolloré group’s media agency Havas, which, in exchange for lucrative container
port terminal contracts, ostensibly provided below market rate services to support
the election campaigns of President Faure Gnassingbé in Togo and presidential
candidate Alpha Condé in Guinea.
44
e container terminal market is complex: on the one hand, there are operators like
PSA International (Singapore) and ICTS (Manila) who exclusively run terminals,
while, on the other hand, there are the increasingly powerful shipping lines (Maersk,
MSC, CMA-CGM, Cosco) who run their own terminals. In the shipping industry,
the future and further consolidation of lines and terminal operators is intensely
debated. Even though PSA is probably the most powerful terminal operator in
the world (present in strategic ports like Rotterdam), the competitive advantage
of shipping lines having their own terminals that serve their ships rst (speed is
money) appears to be the mode of the future.
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176 N S
e promise of multi-modal transportation systems, i.e. a containerised rail
network that links the sea port to a grid of dry ports across the country, also
features in the government’s – National Development Plan (NDP).
Indeed, the making of Togo into a major logistics hub in the region constitutes
the rst of three axes the plan proposes. Poignantly, the NDP was ocially
launched at the recent EU–Togo Summit where no less than former IMF director
Dominque Strauss-Khan (aka DSK) promoted the plan’s vision and potential.
When discussing the summit in relation to the scope and ambition of the new
development plan, a Togolese journalist commented sarcastically: “Whose devel-
opment? Come on! Faure is preparing for next year’s election, there won’t be
any national development!” His critique of the current political order, what one
might call neopolitics, cynically captures the new political-economic moment
under neoliberalism. Indeed, Faure ran the country much like a corporation,
surrounding himself with a team of inuential presidential advisors that, in
addition to DSK, also includes Tony Blair. e latter’s economic development
consulting has worked through the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
And so it was Blair himself who blatantly spoke about economic opportunity
at the recent Togo–UK Investment Summit in London where he praised Togo’s
potential to become a major logistics centre in West Africa.
Togo’s neopolitical moment did not just come along, just as neoliberalism
does not come along and do stu. Ultimately, by historizing, one sees that the
move to the neoliberal moment is not something that has arisen by contingency.
Instead, it emerges as a process of the longue durée in which colonialism and its
complicated processes paves the way for this to happen. It is precisely for these
reasons that the ecological, the geographical and the global nancial explana-
tions are merely symptomatic and contextual – i.e. a series of necessary but
insucient conditions – whereas political economy, and its three elements, is
the most persuasive explanation. Not simply because they are political economy
but rather because they are the dissemination of a history of the longue durée
without which they simply look like the happenstance of capital and the state.
Conclusion
Why did Lomé become this successful port despite the odds of being located
in one of the poorest and smallest countries in the world? What is more, why
should this have happened in the rst place? e answer to these questions has to
45 See Tony Blair’s June , speech at the Togo–UK Summit: ‘Tony Blair urges
investors to “Go To Togo!”’ <www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTZweiZc>.
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H N L 177
do with the specic history of how global capital/ism has re/made Lomé harbour
from its edges. And there is an important comparative point to be made about
the way the story of Togo harbour (hence privatised port governance) ts into
global patterns of how capital is shaping and securing port and transportation
infrastructure elsewhere.
e restructuring of African ports and their privatisation is not unique
to Togo. Nor is it new. Indeed, the wave of port privatisation began in the
s when World Bank analysts considered those infrastructures to be failing,
prescribing port reform according to the landlord model. It is during this time
that French logistical giant Bolloré snatched up the lion share of African port
concessions while also acquiring various (French colonial and postcolonial)
transportation companies. To wit, today Bolloré has over port concessions
in Africa, in addition to rail concessions and numerous transport and logistics
companies. However, it is only since , in the aermath of the global nancial
crisis and its impact on the global shipping industry, that we see drastic trans-
formations in the African port and logistics sector. ese transformations are
related to the entry of global corporate capital. ey hinge on two important
developments: rst, the consolidation/alliances of shipping lines and terminal
operators; and second, the need for modernised port infrastructure to handle the
new generation of container ships. e state-of-the-art logistical infrastructure
at Lomé Container Terminal – notably the giant steel structure of so-called
Super-Post-Panamex cranes looming behind electric fences in strange humanoid-
animalis form – matched the imperative of global shipping.
Lomé was the rst port to feature the kind of rationalised global port infra-
structure that facilitates global circulation in the era of the mega ship, yet we
see the same pattern emerge across the region. A case in point is the new Tema
container terminal, which was built on reclaimed land and inaugurated in June
. Another, particularly compelling, case is the port of Cotonou. Not only
is it in the process of being fully restructured and privatised, but the Cotonou
46 Certainly, the forms this has taken have fundamentally changed with Chinese capital
entering the African continent, i.e. what many view as China’s geopolitical securing
of major transportation networks and corridors. And such perspectives have a point.
ough one might wonder if instead of conceptualising China’s renewed and
intensifying presence on the African continent – including investments in Africa’s
maritime infrastructure as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – might
not be better thought of as Chinese corporate capital tout court. en too, what
makes Chinese corporations such as the shipping giant COSCO, or port equipment
manufacturer ZPMC dierent from European corporations such as MSC, TIL or
Koncecrane?
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178 N S
port authority is currently managed by the Port of Antwerp. ere are few cases
in the world where a port authority is managed by a foreign entity. e Greek
port of Piraeus is perhaps the most prominent example, when, in the midst of the
Greek sovereign debt crisis, the Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco
acquired the Piraeus concession and a per cent stake in the port authority.
Might this not be a textbook illustration of the Comaros’
conceptuali-
sation of the Global South as the critical site where the future is being antici-
pated, where neoliberal patterns are rehearsed and practised as deregulated
capital gets to experiment? e old model of the concession gains new currency
in the remaking of a global transport infrastructure. It emerges as a new site
of infrastructural, logistical and nancial innovation designed to facilitate the
mobility of goods and capital.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
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180
C 8
A Time for Realignment? Retrofit in the
Golden Era of the Cameroonian Railways
J-M M
Introduction
is chapter explores the irruption of the notion of corridor in the vocabulary
of those with a stake in transport infrastructure investments in the African
continent. I document this process in a particular context, that of the
relationship that the World Bank and the Cameroon government forged around
railways in the s and, more specically, around a project to realign the
Douala–Yaounde railway line, whose construction dated back to colonial era.
is reconstruction project was distinctive in that it confronted both national
and international participants with what a group of scholars has recently called
the paradox of retrotting. Coming as it did in the shadow of substantial new
construction, the project forced all parties involved to reckon with an onerous,
decaying infrastructural legacy. e s were a time of increasing complexity
in both planning processes in general and co-ordination of nancial arrange-
ments behind large-scale investments in particular. In the transport sector,
this complexity partly derived from the coexistence of alternative modes. My
1 is work draws on research funded by the European Research Council within the
framework of the African Governance and Space (AFRIGOS) project (ERC-ADG-
–). I could not have done it without the outstanding support I received
from Shiri Alon, Bertha Wilson and other sta at the World Bank Archives. I
want to thank the other members of the AFRIGOS team and my colleagues at the
University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies for their constant intellectual
stimulus. I am also grateful to the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) for hosting me as visiting scholar while I worked on
this text. I would like to give special thanks to Ulf Engel, Robert McDonald, Olivier
Walther and the volume’s editors for their close reading of earlier dras.
2
Cymene Howe, et al., ‘Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrot, and Risk’, Science,
Technology and Human Values, :, , –.
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R G E C R 181
argument is that the question of intermodal transport co-ordination was at
the heart of the then emergent policy construct of corridor. e centrality of
co-ordinated planning in rail and road investments seems to have receded in later
decades, as if the concept of corridor had outgrown it. Intermodal co-ordination
has as a result received limited attention in the scholarly and policy literatures
on corridors, on which the challenges of landlockedness and regional integration
have loomed larger (Cissokho, in this volume)
uestions around the feasibility of the realignment of the Douala–Yaounde
railway and its timing called for a kind of technical work whose duration and
complexity confounded initial expectations. It was a long-drawn endeavour that
took almost a decade to be settled. As we will see, the initial task of justifying a
railway project largely in its own terms was reframed with the passage of time to
foreground its intermodal implications. e exercise to establish a justication
for a railway investment thus explicitly became a study of optimal formulas to
coordinate rail and road investments. At this juncture, ‘corridor’ starts to pop
up in the archival record as a shorthand for such a broadened approach.
Railroad competition was by no means a new problem in the region. In the
s, for example, the paving of the road between Douala, Cameroon’s main
port, and Edea, an important town on the way to Yaounde, the capital city, had
a noticeable impact on the railway company’s nances. e ‘brutal methods’ the
railway company Regifercam subsequently adopted to fend o road competitors
led in to a rail–road consultative conference at the Chamber of Commerce.
As the doyen of transport history in Cameroon Albert Dikoumé showed,
Regifercam’s methods included both ocially sanctioned measures (such as a
drastic drop of ton/km taris for cocoa and the enforcement of exacting weigh
limits at the Edea rail–road bridge) and outright tracasseries (abuses, in this case
in the form of deliberately long interruptions of road trac at level crossings).
A year later the government had to intervene to regulate what types of freight
could be transported by road between Douala and Yaounde. Similarly, new
railway construction in the s and s was accompanied by agreements on
intermodal distribution between Regifercam and the national truckers’ associ-
ation. For cargo in transit to and from northern Cameroon and Chad, truckers
would thereby cease to operate in the sections covered by the railway network.
More broadly, of course, the colonial and independent governments had incor-
porated intermodal considerations in their planning of transport infrastructures.
As we will see, such considerations were integral to the northward expansion
3 Albert Dikoumé, ‘Les Transports au Cameroun de à ’, unpublished PhD
thesis, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, , p. .
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182 J-M M
of the railway network, which was conceived in conjunction with an ambitious
programme of road construction. With its methods of economic analysis and
computational tools, the novelty of exercises like the ‘corridor study’ advocated
by the World Bank in this case was seen to reside in the rigour and systematicity
that they brought to the co-ordination of investments.
In trying to tell as richly as possible what is an intricate story, I take heed of
recent calls for new research ‘to document the technical work of planning and
to analyse its place within historical trajectories’. e World Bank archives,
where the core of my research materials come from, lend themselves particularly
well to such a task. When approached with the tools of critical historiography,
these materials provide rare insights into the dynamics that shape planning
processes. e correspondence folders that I was able to consult shed precious
yet partial light into some of the negotiations, conventions, compromises, misun-
derstandings and conicts that policy visions and investment decisions are made
of. Archival work took place during two visits to Washington D.C. in November
and December .
Retrofit in the Golden Era of Cameroonian Railways
For Cameroon, as for most African countries south of the Sahara, the rst
substantial exchanges with the World Bank came in the late s. As the then
director of the newly created Western Africa Department would later explain,
‘[e Bank] knew relatively little about Africa and we were a new donor …
[Others] had established themselves there …We had to establish our credibility …
We had to start with some projects … We had to do the legwork.’
In Cameroon,
some of the rst projects through which the bank found their place in an already
crowded landscape of development assistance providers concerned transport
infrastructure. e Highway, Railway, and Douala Port projects were appraised
in quick succession over the course of . It was just the rst batch of more
to come.
In the conversations that led to this rst loan for railways, the rehabilitation
of the Douala–Yaounde line was a focal point from the start (Map .). Its
kilometres had been constructed in two stages: – under German
4
Boris Samuel, ‘Planier en Afrique’, Politique Aicaine, , , pp. –, at p.
.
5
Roger Chaufournier, interview by Robert W. Oliver, July , Oral History
Program, WBGA, pp. –. Aer the reorganisation of , Chaufournier was
chosen to head the Western Africa vice-presidency. He acted as the most senior
regular interlocutor for Cameroonian ocials in the years covered in this chapter.
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R G E C R 183
domination and – during the period of French rule. Accordingly, the
railroad bore the technological marks of the time of its construction, out of
which resulted its twisting alignment, severe gradients and sharp curves. By the
late s, the stability of a vital steel bridge (the Japoma Bridge over the River
Dibamba) was imperilled by the sinking and tilting of its piers. Another source
of concern were the rails, per cent of which dated back to and .
Moreover, kilometres of the line had been laid in very light rail (–.
kg/m). e age and lightness of rails meant that the line had around derail-
ments in , with the associated disruption and losses. ese inadequacies
had become glaring at a point in time when, as a result of the Biafran War
(–) cutting access to the Port of Lagos for nearly two years, the lion
share of Chad’s imports of consumer goods and exports of cotton had been
diverted towards Douala via the Transcamerounais.
Regifercam had struggled
to cope with the ensuing increase in trac, which had continued to follow
this route even aer the civil war in Nigeria came to an end.
e bank showed itself open to consider involvement in the funding of the
line’s rehabilitation. e Cameroonian agency for implementation of railway
projects was already undertaking a technical study of a potential realignment (as
opposed to less fully-edged upgrading possibilities), so it was agreed that the
bank would provide funds for consultants to carry out a study of the project’s
economic viability. is was, however, only a small item in the loan package.
Other more substantial components were urgent investments such as the recon-
struction of the Japoma Bridge, the relaying of . kilometres of track, and the
purchase of rolling stock.
While the US$. million of the bank’s rst railway loan were a welcome
injection of funds for the railway company, it paled in comparison with the
type of investment Cameroon railways had attracted in the previous decade.
Indeed, aer independence (), the government had ‘moved heaven and
earth to get providers of funds’ for the long-held aspiration of extending the
railway network northwards.
ese eorts crystalised in the construction of
an additional kilometres of railroad between Yaounde and Ngaoundere,
6 Albert Dikoumé, ‘Les Transports au Cameroun de à ’.
7 Commissariat Général d’Information (CGI), Chemin de Fer Transcamerounais, Yaoundé,
; International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), Appraisal of a
Railway Project – Federal Republic of Cameroon, Washington, D.C., .
8
Phillipe Decraene, ‘Le Chemin de Fer Transcamerounais Facteur de Développement
et d’Unication’, Le Monde Diplomatique, September , p. .
9
European Development Fund (EDF), Cameroon –, Brussels, , p.
.
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184 J-M M
which began in October and would cost some US$. million. With
the TAZARA project, this was one of the rare new investments in railways of
the early postcolonial era. e Transcamerounais, as the line was baptised, was
10 Richard Bullock, O Track: Subsaharan Aican Railways, Washington, , p. .
Financed by China, the TAZARA (Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority) project
involved the construction of linking the port of Dar es Salaam to the Zambian town
of Kapiri Mposhi. See: Jamie Monson, Aica’s Freedom Railway, Bloomington, .
Map 8.1. Cameroon’s railway network circa .
(Source: World Bank, Cameroun Fourth Railway Project – Sta Appraisal Report,
Washington D.C., .)
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R G E C R 185
made possible by grants and concessional loans from the European Development
Fund (EDF), which contributed more than half of the funds, as well as French
and US sources. An autonomous railway agency, the Oce du Chemin de Fer du
Transcamerounais (OCFT), oversaw the work undertaken by the Italo-German
consortium between the rms Cogefar and Hochtief that won the bid for the
construction contract. e rst phase nished in May with the opening of
trac from Yaounde to Belabo. e line from Belabo to the railhead Ngaoundere
was completed in February .
e new railway’s political signicance was prominent from the start.
When
construction began, President Ahidjo emphasised its potential to create ‘closer
ties and unity between our inhabitants’. In this view, the Transcamerounais was
‘an essential foundation stone for the building of our nation’, an especially useful
one for political leaders who not only lacked anticolonial credentials but had
embraced nationalism only in recent years. In spite of repeated claims to the
contrary, the national framework overshadowed the project’s regional dimension,
particularly the improved access to the sea for Chad and Central African Republic
that derived from the project. More broadly, the project was celebrated as ‘le
grand événement’ and a ‘a great adventure’.
e European funders’ emotions
were particularly charged, perhaps not surprisingly, given the gargantuan budget
of the ‘Transcam’, as it became popularly known, in comparison to their other
investments in African railways in the s and s.
Consider the EDF
coordinator’s speech for the inauguration in Ngaoundéré, in which he harked
e construction of Transgabonais began later and, unlike the Transcamerounais
and the TAZARA, was more narrowly conceived as a mining railway. See: Roland
Pourtier, ‘Les Chemins de Fer en Afrique Subsaharienne, entre Passé Révolu et
Recompositions Incertaines’, Belgeo, , , pp. –.
11 Adrian Hewitt, ‘e European Development Fund as a Development Agent:
Some Results of EDF Aid to Cameroon’, Overseas Development Institute Review,
, , pp. –; Veronique Dimier, e Invention of a European Development
Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire, New York, , pp. –.
12 CGI, Chemin de Fer, ; Achille Mbembe, ‘Le Cameroun après la Mort d’Ahmadou
Ahidjo’, Politique Aicaine, , , pp. –.
13 Dimier, Inention, p. .
14 Pierre Billard, ‘On Construit des Chemins de Fer au Cameroun’, Revue de Géographie
Alpine, :, , pp. –, at p. , (EDF), Cameroon –, p. .
15
EDF aid allocation to Cameroon’s railways (EUA . million) dwarfed the sums
invested in other countries’ railways networks (Congo–Brazzaville . million, Côte
d’Ivoire–Burkina Faso . million and Togo . million) in the – period.
See: Hewitt, ‘e European Development Fund as a Development Agent’, p. .
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186 José-María Muñoz
back to his time as a colonial ocial and quoted his fellow Corsican Napoléon,
and which the national press found ‘brilliant and spiritual’.
As he put it, the new
railway was “only prestigious because it was beautiful and full of hope”. Other
international funders were equally delighted to be associated with the project
(Photo .). As of one of the USAID staers, looking back on his involvement
four decades later, reminded me, “it was a fairly sexy project in that it received
a lot of attention … It was also fun.”
Such a large-scale investment, with the money, time and energy it required
and the accompanying prestige at stake, was bound to generate the kind of
hard-to-reverse commitments that Albert Hirschman had dissected so lucidly
in his coetaneous Development Projects Observed. e paradox was that, while
the new railway construction was being celebrated, the older existing line could
not hide its fragility. As a USAID manager put it, ‘within the promise [of the
Transcamerounais]’, there was ‘a weak spot’. at the construction of the new
railroad called for the realignment of the old one did not come as a surprise to
16 ‘Deux Réalisations Grandioses Fêtées dans l’Enthousiasme’, Cameroon Tribune,
December .
17 Jacques Ferrandi, ‘Inauguration à Ngaoundéré’, Le Courrier, , , pp. –, at
p. .
18 Interview, Washington, D.C., April .
19 Albert O. Hirschman, Development Projects Observed, Washington, D.C., .
20 John Swenson, ‘Le Transcamerounais Vu par un Américain’, Courrier de l’Association,
, , pp. –, at p. .
Photo 8.1.
European Commission’s
President Ortoli and
Cameroon’s Minister
of Planning Maïkano
watching track-laying
operations in the
vicinity of Ngaoundéré,
July .
(Source: © Ortoli
family.)
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R G E C R 187
those who had promoted the Transcamerounais. In fact, one of the conditions
of the EDF’s nancial commitment in had been that the Cameroon
government should upgrade, with its own resources, the original Douala–
Yaounde stretch of the railway. at this was a highly unrealistic condition
in the national economy’s pre-oil era hardly seemed to matter. e words of
Luc Towa-Fotso, the OCFT’s secretary general, capture well the ways in which
both projects were intertwined: ‘Admittedly, Cameroon, like the neighbouring
countries relying on the Transcamerounais railway, will only get the full benets
of the heavy investments made in the Yaounde–Ngaoundere railroad when the
old section Douala–Yaoundé is entirely renovated.’
In the aermath of the UK’s accession to the European Community, British
critics of European aid would denounce the circularity of the argument justifying
both these projects. While ‘the existence of the Yaoundé–Douala railway was itself
a major reason for adopting the railway option [in the Yaounde–Ngaoundere
section] in the rst place’, it had been subsequently argued that the poor perfor-
mance of the new line could only be remedied by addressing the ‘deterioration
of the Yaounde–Douala railway to which it connects’. But such Overseas
Development Institute-sponsored assessments were made with the benet of
hindsight. e planning for the Transcamerounais had been carried out when
the end of the ‘golden era’ of African railways was not quite within sight. By this
‘golden era’ shorthand, specialists designate the period that began aer the end of
the Second World War, when this mode of transport beneted from abundant and
oen highly skilled human resources, ease of access to nance and steady growth
in trac. It was only in the s that the combined eects of economic crisis
and road competition led to a reckoning that the times of plenty were over.
e vision behind the ‘Transcam’ and the nancial calculus that informed
the project were premised on the primacy of railways. e all-season road
network inherited from the colonial era was extremely limited. Even Douala
and Yaounde, the country’s two main cities, had an only partially paved road
connection (Douala–Edea, of the total kilometres) on which circulation
during the rainy season was highly disrupted. In the north of the country, where
21
Luc Towa-Fotso, ‘Apres le Deuxieme Troncon Entrée en Service en la Refection
de la Portion Douala–Yaoundé’, Le Courrier, , , pp. –.
22 Hewitt, ‘e European Development Fund as a Development Agent’, pp. –.
23 François Dupré la Tour, ‘Cent-vingt Ans de Chemins de Fer en Afrique Noire
Francophone: De la Construction aux Privatisations’, Revue Generale des Chemins
de Fer, –, , pp. –, at p. .
24 Michel Baranger, ‘Afrique Intertropicale: L’Avenir du Rail’, Le Rail et le Monde, ,
, pp. –.
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188 J-M M
there was no prospect of railway coverage, the construction of new paved roads
was explicitly co-ordinated with the railway project and these roads were seen
as the railway’s ‘prolongements routiers (road extensions)’.
At the time of the decision to build the railway, there was no clear highway
alternative. e railroad had been surveyed; hence the extension, unlike
some alternative highway projects, was ready to be undertaken. It is always
dicult to argue that some nebulous alternative is better than what is being
proposed in concrete detail.
What Hirschman wrote about the construction of the Kuru–Maiduguri
railway extension in Nigeria (–) applies well to the Transcamerounais
project. By the time plans for the upgrading of the Douala–Yaounde old railway
began to take shape, highway alternatives were becoming less and less nebulous.
Planning for the Douala–Yaoundé Realignment
When the World Bank and the Cameroon government began negotiating
what became the First Railway Project, transport planning was the responsi-
bility of the Ministry of Planning, which underwent several restructurings and
name changes in the s and s. e country was then in the midst of
its second ve-year plan (–). In spite of the public prominence of
indicative planning exercises in the French tradition, the Ministry was at the
time portrayed as failing to perform essential tasks in a satisfactory manner,
when not neglecting them altogether.
‘Who studies the programmes of public
investment …? Two or three high-level technical experts cannot suce’, we
read in the sombre diagnostic of a long-serving technical advisor. A Ministry
of Transport only came into being in . It subsequently struggled to live
up to its missions in policy formulation and in the co-ordination and review
of investment proposals. By the end of the decade, the bank’s assessment was
25 Ferrandi, ‘Inauguration’, .
26 Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms,
Organisations and States, Cambridge, , p. at fn. .
27 Philippe Hugon and Olivier Sudrie, ‘La Crise de la Planification Africaine:
Diagnostic et Remèdes’, Tiers-Monde, :, , pp. –.
28 Gerard Winter, ‘Note sur la Planication du Developpement au Cameroun’,
Yaoundé, , p. <http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/
pleins_textes_/b_fdi_–/.pdf> [Accessed April ].
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R G E C R 189
damning: the Ministry of Transport had ‘neither the qualied sta nor the
authority to perform its functions adequately’.
Other actors were going to prove important in this and successive railway
projects. Created in by presidential decree, the OCFT was conceived as an
implementation agency for the Transcamerounais project. During the construction
of the Yaounde–Ngaoundere line, it had distinguished itself for high professional
and technical standards. Heavily staed with expatriate personnel, it was an enclave
of the French oce for overseas railways within the Cameroon administration.
Regifercam (the railway company) dated back to the post-war period, when the
French colonial authorities decided to grant autonomy to the existing railway
networks whose nances and management had up until then been controlled
from the metropolitan centre. Independence marked the beginning of the
gradual ‘Africanisation’ of the company’s management, but this proved elusive.
In , Regifercam employed about , people, including French technical
assistants holding key posts. e rst Cameroonian president-general manager
was appointed only in and he continued to work closely with a French deputy.
A programme training young Cameroonian engineers and administrators and
placing them alongside expatriate managers as ‘national counterparts’ had mixed
results and failed to achieve the levels of Africanisation expected. During the
s, the company kept nding it hard to attract and retain qualied, competent
Cameroonian sta in positions of responsibility. By the end of the decade, the
company still employed French technical assistants.
The renovation required in the Douala–Yaounde section of the
Transcamerounais surfaced as a potential bone of contention from the
early negotiations of the World Bank’s First Railway Project in . e
29 World Bank, Cameroun Fourth Railway Project – Sta Appraisal Report, Washington,
D.C., .
30 With the independence of most French territories in Africa, the former Oce
Central des Chemins de Fer de la France d’Outremer (OFERFOM) changed its
name to Oce Central des Chemins de Fer d’Outremer (OFEROM). In , it
was revamped, and renamed once more, as Oce de Coopération pour les Chemins
de Fer et les Matériels d’Équipement (OFERMAT).
31 Dupré la Tour, ‘Cent-vingt Ans’, pp. –; Edy-Claude Okalla Bana, ‘Les
Entreprises Françaises de Travaux Publics Face au Développement Économique
de l’Outre-Mer: La Mise en Place du Réseau Ferré au Cameroun’, Outre-Mers, ,
, pp. –, at pp. –.
32 IBRD, Appraisal of a Railway Project, pp. –.
33 Operations Evaluation Department (OED), Cameroon Second and ird Railway
Projects – Performance Audit Report, Washington, D.C., , p. .
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190 José-María Muñoz
correspondence of the following years between the bank and various counter-
parts, including Regifercam, OCFT, the Cameroonian government and the
consultants entrusted with the economic study of realignment options (led by
Sofrerail, the French railways’ engineering outt) allows us to reconstruct the
contours of the discussion. ere was a shared consensus on the deciencies
of the existing railroad. Even the most cautious participants in these discussions
conceded that a realignment of the entire line to rectify its steep gradients and
sharp curves would be necessary eventually. e issue, then, was when and how
the realignment should be undertaken. In determining ‘the optimum timing’
(including a possible phasing) of realignment works, calculations of when the
existing line would become saturated became crucial. e estimate of this point
of in time, in turn, depended on trac forecasts, which concerned not only
tonnage to be carried in any given year but also the seasonality of trac, i.e.
its concentration in specic months. Early on, the bank’s caution contrasted
34 Archival work took place during two visits to Washington, D.C. in November
and December . Unless otherwise specied, sources are from the First
and Second Railway Projects correspondence: Railroads Project – Cameroon –
Correspondence vols. –, Folders –, WBGA; and Railway Project II
– Correspondence vols. –, Folders –, WBGA.
Photo 8.2. De la Renaudière to Delapierre, ‘Cameroon –
Identication of highway projects & supervision of ongoing
studies – Terms of Reference’, February .
(Source: World Bank Group Archives.)
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R G E C R 191
with the keener approach of the railway company and the government. e
archive contains subtle signs of the reticence underlying the bank’s stance. When
reviewing the dra of instructions to sta traveling on an April mission to
Cameroon, for example, their Transportation Department manager substituted
‘the study of the improvement to the central railway line’ for ‘the realignment
study of the central railway line’ (Photo .). At this early stage, thus, there was
a clear willingness on the part of bank managers to give serious consideration
to solutions that did not necessarily involve a realignment in the near future.
By June , the consultants began to informally share preliminary conclu-
sions with the bank and Regifercam.
It appeared to be a case of oering the
bitter with the sweet. eir estimates initially pointed to as the year
when existing line capacity would reach its limits. On the other hand, they
hinted at a probable recommendation to go ahead without delay with the total
realignment of the line, based on the substantial operating and maintenance
savings this would produce. Predictably, Regifercam questioned the estimate of
the saturation point, pushing for a considerably earlier date, whereas the World
Bank argued against any recommendation to proceed with the realignment
earlier than . ese two contrasting positions hardened alongside the
various iterations of the report: an interim report in July , a dra nal report
in November plus an addendum in January , and the nal report in
September . All the actors involved met repeatedly in Cameroon over the
course of Bank missions to the country, in Paris, where the consultants were
based and both the bank and the OCFT had an oce, and in Washington D.C.,
which the railway company’s assistant managing director visited in February
and where bank sta and Cameroon government representatives met every
year during bank’s annual meetings.
The bank took nine months to communicate to the Cameroonian
government its ocial response to the consultants’ nal report. It expressed
several important reservations: they found the report’s trac forecasts too high
and they questioned the assumptions made in calculating the concentration of
trac on peak months; they found that the determination of the least costly
option to meet the demand was premised on a awed comparison of rail/road
alternatives; and they pointed out a series of deciencies in the assessment of
35 Letter from Brechot to Oursin, ‘Railway Project – Back-to-Oce Report’, June
, WB G A .
36 Letter from Brechot, De Gryse and du Parc to Oursin, ‘Discussion of Consultants’
Dra Final Report Concerning the Realignment of the Douala–Yaoundé Railway
Line – Combined Back-to-Oce and Full Report’, December , WBGA.
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192 J-M M
the realignment’s economic and nancial return as well as the analysis of the
relevant costs of opportunity.
Signicantly, the bank’s ocial response to the report was sent on June
, only two weeks before a meeting called by the government to gauge
the readiness of donors to fund the realignment, a meeting that had been
scheduled months earlier and in which the bank itself was taking part. As early
as November , the Cameroonian government had intimated to the bank
their intention to cast the net wide in their search for donors interested in
nancing the realignment works. Indeed, as the OCFT was quick to advertise
through the European–African Association’s newsletter, the outcome of the July
meeting with donors was a Western German and French commitment to
fund a rst phase of the realignment project (the Otele–Yaounde section).
While the concessional terms in which these funds were oered undermined
the bank’s argument that the realignment project’s estimated economic rate of
return ( per cent) was not high enough, the decision to split the project into
smaller components was a sign of the fundraising diculties that lay ahead.
Part of the rationale behind the German and French support for the
realignment was the possibility to redeploy the work teams and equipment that
had been engaged in building the northernmost segment of the Transcamerounais
(Goyoum [north of Belabo]–Ngaoundere), whose completion was imminent.
is was a possibility of which the bank sta were fully aware, as it had been
discussed internally by the engineers involved in preparations for the Second
Railway Project. In proposing a negotiation strategy to their boss at the bank’s
Division of Port’s and Railways in February , they noted: ‘It has been argued
that advantage should be taken of the availability of competent contracting and
supervisory sta aer completion of the Transcamerounais scheduled for .
is indeed may result in savings (mobilisation costs etc.) but these savings would
probably be more than oset by the loss resulting from premature investment.’
e bank soon found itself under pressure. Formally, the government could
not go ahead with the realignment of the Otele–Yaounde section, as the loan
agreement for the First Railway Project included an explicit commitment not to
undertake the realignment unless the government and the bank were satised that
the investment was economically and nancially sound. Other donors, who had
repeatedly approached the bank in the preceding two years about co-nancing
arrangements for the realignment, probed the bank’s decision to disregard the
37 Towa-Fotso, ‘Apres le Deuxieme Troncon’, p. .
38 Letter from Brechot, De Gryse and Du Parc to Oursin, ‘A Proposed Strategy for a
Second Railway Project’, February , WBGA.
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R G E C R 193
consultants’ recommendation. In a letter to their colleague at the bank’s Paris
oce, who had informed them of the French government’s complaints about
their position in this matter, the division chiefs for Western Africa took pains
in setting the record straight: ‘e Bank, at no time has taken the position that
it is unwilling to nance the realignment of the Douala–Yaounde leg of the
Transcameroon Railway.’ ey had simply stated that they could not commit
to nance these works unless a complementary study on road/rail competition
was completed.
Realignment as a ‘Corridor’ Matter
A study on road/rail competition in the Douala–Yaounde link had been included
in the Second Railway Project package, which was neg otiated and approved during
the period when the bank was still grappling with its response to the economic
study of realignment. It was in this context that the word ‘corridor’ made its rst
appearance in connection with the bank’s investments in Cameroon’s transport
infrastructure. is part of the transport routes that converged in the port of
Douala was the section that had highest density of freight and passenger trac
in the country. Not only did it link Douala to Cameroon’s capital and second
largest city, it also was one of the main routes through which cargo to and from
Chad and Central African Republic gained access to the sea. From the outset,
the framing in terms of corridor was understood to bring to the foreground ‘a
complex transport coordination problem’ that pitted ‘road construction’ against
‘railway realignment’. In this case, the relationship between these two modes
of transport was the core policy issue at the heart of the notion of corridor. e
need for the new study was premised on the view that the previous one ‘did not
go deep enough into problems of least-cost solution to the long-term question of
capacity on the Douala–Yaounde corridor’. However, insucient loan funds
meant that this and other items had to be transferred to a ird Railway Project,
so the chapter opened by this study did not end for another four years.
e preparation and the undertaking of the new study run parallel to the
planning and works of the Otele–Yaounde realignment, for which German,
French and Canadian financial contributions had been confirmed. This
commitment had obvious implications for the study, which could no longer
39
Letter from Steckhan and Brandreth to Carriere, ‘Transcameroon Railway (Douala–
Yaoundé)’, December , WBGA.
40 IBRD, Appraisal of a Second Railway Project – Cameroon, Washington, D.C., ,
pp. ii, .
41 IBRD, Appraisal of a Second Railway Project, pp. iv–v.
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194 J-M M
treat the realignment of this section as an option to be assessed but as a given.
Moreover, these three countries’ nancial backing of works in that portion of
the railway generated a momentum towards further commitments. Indeed, in
early , the Minister of Planning contacted the bank’s vice-president for
Western Africa to appeal to the bank’s ‘willingness to associate themselves to
the already formed group [of funders]’, so that the government could ‘forge
ahead, as fast as possible, towards our nal objective’, which was no other than
the realignment of the entire line.
As the bank’s lead in the railway projects
noted in a memo to one of the Western Africa division chiefs: ‘e Minister’s
letter…puts us in a dicult position. On the one hand, we and the Government
should await the results of the rail/road study…before undertaking any works
on the Douala–Yaoundé transport corridor. On the other hand, we more or less
gave no objection in June to the Otélé–Yaoundé section being carried out.’
e bank could do little but to urge that the corridor study should get under
way and emphasise the importance of subordinating all investments to the study’s
conclusions. To speed up the process, in April the bank agreed to retain the
same consultants that had conducted the rst economic study on the realignment.
e logic of postponing further investment decisions until the completion
of the new study was anyhow hard to impose. e government, Regifercam
and, less directly, the OCFT and the construction contractors kept pushing for
potential lenders to agree to further phases of realignment and were successful,
particularly in the case of a very receptive German government. Aer a visit
to Frankfurt in July , one of the Bank’s nancial analysts reported that
the German development bank, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (Kf W), felt
‘committed to the realignment of the entire Douala–Yaounde section’ and that
‘the nancial constraints of both Kf W and Cameroon’ were the main reason
for the slow pace of implementation. Bank managers, in turn, were not open-
minded about what the implications of the corridor study could be. In a memo
of November , they stated clearly that ‘it is increasingly unlikely that we
shall contribute to the realignment project’.
42 Letter from Maikano Abdoulaye to Chaufournier, February , WBGA.
43
Letter from Johnson to Steckhan, ‘Cameroon Railways’, February , WBGA.
44 Letter from Bayon to Johnson, ‘Compte Rendu des Reunions du Mars a
Bruxelles a/s Rélignement Douala-Yaoundé’, April , WBGA.
45 Letter from Apitz to Brandreth, ‘Second Douala Port Project and Proposed Douala-
Yaoundé realignment’, July , WBGA.
46 Letter from Agueh de la Renaudiere to Chaufournier, ‘Cameroon – Status of
Implementation and Preparation of our Railway Projects’, November ,
WBGA.
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R G E C R 195
For close to a year aer the choice of consultants was made, much energy
was spent in reaching an agreement on the terms of their remit. Even the prole
of the team of consultants was subject to considerable discussion, as the bank
detected ‘a lack of balance in favour of railway [expertise]’.
e impasse was
reected on a gap of months (from November to December )
without a bank supervision mission. Once the consultants nally got to work,
they were able to produce an interim report. Regifercam received it in July
and sent copies of it to the bank in August. In the following months, bank
sta, including railway and highway engineers and nancial analysts, reviewed
the report and travelled to Paris to discuss it with the consultants. However,
to the Regifercam managers’ exasperation, they declared that the members
of a mission to Cameroon in December were ‘still not in a position to
discuss [the report]’. In a wire to Washington, the mission sta informed their
bosses that the ‘railway is very embarrassed about delays purportedly caused
by the Bank in nalising this study’. By that stage, the consultants had already
produced a dra nal report without allowing for the bank, the railway company,
or the government’s comments to be incorporated. Eventually, it was agreed
that the consultants would prepare an addendum to respond to the bank’s and
Regifercam’s comments.
Once the bank had communicated their observations about the interim
report to Regifercam, the company shared with the bank the dra nal report
and the two parties reviewed the consultants’ addendum. Only aer the new
year could they sit down to discuss their respective positions. When they did,
predictably, their observations went in opposite directions: whereas the bank
found the forecasts of timber trac too optimistic, Regifercam thought the
study had underestimated the benecial impact realignment would have on
accidents. ey agreed on asking the consultants to rectify both aspects in the
nal report.
Beyond such technical requests for rectication, whose implications were
not likely to bring about any surprises, both parties seemed to have already
drawn their own conclusions. e Western Africa Region economist in charge
of railway projects informed the bank’s representative in Yaoundé in early
January of how their ‘highly condential’ review suggested that ‘realignment
[is] not economically viable but minor improvements to railway probably
47 Letter from Brandreth to Regifercam, outgoing wire, January , WBGA.
48 Letter from Dick to Brandreth, ‘Second Railway Project – Douala–Yaoundé
Corridor Study – Back to Oce and Full Report’, February , WBGA.
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196 J-M M
ar e ’. Sensing the bank’s continued reticence on this score and knowing
that the government had by then received assurances of German support for
realigning a new section (Douala–Edea), Regifercam reoriented their requests
to the bank towards the purchase of new rolling stock. To complicate matters
more, an announcement by the Cameroonian president seemed to undermine
the relevance of the planning exercise itself. In a speech that had purportedly
‘caught even the relevant ministers by surprise’, President Ahidjo made public
the government’s intention to construct a four-lane autoroute between Douala
and Yaounde. Conrmation that Gau, a German rm, had been hired to
undertake engineering studies for this future highway and was considering
constructing a stretch of it with its own funds caused alarm among bank sta.
e next step was a three-day ‘co-donors meeting’ held in Paris in March
. is larger meeting was preceded by further ‘technical discussions’
among the consultants Sofrerail, the Cameroon delegation and the bank. is
restricted forum was the opportunity for Regifercam to conrm its intention
to go ahead with the realignment of Douala–Edea, for which the consultants’
analysis showed acceptable rates of return. e bank explained that they would
only be able to participate in the nancing of this investment under certain
conditions. Some of the conditions concerned the complementary future road
investments, including the autoroute the president had recently ‘decreed’ be
built. e Cameroon delegation stated that such conditions would be ‘dicult
to meet’ and the discussions ended without reaching ‘a meeting of minds’.
Eventually, the meeting with the larger pool of potential funders led to ‘an overall
accord in principle’ on future railway investments and on each of the parties’
respective nancial contributions. e bank’s proposed participation was, in the
49 Letter from Dick to Palein, ‘Cameroon Corridor Study’, telex, January ,
WBGA.
50 Letter from Dick to Brandreth, op. cit., February , WBGA.
51 Letter from Palein to Steckhan, ‘Progress Report from Cameroon’, telex, February
, WBGA.
52 e Cameroon delegation was led by the Minister of Transport and included a
Ministry of Economy and Planning director, Regifercam’s president and his French
assistant director and the OCFT’s managing director, also French. Potential
funders present at the table were Germany (four delegates), France (six), European
Community (three), US (two), Canada (two), World Bank (two) and the Arab
Bank for Economic Development in Africa (one).
53
Letter from Dick to Brandreth, ‘Cameroon Second Railway Project: Co-donors’
Meeting – Back to Oce and Full Report’, April , WBGA.
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R G E C R 197
view of its own sta, ‘marginal’ but deemed sucient to give them ‘leverage’.
e bank sta were also satised to obtain a commitment to supplementary
analysis by Sofrerail of the proposed infrastructure investment plan, in light of
various new factors that had not been considered in the original study, including
the autoroute project.
The Path from ‘Partial’ to ‘Non-Involvement’
In May , when the nal report on the Douala–Yaounde Corridor study
reached them, the bank sta reviewing it could not but be disappointed. Trac
forecasts used in the dra version, which as far as the bank was concerned had
been ‘the most signicant cause of dispute’, had not been changed. e sta ’s
take was openly cynical: ‘the consultants have managed to squeeze slightly
higher rates out of the packages favoured by Regifercam (presumably a coinci-
dence)’. However, there was solace in that the report supported the bank’s
stance against the Edea–Makak realignment. In any case, arriving aer the
April donors meeting as it had, the report was a non-event. e supplementary
study followed soon aer and this time the bank was pleased to read that ‘the
high cost of autoroute construction renders this economically unacceptable’
and that ‘a self-nancing toll autoroute is an untenable proposition between
Douala and Yaounde’.
In spite of its unequivocal conclusions, Sofrerail’s supplementary study did
not put an end to what bank sta now called ‘the road/rail controversy’.
Speculation and rumours kept feeding uncertainties surrounding the prospect
of a new autoroute. While French opposition to the project seemed strong, the
German Ministry for Economic Cooperation remained rather supportive. In
discussions with the bank, the Cameroon government showed itself ‘unwilling
to modify [the engineering survey contractor Gau’s] terms of reference to
include a more modest concept’, such as the paved two-lane road on the
existing alignment advocated by Sofrerail. More alarmingly from the bank’s
point of view, everything seemed to be up for grabs again on the railway side
of things. During the bank annual meetings in D.C., the Cameroonian
54 Letter from Dick to Brandreth, ibid., April , WBGA.
55
Letter from Dick to Brandreth, ‘Douala-Yaoundé Corridor Study – Supplementary
Study’. June , WBGA.
56
Letter from Eigen to Steckhan, ‘Discussions with BMZ/KfW in Bonn’, July
, WBGA.
57
Letter from Dick to les, ‘Douala-Yaoundé Road Construction’, October ,
WBGA.
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198 J-M M
delegation was ‘non-committal’ about the investment package agreed in Paris a
few months earlier and ‘adamant’ that the realignment of the Eseka–Maloume
section be discussed.
In November , only a few weeks aer the tense discussions of the annual
meetings, the Minister of Economy and Planning sent a new letter ‘to clarify
from now on the Cameroon government’s position’. e conciliatory tone
seemed to be aimed at securing the bank’s green light for the realignment of
the Douala–Edea section. With regards to the prospects of the realignment of
remaining sections and the autoroute project, the minister reassured the bank
that ‘our constant policy had never led us to envisage overinvesting but, on
the contrary, to modulate such investments with regards to our needs and our
possibilities’. e bank took this as outright acceptance of its own position.
When commitments for the Douala–Edea realignment were rmed up, the
bank was no longer among the funders.
e bank’s Fourth Railway Project
focused instead on the construction of new railway facilities in both Douala
and Yaounde and on technical assistance to improve Regifercam’s management
and operational performance. Yet, one of the covenants contained in this loan
agreement referred to the railway realignment. e government thereby agreed
to pursue a closer study of all possible improvement alternatives to completely
realigning the Edea–Maloume section and committed itself not to make any
capital investments in this section unless their ‘economic justication’ had
been established. By the time the new railway loan was approved in June
, the bank had also prevailed upon the government to drop the idea of
a Douala–Yaounde autoroute and to redene the terms of reference of the
project’s contractors, so that the economic feasibility and detailed engineering
of a two-lane paved road would be studied instead.
58 Letter from Calvo to Palein, ‘Annual Meeting’, telex, October , WBGA.
59 Letter from Minister of Economy and Planning to Chef de Division, November
, WBGA.
60 Letter from Apitz to Brandreth, ‘Second and ird Railway Projects Supervision
– Preparation of the Fourth Railway Project – Back-to-Oce report’, December
, WBGA.
61
Nor did the bank nance the rolling stock about which Regifercam had approached
them back in early , as the Canadians showed themselves more willing to cover
that particular investment: see letter from Apitz to Brandreth, op. cit., December
, WBGA.
62 Fourth Railway Project, Sta Appraisal, p. , WBGA.
63 Fourth Highway Project, Sta Appraisal Report, p. , WBGA.
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R G E C R 199
us, as in the previous phase, when construction works for the realignment
of the Douala–Edea portion began in December , uncertainty surrounded
the fate of the remaining sections. In spite of the bank’s continued objections to
the project, the government continued to seek out potential funders. Consider
the presidential speech for the opening in June of the new Japoma railway
bridge, a project whose completion arrived almost a decade aer the bank had
rst agreed to partially fund it. While the occasion was framed as a celebration
of international co-operation, the president did not miss the opportunity to
remind Cameroon’s partners of the priority projects still in need of support:
e government will not spare any eorts to obtain funding for the
last section Edéa–Maloumé as soon as reasonably possible, so that the
works can begin quickly. Only this way will we eliminate the bottleneck
that hinders the optimal performance of our transport system and will
Cameroon have at its disposal a heavy-duty route ready to play its role
fully as the backbone of our transport system.
In the end, the realignment of the remaining section of old railway was carried
out in two stages. e rst one, from Edea to Eseka, began in and opened
for trac ‘sans tambours ni trompettes [without fanfare]’ in December .
e most technically challenging and expensive part (Eseka–Maloume), which
included an ‘infernal’ elevation gain of metres within kilometres as the
crow ies, was le for last. It comprised building four spectacular viaducts and
excavating three long tunnels. e much-awaited completion took place in ,
by which time the country’s economic prospects had taken a drastic turn for the
worse. Years of annual decits and underinvestment followed for Regifercam,
64
Letter from Rabeharisoa to Chaufournier, ‘Inauguration of Japoma Railroad Bridge’,
June , WBGA; See also: ‘Un Nouveau Pont à Japoma’, Le Rail et le Monde,
:, .
65
Michel Baranger, ‘Transcam: Plus que km’, Le Rail et le Monde, , , pp.
–.
66
‘Infernal’ is the adjective chosen by Daniel Vincent, who was then the European
Commission’s division chief for general infrastructure and industr y. It is interesting
that even within the European Economic Community, which remained a constant
funder throughout the whole realignment process, there was already in a clear
sense that the more technically and nancially demanding sections to be rebuilt
‘weighed’ heavily on those involved in the project. See Daniel Vincent, ‘La politique
du F.E.D. en matière de cooperation ferroviaire’, Le Courrier, , , pp. –.
e sense of exhaustion when the nal works approached completion is apparent
in the title that the editors of Le Rail et le Monde, the French periodical devoted to
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200 J-M M
whose privatisation was agreed by the government and its nanciers in .
It nally materialised in through a -year concession agreement with a
consortium led by the French multinational Bollore.
In sum, the complete realignment ended up being a much longer, tortuous
and expensive aair than could have been anticipated in the early s, when
planning for it had begun. Carrying it out took roughly as long as the construction
of the original Douala–Yaounde line – and it cost almost twice as much as the
construction of the new Yaounde–Belabo–Ngaoundere railroad. roughout
this period, the World Bank stood rm in their stance of not supporting the
project, while taking active part in various other transport investments in the
country. ese included one of nine lots in which the construction of a paved
Douala–Yaounde road was divided, a project that took place from to .
Running the Clock Down?
e plan to realign the Douala–Yaounde railway raised a series of complex
questions and presented the dierent parties involved with various dilemmas.
e two studies commissioned by Regifercam at the behest of the bank were
conceived to inform decisions on the timing and modalities of the rehabilitation
of the existing network. e agreement to conduct the rst study committed
the Cameroon government to a deferred timetable. e study opened a process
that included the draing of the terms of reference, the international call for
bids, and the selection of consultants. Once the consultants were selected,
the study itself would involve months of both in-country and distance work.
Similarly, the second study committed the government to wait for its results.
ese studies entailed as one of their most immediate eects the postponement
of realignment.
For the bank, the delay seems to have been welcome. eir ‘petit projet ferro-
viaire’, as the OCFT dismissively referred to the First Railway Project, had given
the bank a say in the government’s investment policy. Its small size notwith-
standing, the terms of that rst loan explicitly subjected future decisions on
realignment to the bank being satised that they constituted sound investments.
international railway co-operation, chose for the issue they devoted to the project:
‘Transcamerounais: the end of the tunnel’. See: Michel Baranger, ‘Transcamerounais:
Le Bout du Tunnel en ’, Le Rail et le Monde, , , pp. –.
67 Dupré la Tour, ‘Cent-vingt Ans’, p. .
68 Oce du Chemin de Fer Transcamerounais (OCFT); ‘La Revision de la Voie
Ferrée Douala-Yaoundé’, September , Revision de la Ligne Doula/Yaoundé
– Dossiers, Fol. , WBGA.
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R G E C R 201
From the preliminary discussions of the consultants’ ndings, well before the
nal report, they knew that the cost–benet analysis was going to generate
what were by their standards low economic rates of return. As far as they were
concerned, it was an investment that could wait. From the point of view of
the Cameroonian parties, the old line was a major hindrance to the railway
company’s operations and the investment was justied and urgent. ey had
been led to assume that if the consultants’ recommendations were favourable, the
bank would follow through with a nancial contribution towards realignment.
As we saw, they were up for a disappointment. Although the report recom-
mended to proceed with the investment, it also placed the point of saturation
of existing line in . e bank could latch on to this to argue that any earlier
investment would be premature.
ere was an acute awareness of the potential dilatory eects of technical
studies when the bank and the government negotiated the Second Railway
Project (Photo .). Firstly, the diculties involved in securing the bank’s
board of executive directors’ approval of a loan were not to be underestimated.
Going through the motions of the bank’s bureaucratic procedures to reach the
stage of the presentation to the board, from the ‘issues paper’ and the ‘yellow
cover’ president’s report to the ‘green cover’ documents for the loan committee
and the negotiations with the government, could take up to ten months when
things went as planned.
Secondly, it was fresh in everyone’s minds that, for
the preceding study on the economic viability of the realignment, the bank had
taken nine months to respond to the consultants’ nal report. e government
therefore voiced its reservations about the new ‘corridor’ study proposed by
the bank, ‘fearing that [on the basis of this further study] the Bank might not
nance the realignment’. e bank oered assurances that ‘the study can be
completed within a year of commencement and this … would still leave time
to complete the realignment before trac constraints on the existing line reach
an unacceptable level’. At the bank’s insistence, the study thus became one of
the items in the new railway project.
69 Sympathetic bank sta could make eorts to ‘compress’ the typical schedule to seven
months, as they oered doing for Cameroon’s ird Railway Project. See: Memo
from Agueh to Files, ‘Cameroon – ird Railway Project – Decision Memorandum’,
December .
70
Letter from Steckhan and Brandreth to Carriere, ‘Transcameroon Railway (Douala–
Yaoundé)’, December , WBGA; See also: IBRD, Appraisal of a Railway
Project – Federal Republic of Cameroon, pp. –; Similarly, the project appraisal
document stated that that, even ‘allowing for construction lead time’, a decision
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202 J-M M
Loan budgeting shortages resulting from currency exchange dynamics slowed
down the launch of the corridor study. Although a decision was taken to entrust it to
the previous consultants to expedite the process, it was only in July , more than
two years aer the agreement, that the consultants produced an interim report. It is
not hard to understand the railway company’s frustration when, ve months later, a
bank mission to Douala informed them that they were not in a position to discuss
the report. When those discussions nally took place in February , the transport
economist leading the banks’s team showed full awareness of the eects that all
that waiting was having on their relations with the borrowers. When discussing
the options that the bank faced in an upcoming donors meeting, he wrote: ‘[Our]
non-involvement [in the nancing of realignment] could have a serious adverse eect
on the Bank’s inuence on the Cameroon transport sector. e Bank initiated the
consultants’ study, this study has been patiently awaited for two years, and complete
dissociation of the Bank from railway investment associated with its conclusions
would be incomprehensible to the Cameroon government.’
Yet that was exactly what ended up happening. As we have seen, an initial
agreement in principle to contribute alongside other donors to the realignment
of the Douala–Edea section, then under discussion, soon came to nothing.
As much as the rhythms of work within various bureaucracies ranging from
the railway company to the relevant ministries and funding agencies were
oriented towards short- and long-term planning, the converse relationship also
obtained. ‘Planning itself takes time’, Simone Abram has recently reminded us.
In Cameroon, throughout the s, this obvious but oen neglected fact served
well the bank in its eorts to either prevent or slow down investments that they
deemed premature. ere were certainly clear limits to this strategy. When the
bank distanced itself from the consultants’ recommendations in both the economic
study of realignment and in the corridor study, there was an inevitable fallout.
At those points, the clauses contained in the loans that required bank approval
did not count for much and the government was able to forge ahead and secure
commitments from other donors to realign rst Yaounde–Otele–Maloume and
later Douala–Edea. e bank’s overestimation of its ability to exert control over
events was costly in particular instances. For example, track of the old line renewed
as late as November was taken out of use in April , when the realigned
on ‘either railway realignment or road improvement’ would be ‘unnecessary before
’, see: IBRD, Appraisal of a Second Railway Project – Cameroon, p. .
71 Letter from Dick to Brandreth, ‘Second Railway Project – Douala–Yaoundé
Corridor Study – Back-to-Oce and Full Report’, February , WBGA.
72
Simone Abram, ‘e Time it Takes: Temporalities of Planning’, Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, special issue, , pp. at p. .
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
Retrofit in the Golden Era of the Cameroonian Railways 203
Yaounde–Otele section was completed (Map .). Although the track from the
renewed sections was salvaged and repurposed by the railway company for other
projects, the expense of the ballast and the labour required for the relaying of
the track looked wasteful. e bank’s nancial analyst, who, as Figure . shows,
devoted considerable attention to this matter, concluded that ‘with the benet
of hindsight, it might have been anticipated that … the extent of benets from
track relaying were very uncertain’. As the bank’s sta acknowledged, such a
blatant case of mistiming was ‘partly due to weaknesses in the Bank’s relationship
with the borrower’. Such glitches aside, in a matter of months aer each of the
fallouts resulting from the bank’s response to the two studies, both parties made a
point of patching their dierences up and, as the rhetoric of international nance
diplomacy would have it, nd ways of ‘concentrat[ing] on areas where government
and Bank can develop enlarged co-operation and avoid confrontation’.
73
World Bank, Cameroon Second and ird Railway Projects – Project Completion
Report, Washington, D.C., , p. .
74 World Bank, Cameroon Second and ird Railway Projects, p. .
75 Letter from Calvo to Palein, ‘Annual Meeting’, telex, October , WBGA.
Photo 8.3. Loan signing for Cameroon’s Second Railways Project; seated from
right to le World Bank’s Vice-President Chaufournier (Western Africa Region)
and Cameroon’s Ambassador Tchoungui, Washington, D.C., September .
(Source: © Edwin Human/World Bank. Licence: CC BY NC-SA ..)
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
Figure 8.1. Critical steps in
track relaying/realignment of
Yaoundé–Otele section.
(Source: World Bank Group
Archives.)
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R G E C R 205
Ultimately, the factor that seems to have inuenced most the timing and the
pace of realignment was the presence in Cameroon of Cogefar-Hochtief, the
tried and tested contractor that had built the Yaounde–Ngaoundere line. As it
turned out, the various phases of the realignment ended up being scheduled so
as to ensure the Italo-German consortium kept getting steady contracts without
signicant periods of idleness. Resorting to these contractors mitigated the
uncertainties surrounding the engineering challenges of the realignment works
themselves. is was presented as both a matter of lower cost, given the instal-
lation savings, and of quality. But, equally decisively if not more, retaining the
same contractor – while complying with the motions of international bidding
procedures – was for the Cameroon government also key in addressing the
uncertainties surrounding the supply of nance. e choice of contractor was
indeed far from immaterial to the co-funders involved in both the construction
of the new line to Ngaoundere and the realignment of the old line. e tying
of aid to contracts for companies from the European Economic Community
member countries was at the time a requirement for the EDF and, in fact, the
Transcamerounais was a pioneering project in relaxing these restrictions to make
US rms eligible bidders. A similar logic applied to the position of the OCFT
as the supervisor of railway projects. Large projects such as the successive phases
of realignment were what justied the OCFT’s continuous existence; it was
also a crucial consideration behind France’s nancial support at various points.
Conclusion
It was only in the s and the s that the term ‘corridor’ became
fashionable to refer to certain approaches to planning, building and managing
transport infrastructure in the African continent and beyond, although even
76 According to Hewitt, the Transcamerounais project beneted from ‘the surplus
capacity civil engineering sector of the Italian economy’. Cogefar was ‘prepared
to oer relatively cheap but highly skilled labour and expertise and to bid aggres-
sively for the works contracts’, see: Hewitt, ‘e European Development Fund as
a development agent’, p. . Most grants and loans for Cameroonian railways were
tied aid. Referring specically to the realignment, a USAID ocer recalled “dicult
issues surrounding the transparency and fairness of the procurement arrangements for
the various aspects of the project …e European donors were inclined to be cavalier
about these issues”: Frederick Gilbert, Deputy Reg ional Development Ocer, USAID
Cameroon (–), Foreign Aairs Oral History, , p. <https://adst.org/
wp-content/uploads///Gilbert-Frederick-E.pdf> [Accessed April ].
77 Dimier, Inention, .
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206 J-M M
then it remained ‘a geographical object waiting for a denition’. is chapter
has documented the earlier usage of the term with a signicantly dierent
emphasis from the ones it acquired later. roughout the s, the World
Bank proposed that the transport links between Cameroon’s two largest
cities be conceived as a corridor. By this they meant adopting an approach
that compared the costs and benets of various combinations of investments
in railway and road infrastructure as a basis for strategic decision-making.
What had begun as a study of the economic returns of a railway investment
morphed into an assessment of the relative merits of alternative modes of
transport, which the bank managers ultimately thought should encourage
the government to take a more cautious investment strategy and one that
privileged roads over railways. Yet, the vision behind the ‘corridor study’
proposed by the bank was not without inconsistencies.
e design of these transport infrastructure projects in Cameroon had been
done along modal lines, with separate loans for ports, highways and railways.
In fact, it was only much later, in the s, that the bank’s loans to Cameroon
adopted the more encompassing ‘transport sector’ denomination. Furthermore,
in these projects of the s, the arena for co-ordination of intermodal invest-
ments that the bank itself had agreed to was one dominated by railway profes-
sionals. Indeed, the commissioner of the corridor study was the railway company
– and, according to such far from neutral legal arrangements, it was the company
that would have to return the money they had borrowed from the bank.
It was
also small wonder that railway expertise would be overrepresented in consultant
teams led by a railway engineering contractor; or that the consultants’ recom-
mendations for the corridor ended up being sympathetic to the investment
packages favoured by the railway company.
at corridor irrupted as the watchword for a technical problematisation of
rail–road competition in Cameroon at this particular time also reected a global
swing of the pendulum in favour of roads. Indeed, the s was the decade when
road transport became ‘the right mode’. is gradual dominance was long in
the making and was decisively strengthened by the standardisation of shipping
78 Benjamin Steck, ‘Preface’, in Jérôme Lombard, Le Monde des Transports Sénégalais,
Marseille, , p. . See also Nugent and Lamarque, in this volume.
79 Laura Bear, ‘Speculations on Infrastructure: From Colonial Public Works to a
Post-Colonial Global Asset Class on the Indian Railways –’, Economy &
Society, :, , pp. –.
80 International Road Union (IRU), ‘Seven Decades: Driving Road Transport’, IRU
Factsheet, , p. <www.iru.org/system/les/factsheet-tir-seven-decades-driving-
road-transport.pdf> [Accessed April ].
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
R G E C R 207
containers. e process certainly had many specic histories. In Nigeria, a case
that became paradigmatic because it caught Albert Hirschman’s imagination and
was the spark that inspired some of his most celebrated work, the triumph of
road transport was already palpable by the mid-s. In Cameroon, because
of the limitations of the road network and the foreign and national backing of
railways, the pendulum swung later but the swing was equally pronounced. As
in numerous other contexts, road transport eventually developed a powerful
political platform that found its reection in government policies premised
on the road’s superior competitiveness. As if to atone for the sense of repeated
deferral that surrounded the entire realignment project, a evaluation of
the bank’s railway lending to the country ended on a positive note: ‘Regifercam
is at least fortunate in having time to prepare for the increased competitive
situation [that would derive from the completion of the Douala–Yaounde paved
road in ].’
Yet, what unfolded in later years seems instead to instantiate
Hirschman’s point about the Nigerian railways. In both cases, road competition
seems to have provided ‘the railways not so much with a spur for good perfor-
mance as with a special kind of latitude for poor performance’.
e present oers a suggestive vantage point from which to look back on
the s. While the twenty-rst century opened with announcements of an
imminent ‘rail renaissance’
in the African continent, its substance, momentum
and durability have been variously assessed. Certainly, the enthusiastic tone of
the early s has given way to more circumspect views.
Yet, a number of
new railroads have been completed in recent years and construction of others is
ongoing. In Cameroon, the government published an ambitious Railway Master
Plan (RMP) in . e investments designated as short- and mid-term are
gargantuan. It is the new construction projects to be undertaken that have
captured most of the media attention, even though they remain to this day
distant possibilities.
e RMP also comprises a substantial but less conspicuous
package for rehabilitation of the existing network, within which the renovation
81 Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty.
82 World Bank, Cameroon Second and ird Railway Projects, p. .
83 Hirschman, Development Projects Observed, pp. –.
84 Neil Ford, ‘Africa’s Rail Renaissance’, Aican Business, June , pp. –.
85 ‘Pued Out; Railways in Africa’, e Economist, , , p. ; Vincent Defait,
‘En Afrique, le Train Revient au Cœur des Grands Projets du Continent’, Le Monde,
October .
86 Rousseau-Joël Foute, ‘Transport Ferroviaire: L’Incontournable Modernisation’,
Cameroon Tribune, June ; Paul Eboa, ‘Projets à Réaliser à Moyen Terme:
Une Dizaine de Tronçons dans le Pipe’, Cameroon Tribune, April .
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208 J-M M
of the northernmost section of the existing line (Pangar–Ngaoundéré) is the
largest project.
In the aermath of the country’s most lethal railway accident on October
( deaths and nearly injured) and faced with a pronounced decline
in freight volume, the concessionary company Camrail (Regifercam’s successor)
has been questioned in recent years. While the concession does not expire until
, the government itself commissioned an audit of the company’s perfor-
mance in . However, the auditors’ recommendations have neither been made
public nor acted upon. In ways that both resemble and dier from the situation
in the s, many railway professionals in Cameroon today see the present as
a period of uncertainty and confusion. Some of this uncertainty and confusion
refers specically to what the best ways of ensuring the long-term durability of
railway infrastructure might be, a question that occupied all those who took an
active interest in the Douala–Yaounde realignment. A greater policy focus on
intermodal co-ordination and competition might be in the cards. In this, the
coming decade may echo the s.
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Winter, Gerard, ‘Note sur la Planication du Developpement au Cameroun’, Yaoundé,
, <http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/pleins_
textes_/b_fdi_–/.pdf> [Accessed April ].
World Bank, Cameroun Fourth Railway Project – Sta Appraisal Report, Washington
D.C., .
— Cameroun Second and ird Railway Projects – Project Completion Report, Washington
D.C.,
World Bank Group Archive, Railroads Project – Cameroon – Correspondence vols.
–, Folders –.
— Railway Project II – Correspondence vols. –, Folders –.
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211
C 9
When is a Corridor Just a Road?
Understanding Thwarted Ambitions
Along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor
P N
When you reach border, immigration ocer dey
Him go blu you, waste your time
Change him pants
Some dey comb dem hair
Den tidy dem table
Den dem pull dem chair
Before him go know say you dey there
If you no talk quick
Him go go for shit
Him go shit, come-back
And you talk to am
en you surprise when him
Shock for you
Him go say you no go cross
You no go cross today
Na that time dem go start dem
Power Show.
Introduction
To ask what is a transport corridor is not to pose an entirely facetious question.
Most analysis proceeds on the assumption that we can infer what a corridor
is from ‘its’ eects rather than by trying to dene any intrinsic attributes. But
there are countless roads that are not regarded as corridors, while almost all of
the corridors are eectively labels placed upon routes that already existed – and
1 Fela Kuti, ‘Power Show’ from the album Original Suerhead, .
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212 P N
oen for a very long time.
One possible basis for a distinction might be that
along designated corridors the roads are widened and the surfaces improved –
processes of upgrading that are oen associated with the interpolation of toll-
booths – but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, there are stretches along all
the main corridors in Africa that are severely potholed and in far worse shape
than other national roads – as we will see below. So what serves to transform
a mere road into something that is constitutive of a corridor? At the most
fundamental level, a corridor exists when governments, donors and planners
think it does, or should, exist. is obviously imparts a large measure of circu-
larity to the exercise. But two other considerations that most analysts would
regard as essential may instil a greater measure of rigour: rstly, whether a route
connects two or more places that represent centres of particular importance –
because of some combination of demography, strategic positioning or the
location of natural resources – and, secondly, whether it carries unusually high
levels of trac. e Abidjan–Lagos Corridor (ALCo) evidently meets the rst
condition, given that the corridor links no fewer than ve capital cities, namely
Abidjan, Accra, Lomé, Cotonou and Lagos. However, the status of the second
criterion is much more debatable. Whereas long-distance trucking along some of
Africa’s other transport corridors – such as along the Northern Corridor in East
Africa – is highly visible, this can hardly be said of ALCo. Although there are
passenger vehicles that regularly ply the route, there is relatively little evidence
of serious trucking. Revealingly, unlike in Southern and East Africa there are
no real trucking companies that make their business from using the corridor
on a sustained basis. At best one might say that ALCo is a developmental idea
that is still under development.
In this chapter, I seek to make sense of this baing state of aairs. First of
all, in probing some possible historical reasons, I pose the question of where
the rationale for this particular corridor emanated from and how it has evolved
over time. Secondly, I seek to identify why there remains such a mismatch
today between the ocial discourse surrounding ALCo and what actually
unfolds along the route. is requires us to be alert to the nuances of space
and scale, both of which play out in signicant ways along sections of the
corridor. Comparing corridor dynamics is something that can yield fruitful
insights. Although ALCo exhibits a number of peculiarities – and might be
said to occupy one end of a corridor spectrum – it does throw up some lessons
that have a more general application.
2 e same would hold mutatis mutandis for railways.
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T A A A–L C 213
The Why and the When of the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor
Whether it emanates from mainstream economists or transport specialists,
the literature on transport corridors tends to be at once technical and highly
presentist. But a recent report from the Asian Development Bank factors in a
much older history of transport corridors in South Asia, viewed through the
prism of Mughal trade routes, the interventions of the East India Company and
colonial railways – all of which (it is claimed) had a demonstrable impact on
the regions through which they passed. ese deeper histories are arguably
well-worth excavating for dierent regions of Africa as well (see Soi in this
volume). Between what is now Côte d’Ivoire and western Nigeria there is a
string of coastal ports that have been in existence for a very long time. Although
there was some trade and migration between the coastal settlements during the
era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the routes followed a broadly north–south
orientation. Trading communities in the interior typically kept their options
open, so that slaves and ivory would pass in one direction and cowries and
manufactured goods in the other, depending on a number of factors that were
operational at any given time: most notably, the level of physical security along
the trade routes and the prevailing prices at the various ports.
Some of these
routes from the interior to the coast provided the precedent for colonial roads
and railways. In interesting ways, the Asante great roads remain etched into
the contemporary landscape and some have subsequently been rebranded as
corridors. But as for the littoral itself, the underlying pattern was one of active
competition between coastal ports, which has an obvious echo in the present.
e interpolation of colonial borders was associated with a contradictory double
manoeuvre: that is, states constructed better roads along the coast to facilitate
the export of cash crops and communications with the capital city – which
was always located on the coast – but they also imposed taxes and restrictions
on much of the trade that traversed borders. e net result was that coastal
infrastructure was the composite of separate segments of road that had been
constructed at dierent times to serve colonial, and later national, rather than
regional or continental ends.
In the mid-s, during the oil boom, the eastern segment of the coastal
route became famous as the means by which migrants entered Nigeria. e
actual crossings remained as gruelling as ever, as immortalised in Fela Kuti’s
3
World Bank, e Web of Transport Corridors in South Asia, Washington, D.C., ,
pp. –.
4 Paul Nugent, Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Aica: e
Centrality of the Margins, Cambridge, , ch. .
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214 P N
scathing lyrics in ‘Power Show’ which highlighted the capricious exercise of
power by ocials at Nigerian border posts. e instrumentalisation of borders
was graphically illustrated in when around a million Ghanaians found
themselves stranded at the Seme border with Benin as they attempted to leave
Nigeria in advance of the deadline set by the authorities. ‘Ghana Must Go!’ was
the slogan, but the practical diculty was that the border between Ghana and
Togo was closed because of ongoing tensions between their governments over
smuggling and allegations of subversion. Although Nigerian leaders liked to
think of themselves as the driver of regional integration processes, following the
foundation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
in , the country also had an interest in seeking to preserve rather hard
borders – in large part because the oil boom aorded abundant opportunities
for smuggling to and from Benin which had cemented its position as an entrepôt
state. In short, there were successive stretches of road between Abidjan and
Lagos, but there was no corridor in a meaningful sense.
Curiously, the origins of ALCo reside not in the eort to foster economic
interdependence, but rather in the playing out of responses to the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. One of the comparative insights that had emerged from the mapping
of infection rates across Africa was that the prevalence was especially high
along trucking routes. e risky sexual behaviour of truckers was thought to
correlate with the lengthy administrative delays at border crossings. In the s,
the UNAIDS West Africa Initiative made the link explicit and in the
decision was taken to target this particular route for a public health interven-
tion. In , the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Organisation (ALCO) was formally
inaugurated as an inter-governmental agency. Two years later, the International
Development Agency (IDA) provided US$. million of funding to pilot
work aimed at ‘improving access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care
and social support services for target populations’; ‘enhancing regional capacity
and co-operation to deal with HIV/AIDS’; and nally ‘improving the ow
of commercial and passenger trac along the corridor’.
e initiative specif-
5 Fela Kuti, ‘Power Show’ from the album Original Suerhead, .
6 Indicatively perhaps, the prevalence rates did not seem overly high by comparison
with other routes in Eastern and Southern Africa. See: Deepa Chakrapani and
Catherine Gwin, An Independent Evaluation of the World Bank’s Support of Regional
Programs: Case Study of the West Aica HIV/AIDS Project for the Abidjan-Lagos
Corridor, Washington, D.C., , p. <http://documents.worldbank.org/
curated/en//pdf/AFRWAFagosTranspP
UBLIC.pdf> [Accessed April ].
7 Chakrapani and Gwin, Independent Evaluation, p. .
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T A A A–L C 215
ically targeted truck drivers, sex workers and borderlanders as segments of the
population that were considered hard to reach through existing HIV/AIDS
initiatives. An interim report of makes clear that there were many reasons
why the initiative received the backing of governments. ey clearly saw it as a
means of levering additional funding for their individual HIV/AIDS-prevention
programmes. But the report also noted that the governments of Ghana and
Benin saw the programme as a means of bringing about greater inter-govern-
mental co-operation and so giving regional integration a much-needed shot in
the arm. e net result was that the programme began to range well beyond a
narrow engagement with public health issues. Hence the report observed that:
‘ere is general stakeholder agreement that (a) countries on both sides of the
border need to agree on ways to harmonise border control procedures or at least
reduce the time taken at borders, and (b) truckers and transporters need to be
educated on documentation needed to cross the various borders.’
In a rather sideways manner, therefore, the idea of ALCo as an instrument
of regional integration was born. Although HIV/AIDS prevention remained a
component of the package, it occupied a less prominent position as the immediate
crisis passed. e corridor was increasingly justied in terms of the positive
economic eects that it would generate. is was bound up with the observation
that a thick belt of urban development along the littoral lent itself to the kind
of agglomeration eects that the World Bank has recently posited.
In , a
treaty was signed in Yamoussoukro by the leaders of the ve states concerned.
is ostensibly reinvented ALCo as a development corridor – although confus-
ingly it has continued to be referred to simply as the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor.
Since , two new elements have been added to the mix. e rst is a hugely
ambitious plan for infrastructural development along the length of the corridor.
In the African Union’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa
(PIDA) had already adopted ALCo as one of its agship programmes. e
current plan outlined in One Road, One Vision is for a six-lane highway running the
, kilometres between Abidjan and Lagos with one-stop border posts (OSBPs),
8 Chakrapani and Gwin, Independent Evaluation, p. .
9 Chakrapani and Gwin, Independent Evaluation, p ..
10 World Bank, World Development Report, : Reshaping Economic Geography,
Washington, D.C., . e corridor is said to bring together a population
of million, which is projected to increase to more than million by .
See: ECOWAS Commission, Abidjan–Lagos Corridor: One Road, One Vision
[henceforth One Road, One Vision], Abuja, , p. <http://aid.nepad.org/m_
assets/uploads/document/.pdf> [Accessed April ].
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216 P N
described as joint border posts, interpolated at each of the four border crossings.
In line with the notion that ALCo would generate spillover eects well beyond
the road itself, public information materials project, albeit in leaden prose, an
optimistic vision of the future:
e Abidjan–Lagos corridor cannot be reduced to the simple construction
of a motorway. First, it is a trade and transport corridor, that is to say a
coordinated set of multimodal transport and logistics infrastructures and
services that facilitate trade and transport ows between the main centers
of economic activity. en, the corridor, thanks to the spatial planning
dimension, by which it can full a territory Development function, will
allow the opening of the landlocked countries and the deployment of sector-
specic policies (industry, agriculture, energy, environment, ICT, tourism,
Etc.) in the regional community, thus becoming an economic corridor.
The second innovation has been the decision to establish an ALCO
Management Authority (ALCoMA) as a supranational body operating under
an ECOWAS mandate and enjoying a separate legal and nancial status. e
importance of beeng up the organisational side of the operation amounts to
recognition of the fact that ALCO has struggled to persuade member states to
deliver on two other elements that are crucial to the success of the corridor. e
rst is consistent implementation of ECOWAS agreements relating to freedom
of trade. e second is the harmonisation of transportation, phytosanitary and
sanitary regulations, and the removal of a range of non-tari barriers (NTBs).
At the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether ALCoMA will be able
play a more proactive role in eliciting co-operation between agencies operating
in dierent countries.
11 Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa, ‘Abidjan–Lagos Corridor
Highway’ <www.au-pida.org/view-project//> [Accessed March ]. ere
have already been some delays. Although construction was supposed to start in ,
the project is still waiting for the feasibility studies to be completed. e project has
support from the European Union (EU) and the African Development Bank (ABD).
12 ECOWAS, One Road, One Vision, p. .
13 A report by UNCTAD refers to Non-Tari Measures (NTMs) that consist in part
of regulations designed to protect health and the environment ‘and NTBs with an
intent to distort trade such as quotas’. See: UNCTAD, Regional Integration and
Non-Tari Measures in the Economic Community of West Aican States (ECOWAS),
Geneva, , p. vii.
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T A A A–L C 217
So Who Uses the Thing?
I will now look more closely at the level of correspondence between the way
ALCo is depicted and what actually happens on the ground. Although it
ought to be straightforward to get a x on the corridor, in reality there is very
little hard evidence to draw upon. e supporting data exists in fragments
and mostly at a country level. e only real information for the corridor as
a whole arises out of the collection of data on roadblocks and bribes by the
now defunct West Africa Trade Hub and other data relating to border crossing
and port dwell times. e problem is compounded by the fact that the various
organisations that have been seeking to sell the idea of a development corridor
have deployed statistics in a confusing manner. ALCO’s own information states
that: ‘Around million travellers, many of whom are traders and ,
truckers, each year use this service, which is lined with harbors, agro-industries,
bus stations, major regional markets, places of transit for goods, border areas
and parks. used vehicle sales. It concentrates per cent of the economic
activities of the region.’
Leaving aside the truckers, the gure for travellers would average ,
people crossing each of the four sets of border crossings per day, which is patently
not the case. One can only presume that this is aggregated immigration data
for the countries as a whole. Again, it is not clear where the gure of ,
truckers emanates from. ere are certainly not that many trucks using the route
on a regular basis, but if it is an aggregate of all the trucks crossing the corridor
in a year, this would amount to a daily average of across the length of the
corridor. is is certainly possible, but it may also reect some double- and
triple-counting. Again, it is dicult to assess the claim about the economic
contribution of the corridor. Adding Lagos to the equation bulks up the numbers
considerably, but the economy of the metropolis does not revolve primarily
around the existence of the corridor. It seems likely that that these gures also
factor in the trade conducted through the ve ports of Abidjan, Tema, Lomé,
Cotonou and Apapa. ese lie along the corridor and are counted by ALCO
as part of its infrastructure. But the ports are primarily intended to service a
dierent set of corridors leading to the Sahelian countries.
ere is a case, of course, for seeing the big picture here. Hence eo
Notteboom writes that:
A transport corridor is very oen viewed as a point-to-point connection. In
reality, individual transport corridors are mostly part of extensive transport
14 www.corridor-wa.org/index.php/en/presentation-alco [Accessed March ].
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218 P N
and logistics networks consisting of a range of corridors, each with specic
characteristics in terms of scale, transport modes used, price and service
quality. e future development of transport corridors will therefore have
to be assessed ever more from a network perspective.
Indeed, One Road, One Vision itself refers to the complementarity between
ALCo and the north–south corridors running from the ports to the landlocked
Sahelian states. But if one seeks to understand what dierence ALCo itself
makes, it is rather misleading to factor in the ports unless it can be shown
that their existence contributes to economic activity on the stretch between
Abidjan and Lagos. As things stand, investments in the ports are being made
almost as if ALCo does not exist. Because the ports are in direct competition
with one another, it is important to recognise that there are vested interests
in ensuring that goods do not travel along the corridor. For example, if transit
freight is landed at Tema and then moved sideways across the border to Togo
and Benin before being transported northwards, this presents a problem.
e port authorities in Lomé and Cotonou would feel that their operations
were being undercut, but equally the authorities responsible for the Tema–
Ouagadougou Corridor in Ghana would consider that they were losing
business. As Ghana lays out plans for a whole series of new corridor routes
to the Sahel, including a railway running close to the Togo border, the push
to gain a greater share of the transit trade from a rather low base (see Byiers
and Woolfrey, this volume) is only likely to increase. e tacit understanding,
therefore, is that goods entering through the port of a given country will be
channelled onto road and rail within that country before exiting into Burkina
Faso or Mali. And this is perhaps one reason why governments have been so
schizophrenic in their approach to ALCo. While they cherish the notion that
they are furthering the cause of regional integration, the investments that they
need to justify, and then to protect it, mean that they have relatively little
interest in removing many of the practical obstacles to the free ow of goods
along an east–west axis. Despite persistent lobbying, economic actors and
lobby groups like the Borderless Alliance struggle to convince governments
to translate formal commitments into action.
15 eo Notteboom, ‘Strategies and Future Development of Transport Corridors’, in
Alix Yann (ed.), Les Corridors de Transport, Caens, , no page <www.faq-logis-
tique.com/EMS-Livre-Corridors-Transport--Strategies-Future-Develoment.
htm> [Accessed March ].
16 ECOWAS, One Road, One Vision, p. .
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T A A A–L C 219
In order to secure a better grasp of what the dynamics of the corridor look like,
one would ideally want ne-grained data on the number of vehicles and people
making use of it. As things stand, such data does not exist, at least in the public
domain. On the face of things, there does not seem to be great pressure on the
corridor. For example, one does not encounter the long queues of heavy-goods
vehicles that used to be a feature of the Northern Corridor between Kenya and
Uganda. One rough estimate from those working at the Kraké–Seme border in
was that a total of around vehicles a day crossed in either direction.
By contrast, Malaba handles around , and Busia another trucks. At the
border crossings themselves, there are vehicles lined up along the route at Aao
and around Seme, but this reects the lack of proper parking facilities rather
than the pressure of volume per se. Although there are buses and private vehicles
that ply the route on a daily basis, one does not witness acute strain on the
immigration services at any of the four crossing points either. On the face of it,
therefore, the visible evidence would suggest that the corridor is under-utilised.
At least when it comes to trade, one can cross-check this data against
ECOWAS trade statistics. According to One Road, One Vision, more than
per cent of intra-regional trade is carried by road.
e ECOWAS trade statistics
furnish data on the trade between particular countries, but they also oer some
clues as to the direction and nature of the ows. Two points clearly emerge. e
rst is that between and , at a time when the dollar value of intra-
regional trade for all of ECOWAS actually declined, the picture for members
of the ALCo was not signicantly better: it only increased for Benin, while
the value of trade was essentially static for Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, declined
for Togo and fell precipitously for Ghana. Only per cent of Nigerian exports
were directed to ECOWAS countries and nearly half of that was accounted for
by Côte d’Ivoire (Table .).
Given that half of the latter’s oil has come from Nigeria by sea, this would
imply that the transportation of other Nigerian goods by road is rather limited.
Conversely, the statistics reveal a marked decline in the value of Ivorian goods
17 Revealingly, repeated eorts to secure information from Ghana customs ocials
about the number of vehicles crossing through the Aao have drawn a blank.
18 Interview, Kraké border post, August ; When I had the opportunity to ask
the head of the Nigerian side of the newly-opened OSBP at Seme in he said
he was unaware of the number.
19 ECOWAS, One Road, One Vision, p. .
20
Logistics Capacity Assessment, ‘Côte d’Ivoire Fuel’ <https://dlca.logcluster.org/
pages/releaseview.action;jsessionid=EAAAEF?p
ageId=> [Accessed March ].
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220 P N
imported into Nigeria, the bulk of which was presumably transported by road
(e.g. kola nuts). Hence one can reasonably conclude that the two ends of the
corridor are not closely connected with one another. Ghana, which currently
boasts the third largest economy, ought to capture a signicant amount of
regional trade. Over the same period, Ghana exported less to Nigeria than
Côte d’Ivoire, but was the second largest importer of goods from Nigeria. But
again, the value of the goods was rather modest. is is reected in the limited
number of trucks with Ghana number plates that can be seen around Seme – or,
for that matter, Nigerian vehicles at the Aao border crossing. At the Kraké–
Seme border, interviews in revealed a relatively limited range of goods that
originated in Ghana – that is some plastic goods, cosmetics and kola nuts – and
virtually nothing from Côte d’Ivoire.
Table 9.1. Exports from countries on Abidjan–Lagos Corridor (US$).
Country Total exports ECOWAS exports Two top recipients of exports
Cote d’Ivoire
,,,
,,, ,,,
,,, Nig: ,,,
Bur : ,,
Nig: ,,
Gha: ,,
Ghana
,,,
,,, ,,,
,,, Tog: ,,,
Bur: ,,
Mal: ,,
Bur: ,,
Nigeria
,,,
,,, ,,,
,,, CI: ,,,
Gha: ,,
CI: ,,,
Gha: ,,
Benin
,,
,, ,,
,, Nig: ,,
Gha: ,,
Niger: ,,
Nig: ,,
Tog o
,,
,, ,,
,,, Gha: ,,
Bur: ,,
Bur: ,,
Gha: ,,
Source: ECOWAS, ‘Exports’, <www.ecowas.int/-/> [Accessed March ].
21 Interview Kraké border post, August .
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T A A A–L C 221
e second very striking nding is that states have tended to trade most with
their immediate neighbours. is is amply demonstrated by the relationship
between Ghana and Togo, although the exports of Ghana have uctuated
widely by year. e Sahelian countries have loomed disproportionately large
for the ALCo countries. is is very clear in the case of Ghana where per
cent of the value of exports in was accounted for by Mali and Burkina
Faso – a gure that does not take into account the transit trade. e entrepôt
states of Benin and Togo are a specic variant because they depend on the
Sahelian trade, but also rely on trade to their larger neighbours, namely Nigeria
and Ghana respectively. e volume of the trade between Benin and Nigeria
is clearly much greater than the ocial statistics would imply because of the
continuing vitality of contraband economy. According to one estimate, as
much as per cent of GDP in Benin is accounted for by informal cross-
border trade. What all of this would tend to indicate is two things: rstly,
that the overall volume of trade conducted along the length of the corridor
is limited and, secondly, that the corridor actually functions as a series of
segments rather than as an integrated whole.
is is apparent when one zooms in to consider the behaviour of small-scale
traders. Prior to the closure of the borders in March in order to reduce
the spread of COVID-, there was a vigorous trade concentrated on Lomé.
Every day, busloads of traders from Abidjan and Kumasi arrived at Aao and
crossed on foot to buy goods at Asigamé (or the Grand Marché). e mostly
female traders bought goods in Lomé (still largely textiles) before making the
return journey the following day.
ey did not consider going any further
than Lomé because what little prot they make would be eroded by the rigours
of crossing another border. e same logic played out in the sh trade. e
sh markets in Lomé draw much of their supply from traders who come from
as far as western Ghana. A recent study describes what is essentially a relay
system in which, say, dried sh from Ada will be transported as far as Aao,
then moved across the border in smaller quantities by motorcycle or carts,
and then picked up by other traders from Togo and Benin. It makes no
economic sense for any trader to seek to transport the goods across multiple
borders. In the case of manufactured goods, there is a tendency to sell to
22 UNCTAD, Regional Integration, p. .
23
I have interviewed many of these traders. I have both met them as they le and
rejoined the buses in Aao and have traced them to hotels in Lomé that cater
specically to Ivorian traders.
24
Faridath Aboudou, et al., Study on the Specic Problems of Women Traders on the
Abidjan–Lagos Corridor, Dakar, , section ..
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the neighbouring countries, but very few enterprises exploit the corridor as a
whole. e exception is cement, over which the Nigerian empire of Dangote
has established a rm grip within the regional market. Despite rapid urban
growth in West Africa, there is erce competition for market share between
Dangote and factories in each of the countries concerned. A common sight
along the corridor in recent years has been convoys of Dangote lorries that
transport Nigerian cement in vehicles bearing Ghana number plates. Whereas
Ghana removed its controls on imported cement, Nigeria remains a de facto
protected market for Dangote. In this case, one could reasonably argue that
the corridor and the removal of tari barriers is reected in the movement
of cement, but it is all in one direction and it is an exception to the rule. In
most cases, those who produce manufactured products sell their goods in
neighbouring countries, but do not venture much further.
is begs the obvious question of why there is not more trac along the
length of the corridor. e simple answer resides in the many disincentives
that manufacturers, traders and transporters encounter when they try to cross
multiple borders. e rst of these relate to the persistence of a multiplicity
of restrictions on trade. Along with other regional economic communities
(RECs), ECOWAS has been on a ve-step path to full economic integra-
tion. With the coming into force of the Common External Tari (CET) in
, it is supposedly transitioning from a free trade area (FTA) into a fully-
edged customs union (stage three). But the common market, which would
involve the creation of common policies relating to agriculture, communica-
tions, energy and so on, is still in the planning – alongside the monetary
union. To some extent, this programme has been superseded by the inaugu-
ration of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), although
the latter still depends on the architecture of the RECs. A further source of
diculty is that the Francophone countries also belong to UEMOA (Union
Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine), which has been seeking to move
towards its own customs union. Despite attempts to harmonise regulations,
discrepancies abound, for example with respect to rules of origin. Under the
ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS), which came into eect in
, there needs to be per cent local content and value added to the
tune of at least per cent of the price of processed goods in order for them
to qualify for exemption from taris. Although there is now agreement on
25
e ve steps derive from the Abuja Treaty on trade liberalisation. See : United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa, Progress Report on Regional Integration Eorts in
Aica Towards the Promotion of Intra-Aican Trade, Addis Ababa, , p. .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T A A A–L C 223
the per cent rule, the Francophone states oen calculate the value added
dierently. is becomes a very real issue when customs ocials at the
border choose to question whether a consignment of goods should actually
be exempt from duty. Whether the duty is eventually paid, or the goods pass
through aer lengthy delays, this creates a strong element of uncertainty and
risk for economic operators. Although AfCFTA has addressed rules of origin
explicitly, it is likely that some of the underlying issues of non-compliance will
remain because of vested interests that cluster at the national level.
Along the corridor, there is a strong sense that Nigeria is the country where
there is by far the greatest risk associated with trying to despatch goods across
border. Despite the fact that the country ostensibly has the most to gain from
opening up the regional market, and hence from ALCo itself, Nigerian leaders
have focused much more on protecting the domestic market and shielding the
vested interests that are encrusted around it. It is striking that while Nigeria
accounted for . per cent of intra-regional exports in , it accounted
for a mere per cent of intra-regional imports – which is substantially lower
than Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire which were responsible for . per cent and
. per cent of the total respectively.
Nigeria is the country that is primarily
responsible for a proliferation of NTBs. It has imposed import bans on
categories of commodities, including goods produced by fellow ECOWAS
member states. Nigeria also operates a series of import levies, for example on
rice, which are justied with reference to the need to protect local producers
from external competition. e Buhari regime has been particularly susceptible
to national interest arguments based on the imperative to reduce food prices
and to defend jobs. In , it banned the import of tomato paste, powder
and concentrate in a consumer-ready form, increased duties on other tomato
concentrate and imposed an import levy at US$, per tonne, aer the
largest manufacturer threatened to relocate its operations to China. is is
signicant because tinned tomatoes were one of the items that neighbouring
countries had managed to sell to Nigeria with some success. Rice is another
commodity that is dened as strategic, with the government professing to be
26 UNCTAD, Regional Integration, pp. –.
27 UNCTAD, Regional Integration, p. (g. ).
28
Erik von Uexkull and Lulu Shui, Implementing the ECOWAS Common External
Tari, Africa Trade Practice Working Paper Series, , , p. ; Nigerian Ministry
of Finance, Import Prohibition List, .
29 EPA Monitoring, ‘Nigerian Government Adopts Trade Measures against Tomato
Imports’, May <http://epamonitoring.net/nigerian-government-adopts-
trade-measures-against-tomato-imports/> [Accessed March ].
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
224 P N
promoting national self-suciency. In August , the government closed the
Seme border without any warning as part of its attempts to deal with increased
rice smuggling from Benin.
Despite repeated promises to revisit the issue,
the border remained closed in the early months of when the COVID-
pandemic intervened – which justied closing all the borders indenitely. At
the end of , Buhari announced the reopening of the borders, allegedly
aer the intercession of none other than Aliko Dangote, whose cement had
been blocked from the Benin market.
However, as of March little trac
was passing the border legally, while the corridor remained eectively closed.
To make matters worse, the Benin government decided in June that goods
transiting to Nigeria needed to pay duty, ostensibly on the basis that rules of
origin were being outed.
It was widely believed that this was really an act of
revenge aimed specically at Nigeria. e protectionist impulse in Nigeria also
throws up a major disincentive to manufacturers in neighbouring countries
that might otherwise attempt to compete in the largest market of all.
ere have also been numerous other anomalies in the way duties have
been applied. In principle, goods produced within an ECOWAS country
should enjoy free and equal access to other countries in the region under the
principles of the FTA. ere are inevitably questions about the compliance
with provisions for a minimum of per cent local content, but in most cases
the formal procedure is straightforward.
Manufacturers simply need to le an
application for accreditation under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme
(ETLS) through a national committee, and provide supporting evidence. On
30 Felix Onuah, ‘Nigeria Closes Part of Border with Benin to Check Rice Smuggling’,
August <www.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUKLNOSP>
[Accessed March ].
31 Nicholas Norbook and Ruth Olourounbi, ‘Nigeria: President Buhari Opens Land
Border at Seme, Illela, Maigatari and Mfun’, December <www.theafri-
careport.com//nigeria-president-buhari-opens-land-border-at-seme-illela-
maigatari-and-mfun/> [Accessed March ]. Another Dangote business,
Dangote Farms, was involved in rice production and was a beneciary of the initial
closure. Matthieu Millecamps ‘e Benin–Nigeria Border Is Ocially Open Again,
but Smuggling Is on the Rise’, January <www.theafricareport.com//
the-benin-nigeria-border-is-ocially-open-again-but-smuggling-is-on-the-rise/>
[Accessed March ].
32 Trucks that could not cross to Nigeria became stuck in Benin or at the Ghana border.
Interview with freight forwarders in Aao and Benin, and direct observation at
Aao, June . e matter remained unresolved as of the end of July.
33 See ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) <www.etls.ecowas.int/>.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T A A A–L C 225
approval of the company and the product, the HS code reects ETLS accredi-
tation and the list of companies is even searchable on the ECOWAS website.
But there have been complaints about Nigerian customs ocials refusing to
accept the certication of imported goods and insisting on levying duties
at the border. Hence ETLS accredited companies that produce iron goods
have eectively been blocked from the Nigerian market. e delays and
uncertainty have served to deter manufacturers from trying to export goods
to Nigeria – which is almost certainly the intended eect.
Secondly, a major source of grievance for manufacturers has been the transit
fees, tolls and other levies that are imposed on vehicles that seek to move
along the corridor. In , one Ivorian manufacturer of plastic bottles and
caps estimated that the cost of moving a truck from Abidjan to Cotonou
was as much as CFA Francs ,, or the equivalent of €,.. Of
that total, CFA Francs , was attributable to transit fees. By contrast, a
truck that travelled from Abidjan to Ouagadougou would incur a total cost of
CFA Francs , or €.. In addition, to those that are required to be
discharged by the central government, local authorities and transport unions
in Benin oen impose their own fees upon trucks – as happens along many
of Africa’s transport corridors. All of this makes it uneconomic for businesses
to make full use of ALCo: every border that is traversed simply multiplies
the operating expenses.
irdly, a major constraint on the free ow of vehicles along ALCo has been
the proliferation of weigh stations and roadblocks. Dierent standards are
laid down by UEMOA and ECOWAS, which causes considerable confusion
because the Francophone countries have a foot in both organisations. ere
have also been problems arising from the sequencing of eorts at convergence.
In Benin sought to apply the newly agreed ECOWAS limit whereas its
neighbours did not. is created months of confusion as large numbers of
vehicles became stuck in that country. e roadblocks, which have proliferated
in the name of police, gendarmes, customs and immigration, have contributed
to delays, but are also associated with blatant extortion. is aects the trans-
porters, but also impacts especially on the prot margins of small-scale traders.
34 See ELTS <www.etls.ecowas.int/approved-products/>. UEMOA has a parallel
process which applies only between the Francophone member states.
35 Interview, Kraké border post, August .
36 Kouadio Sey, ‘Obstacles to Free Movement of Goods within UEMOA and
ECOWAS’, Borderless Alliance Conference, Ouagadougou, – May
<http://borderlesswa.com/sites/default/files/BA/Kouadio%Sey%_
English.pdf> [Accessed March ].
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
226 P N
ose who travel between Abidjan and Lomé complain of being eeced by
Ghanaian and Togolese ocials along the route. A recurring theme during
interviews with sh sellers in was the money that had routinely to be
paid to border ocials. An intriguing pattern is that while ocials oen
demand token bribes from their own nationals, they charge ‘foreigners’ more
depending on where they have come from. A trader in Togo, who buys used
plastic bottles in Ghana, explained that the worst thing she could do was to
show her Benin documentation, remarking that: “If you show your Benin ID
card, you are dead: they will tax you more!”
A survey of the diculties faced by traders in foodstus found that the
greatest complaint (mentioned by per cent of respondents) was harassment
on the road. e problem has been identied many times, most recently
by an ECOWAS Task Force, but the results of lobbying have been patchy.
Whereas Togo and Benin have removed almost all of the roadblocks, Ghana
and Nigeria have not dealt with the issue. e newly elected Akuo-Addo
government in Ghana publicly pledged to remove all but a couple of customs
barriers by September . But a year later, very little had changed. e
promises of President Buhari have similarly come to nothing. e stretch of
road from Seme to Badagry is in a league all of its own. During a Borderless
fact-nding caravan in which I participated, the bus passed through check-
points in minutes (at speed only because we were travelling in a quasi-
ocial vehicle that was waved through the obstacle course) – controls that
were manned by competing branches of immigration, customs and police. e
case for maintaining the checkpoints in the face of constant complaints from
travellers and transporters is typically made on grounds of security and crime
prevention. ese eectively trump arguments about the need to facilitate
trade and freedom of movement. Part of the reason for the heavy customs
presence is that Nigerian import restrictions on items such as rice have created
enormous incentives to smuggle.
And, nally, there are the chronic delays that impacts on the trac along the
borders. e state of the roads is a relatively minor part of the problem. Most
of the corridor is single-track, although there are stretches of two-lane highway
in Benin and Ghana. e roads themselves are in a reasonable state ( per
cent are dened as good and per cent as average) with the exception of the
37 Interview with Ivorian traders, Aao, August .
38 Interview with trader at Kodome market, Lomé, March .
39 Abdou, et al, Study, Table (no page given).
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
T A A A–L C 227
Nigerian section of the corridor, which is in a severely degraded condition.
e real bottlenecks have occurred at the border crossings themselves. In
/, trucks travelling eastwards along the corridor would spend an
average of no fewer than hours at the four border crossings, with the
Togo–Benin and Benin border posts representing the greatest bottlenecks
(Table .).
ere are many dierent reasons for this. Some arise directly from the
duplication of bureaucratic procedures. Part of the problem also relates to the
diculties of sharing data, when agencies are using systems that speak to each
other imperfectly and when ocials struggle with either English or French.
e opening of OSBPs along the corridor was intended to tackle the issue, but
the facilities that were built at Kraké-Seme and Noepe-Akanu stood empty
for years because of the lack of agreement on the fundamentals. ese were
nally opened for business towards the end of , while a third is planned for
Sanveecondji-Hillacondji at the border between Togo and Benin. If the evidence
for East Africa is anything to go by, there is a reasonable chance that these will
assist in harmonising procedures and reducing delays.
But much still hinges on
a willingness to implement agreements and align the information technologies.
In the last couple of years, the processing times at the borders have improved,
with the total average delay for a truck travelling eastwards along the corridor
being reduced to hours in /. However, there is a long way to go
to match the operations of the functioning OSBPs in East Africa. e delays
at the Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire and Togo/Benin borders are especially acute, as
Table . indicates. is cannot really be attributed to the challenge of dealing
with high volumes of trac. e bottlenecks lie within the implementation of
regulations at the border. Needless to say, slowing things down – or facilitating
speedier passage – creates abundant opportunities for rent-seeking on the part
of border ocials. As things stand, the OSBPs that have been completed stand
more or less unused with expensive equipment le to rot.
40 ECOWAS, One Road, One Vision, p. .
41 Paul Nugent and Isabel la Soi, ‘One-stop Border Posts in East Africa: State Encounters
of the Fourth Kind’, Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , p. .
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228 P N
Table 9.2. Border crossing times for trucks in hours, –.
Crossing Point 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 2015/16 2016/17
Noé (CI) to Elubo
(Gh)
Elubo to Noé
Aao (Gh) to
Lomé (Tog)
Lomé to Aao
Sanveecondji
(Tog ) to
Hillacondji (Ben)
Hillacondji to
Sanveecondji
Kraké (Ben) to
Seme (Nig)
Seme to Krake
Source: Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Organisation.
By Way of a Conclusion: The Disappearing Corridor
e Abidjan–Lagos Corridor presents us with something of a paradox. e case
for making substantial infrastructural investments is that ALCo is the ‘lung’ or
the ‘beating heart’ of West Africa where most of the commerce of the region
is transacted. But this is not reected in the volume of trac on the road or,
more tellingly, in the ECOWAS trade statistics. And when governments invest
in expansion of the ports, their focus is on maximising trac along the north–
south corridors to the Sahel. is means that governments in practice seek to
retard the ow of goods along ALCo itself. e corridor does link no fewer than
ve capital cities, and many smaller urban centres. e vision that is increas-
ingly articulated concerning the potential advantages of urbanism, in a context
where the corridor provides the connective tissue, is certainly worthy of closer
attention. But at the moment, using the corridor is prohibitively expensive for
most businesses. Selling manufactured goods across one border is sustainable,
but beyond that it oen becomes nancially perilous. In reality, the corridor
as an economic space is constituted by two other sets of actors. e rst is
made up of countless smaller traders who deploy a system of relays to move
sh, agricultural goods and other consumer items between markets in border
regions that are oen closely connected to each other. In so doing, they avoid
much of the nancial burden that comes with crossing multiple borders in
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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T A A A–L C 229
a single journey. And the second is made up of the smugglers who are able
to carve out a living by exploiting the dierences in pricing and availability
on either side of a particular border. Here the ironies abound. e rst of
these groups receives little treatment in the documents that justify ALCo as
a target of investment, while the activities of the second provide the justi-
cation for ratcheting up surveillance and control measures that defeat the very
purpose of the corridor. is is captured perfectly in the opening of an OSBP
at Kraké-Seme, with a great deal of fanfare, only to be followed by the Nigerian
decision to unilaterally close the border in August . Maybe the dynamic
will change in the coming years but, as things stand, ALCo remains a bundle
of unresolved contradictions. Although the ve member states formally rank
the development of the east–west corridor as their foremost priority, their
actions have so far demonstrated a rather weak commitment to the corridor
in practice. e closure of land borders as a response to COVID-, which
unleashed none of the anguish that was witnessed in East and Southern
Africa, has merely underlined how under-utilised ALCo really is. Although
small traders were disadvantaged, larger manufacturers and transporters were
remarkably accepting about the de facto closure of the entire corridor. Because
the only real complaints issued from borderlanders, who could be dismissed
as hardened smugglers, governments (especially that of Ghana) almost seemed
to prefer this state of aairs. e disjuncture between the loy rhetoric about
the corridor and its practical disappearance could not have been greater than
over –. One is le wondering what Fela would have made of the
ongoing ‘powershow’.
Bibliography
Aboudou, Faridath, et al., Study on the Specic Problems of Women Traders on the
Abidjan–Lagos Corridor, Dakar, .
Chakrapani, Deepa and Gwin, Catherine, An Independent Evaluation of the World Bank’s
Support of Regional Programs: Case Study of the West Aica HIV/AIDS Project for the
Abidjan–Lagos Corridor, Washington D.C., <http://documents.worldbank.
org/curated/en//pdf/AFRWAFagosTransp
PUBLIC.pdf>.
ECOWAS Commission, Abidjan–Lagos Corridor: One Road, One Vision, Abuja,
<http://aid.nepad.org/m_assets/uploads/document/.pdf>.
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Imports’, May <http://epamonitoring.net/nigerian-government-adopts-
trade-measures-against-tomato-imports/> [Accessed March ].
Logistics Capacity Assessment, ‘Côte d’Ivoire Fuel’ <https://dlca.logcluster.org/
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
230 P N
pages/releaseview.action;jsessionid=EAAAEF?p
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the-benin-nigeria-border-is-ocially-open-again-but-smuggling-is-on-the-rise/>
[Accessed March ]
Norbook, Nicholas and Olourounbi, Ruth, ‘Nigeria, President Buhari Opens Land
Border at Seme, Illela, Maigatari and Mfun’, December <www.theafri-
careport.com//nigeria-president-buhari-opens-land-border-at-seme-illela-
maigatari-and-mfun/> [Accessed March ].
Notteboom, eo, ‘Strategies and Future Development of Transport Corridors’, in Yann,
Alix, (ed.), Les Corridors de Transport, Caens, , pp. – <www.faq-logis-
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Nugent, Paul, Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Aica: e Centrality
of the Margins, Cambridge, .
Nugent, Paul and Soi, Isabella, ‘One-Stop Border Posts in East Africa: State Encounters
of the Fourth Kind’, Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , pp. –.
Onuah, Felix, ‘Nigeria Closes Part of Border with Benin to Check Rice Smuggling’,
August <www.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUKLNOSP>
[Accessed March ].
Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa, ‘Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Highway’
<www.au-pida.org/view-project// [Accessed March ].
Sey, Kouadio, ‘Obstacles to Free Movement of Goods within UEMOA and ECOWAS’,
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
231
C 10
The Jealousy of Roads:
Construction, Circulation and Competition
on East Africa’s Transport Corridors
H L
Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advances
in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a
suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose
that it is impossible for any of them to ourish, but at their expense.
Introduction
is chapter investigates some of the more abstract questions about transport
corridors and geopolitics: How is corridor development shaped by competition?
Under what conditions is trading inastructure that spans multiple states mutually
benecial? When, and for whom, is a trading corridor a threat? In approaching
these questions, I draw on interview material with ocials, corridor users and
freight forwarders from across East Africa, supplemented by news reports,
government documents, and by my own observations travelling the region in
the passenger seats of freight vehicles between and .
Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, stands at a critical junction in East Africa’s road
network – a nodal point where importers and exporters make a choice about
their route to the coast (see Maps . and .). Heading north, freight vehicles
embark on the ,-kilometre Northern Corridor, crossing two international
borders through Uganda and Kenya to the port of Mombasa. Heading south-
east, they travel the -kilometre Central Corridor to the Tanzanian port of
Dar es Salaam. Both routes have undergone signicant changes in recent years
1 David Hume, ‘Of the Jealousy of Trade’, Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, or
Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge, May –December , pp. –.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
232 H L
– with much more scheduled to follow – and decisions made in Kigali oer a
valuable lens into their dierent characteristics.
A great many groups are involved in planning, building, using and benetting
from East Africa’s transport corridors, and their divergent interests complicate
analysis of the politics underlying their competition. In approaching the topic,
it is important to note that corridor competitiveness is not the same thing as
corridor attractiveness from the perspective of road and rail users. is distinction
is valuable and can oen be overlooked. Corridors compete not only to be used,
but also to be funded and built. A second, related distinction is drawn between
groups that generate revenue from corridor access and those for which access
is an expenditure. Dominating the rst category are entrepreneurial elites, very
oen embedded in state institutions, who play a signicant role in shaping East
Africa’s corridor development. ese gatekeepers pursue a ne balancing act
between maximising the circulation of people and goods along a corridor and
maximising the revenue that can be extracted from them: activities that are
inherently in tension. e monopolising spirit of elites involved in infrastructure
development has prompted a dialectical relationship between the Central and
Northern Corridors, with changes to either one giving rise to changes in the
other. e process does not always sit comfortably with the needs of importers,
drivers and passengers.
Approaching transport corridors in this manner brings regional geo-politics
to the forefront of analysis. e distribution of gatekeeping revenue among
groups involved in the development of transport infrastructure has become a
central feature of state power in the region, where large-scale transport infra-
structure informs election campaigning, coalition formation and international
disputes.
An ocial discourse of complementarity among states in the regional
economic community masks a contentious decision-making process that must
account for potentially damaging path dependencies, collective action and
sequencing problems, and high-risk strategies for rst-movers. What follows
proceeds in four sections: a theoretical background, a timeline of developments
along the Northern and Central Corridors, empirical comparisons of movements
and shipments in each case, and an analysis of their competition.
2 See: Michael Bratton and Mwangi S. Kimenyi, ‘Voting in Kenya: Putting Ethnicity
in Perspective’, Journal of Eastern Aican Studies, :, , pp. –; Nic
Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis, ‘Decentralisation in Kenya: the
Governance of Governors’, e Journal of Modern Aican Studies, :, , pp.
–.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
Map 10.1. e Northern Corridor, Mombasa–Kigali.
(Source: Author.)
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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Map 10.2. e Central Corridor, Dar es Salaam–Kigali.
(Source: Author.)
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C, C C 235
Competition or Complementarity?
e term ‘transport corridor’ is used here in a straightforward descriptive sense,
referring to overland transport infrastructure, connecting large urban centres,
containing at least one seaport, and spanning at least one international border.
As in the maps above, they very oen involve a central artery, with smaller
o-shoots extending from them. e overall eect resembles a river basin, with
tributaries joining a core pathway – though notably in this case the ow of goods
and people moves in both directions. Transport corridors can become essential
avenues for international trade, oen involving road, rail and other modes of
transport simultaneously.
e subject of corridor competition has given rise to a growing literature that
investigates infrastructural strategies and best practices, corridor co-ordination,
the interaction of gateway ports and corridors, and corridor attractiveness.
While productivity rests on proximity to ‘markets, customers, competitors,
supporting industries, and governments’, competition between corridors is most
oen understood in terms of the expansion of seaport capacity and the eciency
of transport operations. is chapter takes a dierent approach, exploring
concepts in classical political economy to oer a framework for understanding
the geopolitical repercussions when corridors compete.
Writing on competition between states in industrialising Europe, David
Hume observes how the logic of war and the logic of trade become blurred at
3 Cf. Jean-Paul Rodrique, ‘e Geography of Global Supply Chains: Evidence from
ird-Party Logistics’, Journal of Supply Chain Management, :, , pp. –;
Fraser & Notteboom, ; Albie Hope and John Cox, Development Corridors,
London, .
4 Hope and Cox, Development; Pradeep Srivastava, Regional Corridors Development
in Regional Cooperation, Asian Development Bank Economics Working Paper Series,
, Washington, D.C., .
5 eo Notteboom, ‘Strategies and Future Development of Transport Corridors’,
Les Corridors de Transport, , pp. –; John Arnold, et al., Best Practices in
Corridor Management, No. , pp. –, Washington, D.C., ; Martijn R.
Van Der Horst and Peter W. De Langen, ‘Coordination in Hinterland Transport
Chains: A Major Challenge for the Seaport Community’, Maritime Economics &
Logistics, :–, , pp. –; Notteboom & Rodrigue, ; Fraser &
Notteboom, .
6 Wim Naudé, e Financial Crisis of and the Developing Countries, No. /
WIDER Discussion Paper, Helsinki, ; Monios & Lambert, .
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the level of government decision-making.
is is not a natural development,
he argues, since war produces a winner at the expense of a loser, while the natural
state of trade is one of mutual benet. What Hume calls the jealousy of trade
arises when commercial success becomes a matter of political and military
survival. It is grounded in the political inuence of a powerful mercantile
class, combined with a misconception among elites about the threat posed by
thriving neighbours. Hume considers the jealousy of trade to be a corruption
of thinking that, in the most extreme cases, brings Hobbesian jealousy of state
into the realm of economic exchange and makes the balance of military power
inseparable from the balance of economic power.
Writing in the same period, Jean-Francois Mélon reasons that, among states
with distinct manufacturing specialities, trade rests on necessity, produces mutual
reciprocity, and may act as a stabilising force in geopolitics.
Once one state
becomes more diversied in its manufacturing, it gains the power to deprive its
neighbours of goods without suering in return. is behaviour can amount
to a case for war on the part of those who are cut out of the supply chain.
Even where all the states involved are eectively self-sucient, the instability
lingers. Trade is pursued not out of absolute necessity, but for ‘prot, economic
growth and luxury’.
It can be used as leverage in order to maximise each of
these ends, or else as a political tool to punish rivals. In this context, what
makes trade warlike is the jealousy among sellers looking for new markets and
increased prots. is mercantile jealousy, Adam Smith writes, ‘inames, and
is itself inamed by the violence of national animosity’. From the moment
that merchants become the trusted councillors of the governing elite, he argues,
their expert council teaches the state the jealousy of trade.
Some are more vulnerable to the jealousy of trade than others. According to
Hume, the only states that should fear the improvements and industry of their
neighbours are those who ‘ourish only by being the brokers, the factors, and
7
Hume, ‘Jealousy of Trade’; Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition
and the Nation-state in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, .
8 Hont, Jealousy of Trade, p. .
9 Hont, Jealousy of Trade, p. .
10 Bindon & Mélon, .
11 Hont, Jealousy of Trade, p. .
12 Hont, Jealousy of Trade, p. .
13 Adam Smith, e Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, Peterseld, [], IV.iii ..
14 Smith, Wealth of Nations, IV.iii .; Hont, Jealousy of Trade, p. .
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carriers of others’.
It is natural, Hume argues, for states of this nature to be
apprehensive about their neighbours, who may at any moment ‘take into their
own hands the management of their aairs’, depriving brokering states of their
source of revenue.
In order to apply these concepts to contemporary events, it is necessary to
introduce the divergent interests of actors representing the state. I draw on a
literature in political and sociological theory that regards the state as an arena
of power rather than an agent in its own right. Competition within this arena
forces trade-os that economic institutions do not have to make, balancing the
interests of politicians, civil servants, voters, and powerful non-state actors.
Add to this the pressures of distributing gatekeeping revenue and the diculty
of predicting the impact of government investment on trade ows, and corridor
development becomes shrouded in conicting motivations, economic uncer-
tainty and political risk.
ese theoretical discussions resonate with contemporary accounts of geopol-
itics in the East African Community (EAC). e idea of economic equilibrium
as a substitute for military equilibrium is a common feature in high-level
meetings at the EAC and is echoed in the language of its fourth ‘pillar’ on
political federation. Hume’s call for regional collaboration is reected in the
public statements of national leaders, who, in public at least, continue to stress
the complementary nature of infrastructure linking East African territories.
15 Hume, ‘Jealousy of Trade’, p. .
16 Hume, ‘Jealousy of Trade’, p. .
17 See Mann, ; Abrams, .
18 Terry M. Moe, ‘Political Institutions: e Neglected Side of the Story’, Journal of
Law, Economics & Organisation, , , pp. –.
19 See also: Jean-Paul Rodrigue, ‘Transportation and the geographical and functional
integration of global production networks’, Growth and Change, :, , pp.
–.
20 East African Community, ‘EAC Integration Pillars’ <www.eac.int/integration-
pillars> [Accessed November ].
21 For example, when Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta was asked about the impact
of a Uganda decision to circumvent Kenya and export oil through Tanzania, he
responded: “I have always said that my view of our region is a region not in compe-
tition with itself but complementing each other with a view of competing with
the rest of the world. I do not see the central corridor as a threat to our northern
corridor. I don’t see it as a threat at all’. Kenyatta, , quoted in: ‘In his Own
Words – President Kenyatta’s Take on Issues of the Day”: Capital FM, Nairobi),
June <www.capitalfm.co.ke/news///in-his-own-words-president-
kenyattas-take-on-issues-of-the-day/> [Accessed April ].
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e inltration of the merchant class into state decision-making can be seen in
the rise of public–private partnerships and in accusations of the illegal manipu-
lation of tenders.
Meanwhile, the language of erce nationalism pervades news
reports on the development of the Northern and Central Corridors.
Transport Corridor Development in East Africa
Following the collapse of the formal economic community between Kenya,
Uganda and Tanzania in , large-scale infrastructural projects in East Africa
were put on hold, international highways degraded, and railways went into
systematic decline. It was not until the mid-s that a formalised economic
partnership was revived in the form of the EAC, with a secretariat in Arusha,
Tanzania. In , a protocol for the new customs union was ratied, followed
by an EAC Customs Management Law that replaced the East African Customs
Act of . New common import taris to the region were enforced in
March . In September , the governments of Burundi, DRC, Rwanda
and Uganda formed the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency
(TTFA). One year later, in , the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport
Agreement (NCTTA), a treaty originally signed in , was signicantly revised
and resubscribed to by the governments of Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda and
Uganda. e years that followed mark a new phase of large-scale infrastructural
investments in East Africa. In railway, road and port developments, the results
have been dramatic, and transit times for containers passing from the ports to
cities in the hinterland have fallen by as much as per cent.
Similar large-scale infrastructural investments can be seen across the
continent. Observers have attributed this shi in priorities to a range of factors;
notably high commodity prices, recent technological developments, pushes for
greater regional integration, and a drive for more neoliberal modes of govern-
ance.
A recent surge in competitive general and presidential elections has
22 ese groups were commonly nicknamed ‘Tenderpreneurs’.
23 Frictions over corridor investments are routinely described in militaristic language;
see, for example: ‘Magufuli Meets Kenyatta to Discuss Trade Row’, February
.
24 David Booth, et al., East Aican Prospects; An Update on the Political Economy of
Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, ODI Report, Nairobi, .
25
‘Dar es Salaam Port Increases Rwanda, Domestic Cargo’, Tanzania Daily News, Dar
es Salaam, December .
26 Ulf Engel and Paul Nugent, ‘Introduction: e Spatial Turn in African Studies’, in
Respacing Aica, Leiden, , pp. –.
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C, C C 239
also played a signicant role, as governing parties use large-scale infrastructural
investments as agship policies with visible results. Individual projects, even
when funded and constructed separately, do not exist in isolation. ey form
part of larger infrastructural systems – in this case the ambitious corridor initi-
atives connecting ports in Dar es Salaam and Mombasa with cities throughout
East and Central Africa. ese systems, in turn, are being constructed in the
context of one another.
Timeline of Major Developments
e Northern and Central Corridors consist of thousands of kilometres of
road and rail, with each section in a state of perpetual degradation, repair and
replacement. A comprehensive overview of every amendment, tari change,
resurfacing, added ring road, yover, or bridge, is beyond the scope of what is
possible here. Instead, I draw on a series of interviews with Kenyan, Ugandan,
Rwandan and Tanzanian stakeholders conducted between and .
ose interviewed include freight forwarders, transporters, logistics managers,
clearance agents, dock workers, dry port operators, journalists and representa-
tives of shipping lines, trading associations and government agencies. In early
I travelled the length of the Northern Corridor in the passenger seat of
a large freight vehicle, and draw further material from this extended, four-day
‘interview’ with the driver and with the various corridor users we encountered
along the way. I asked interviewees to recount the key ashpoints in corridor
development that have occurred over the past years. ese accounts have
been compiled into a timeline below. Supplementing interview material, I
make a heavy use of the accounts circulating in newspaper print media from
across the region, drawing on over articles in total. Although these
sources contain information on which many East Africans base their own
opinions about infrastructural developments, I acknowledge that newspaper
accounts are not always reliable, especially when it comes to statistical data.
I make use of these sources for facts and gures only in cases where I have
been able to triangulate the material through interview accounts and other
sources. Nevertheless, the repeated narrative accounts circulating in national
and regional press serve as a valuable thermometer for popular sentiment on
international competition. Rather than map every change in the development
of the two corridors, the purpose here is to identify the decisions, incidents
and infrastructures that stakeholders consider central to competition between
the rival routes.
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In May , the train ferry MV Kabalega, operated by the Uganda Railways
Corporation, collided with the passenger ferry MV Kaawa on Lake Victoria.
Both vessels were rendered unserviceable, severing containerised trade across
the lake between Mwanza (Tanzania) and Port Bell (Uganda). e ports
declined signicantly, with the result that Ugandan access to Dar es Salaam
became restricted to road connections via Kigali in Rwanda. e distance and
expense involved in the route gave the Kenyan port of Mombasa close to a total
monopoly of Uganda maritime trade.
ree years later, in January , widespread violence rocked Kenya in
the aermath of a ercely contested general election. e event paralysed
regional trade and le the hinterland states suspicious of an overreliance on
goods transiting Kenya. Political instability in Kenya triggered a fuel shortage
throughout the Great Lakes Region, pushing up prices and resulting in signif-
icant political backlash against governments in the hinterland.
Key sections
of the Northern Corridor around Kisumu in western Kenya and Nakuru in
the Ri Valley were impassable in the immediate aermath of the election, and
widespread insecurity saw freight vehicles hijacked and their containers stolen.
Importers were le out of pocket by over US$US million, with insurance
voided and compensation unforthcoming.
ese events set the stage for the respective development of the Northern
and Central Corridors in the years since. Ugandan importers, suspicious of an
over-reliance on routes through Kenya, looked to make greater use of Tanzania as
a ‘back door’ – insurance against similar disruptions in the future. In spite of
the greater distances involved circumnavigating Lake Victoria, Ugandans began
using the southern route more frequently to trade in coee, motor vehicles,
wheat, building materials and fuel. Both corridors suered from poor quality
infrastructure, limited logistical services, costly bureaucratic procedures and a
27 ‘Uganda Now Moving to Revive Transport and Trade on Lake Victoria’, e East
Aican, Nairobi, November .
28
‘ Will Uhuru Kenyatta Mediate Uganda, Rwanda Row?’, e East Aican, March
.
29
‘ Will Economy Survive Kenya’s Post-Election Fears?’ e Monitor, October .
30 ‘Ugandan Traders Turn to Dar Port as Kenya Polls Close In’, e Monitor, June
.
31 ‘Ugandan Traders on Edge Over Kenya Election Results’, e East Aican, August
.
32 Kampala-Dar es Salaam: Another Route Uganda Should Consider?, e Monitor,
March .
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host of non-tari barriers to trade.
When Rwanda and Burundi joined the
EAC in , the Central Corridor through Tanzania proved a more natural,
shorter and less bureaucratic route to the sea for the new members than transiting
goods through Uganda to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Freight transiting
Rwanda to Dar es Salaam began to steadily grow in volume.
is situation endured, with periodic infrastructural improvements along
each route, until July , when a single customs territory (SCT) along the
Northern Corridor was put into eect by the presidents of Kenya, Uganda
and Rwanda. e SCT was accompanied by an agreement to construct a
standard gauge railway (SGR) along the route, the rst phase of which would
link Mombasa with Nairobi. At its inception, the line was intended to continue
across Kenya to Kisumu in west of the country, where it would link up with a line
constructed in Uganda connecting it to Kampala, then Kigali, and ultimately as
far as Juba in South Sudan and Kisangani in DRC. Funding for the rst phase
was secured from the Chinese Export Import (EXIM) Bank, a build-operate-
transfer agreement was negotiated with the China Road and Bridge Company
(CRBC), and construction began in .
e rush of developments on the Northern Corridor in – coincided
with the election of President Magufuli in Tanzania. Magufuli stood on a staunchly
nationalist platform and, within a year of inauguration, Tanzania had refused
to implement EAC Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and introduced
protectionist policies on commodities including fertiliser, paper, cement, sugar
and furniture. Tanzania began a US$ million renovation of the port of
Dar es Salaam, adding new berths and increasing container storage capacity.
Simultaneously, the Tanzanian government began work planning its own SGR,
and construction began on the rst phase – kilometres from Dar es Salaam to
Morogoro. e railway deal was signed between state-owned Reli Assets Holding
Company Ltd (RAHCO) and the Turkish rm Yapi Merkezi, in joint venture
33 ‘Bribery, Red Tape Still Dog Trade on Central Corridor’, e New Times,
February .
34 ‘EAC Trade, Free Movement of Goods Machinery Starts’, Tanzania Daily News,
November .
35
‘Tanzania Keeps Walking a in Line on EAC Deals’, e Citizen, September
.
36
‘Congrats TPA for Reaching Out to Potential Customers’, Tanzania Daily News,
October .
37 ‘Standard Gauge Railway Tenders Announced’, Tanzania Daily News, November
.
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with Portugal’s Mota-Engil Engenharia e Construção Africa.
Among Magufuli’s
early commitments as president was to raise the national budget allocation for
developmental and infrastructural projects from per cent to per cent.
In , with Phase I of Kenya’s SGR well under construction, the grand
designs of Kenyan authorities were hit by two simultaneous setbacks. First,
Rwanda withdrew entirely from the Northern Corridor SGR project, citing cost
concerns and the possibility of a more aordable line connecting the Rwandan
capital Kigali to Dar es Salaam port via Isaka in Tanzania. Almost simul-
taneously, Uganda withdrew from a joint oil pipeline scheme with Kenya in
favour of a route south through Tanga port in Tanzania. Uganda authorities
stalled the initial construction of the country’s own SGR from Kampala to
the Kenyan border. is was justied by parliamentary accusations that the
US$. billion price tag for the line had been inated, and by a report from
the engineering procurement and construction contractor CHEC that certain
aspects of the project were unnecessary.
Ugandan authorities turned instead
to the rehabilitation of the metre gauge connecting Kampala with Port Bell, and
set about renovating the facilities for cross-lake trade.
By mid-, Uganda
and Tanzania had signed a memorandum of understanding on joint minis-
terial co-operation and improvements of ports, inland waterways and railway
transport. As Phase I of the Kenyan SGR was launched, not a single kilometre
of the Ugandan line had been laid. Trade between Kenya and Uganda stagnated
at approximately US$ million in the – period.
38
‘SGR Construction Means Big Business to Local Firms’, Tanzania Daily News,
February .
39 ‘Magufuli’s Signature Projects get More Funding’, e East Aican, December
.
40
Estimates suggested the Isaka connection would cost Rwanda up to US$ million
less than connecting to the Northern Corridor.
41
‘Uganda Government Puts SGR on Hold Over Unresolved Issues’, e Monitor,
October ; ‘Uganda, Tanzania Oil Pipeline Deal Unlocks More Funding
Options’, e East Aican, May .
42
‘Uganda May Join Dar as Kenya Weighs Options of Extending SGR to Malaba’,
e East Aican, May .
43
‘Kampala Upbeat with Dar Port, Central Railway Line Faceli’, Tanzania Daily
News, June .
44 ‘Port Bell to Kampala Line due to Reopen’, e Observer, April .
45 ‘e Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Kenya’s SGR Cargo’, e Nation, October
; ‘Kenya, Uganda to Upgrade the Suam Border Crossing’, e East Aican,
August .
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On June , the Kenyan SGR passenger service opened to the public.
A freight service came into operation later in the year, rapidly scaling up the
number of services per day. With low-cost passenger services accompanied by
port regulations that required up to per cent of all containerised goods to
exit the port by rail, the train has radically changed the transport landscape in
Kenya. e line has since been extended to link up with large inland container
depots (ICDs) at Naivasha in the Ri Valley north of Nairobi. ese develop-
ments have not been without controversy, and have exacerbated a political ri
between central government in Nairobi and municipal authorities in Mombasa.
Coastal residents accuse the government of shiing the most lucrative elements
of the port – the handling, clearance and storage of goods – to the heartlands
of the governing elite. e economy of the port town has suered, particularly
those working in the public transport and freight haulage industries.
President Kenyatta has tended to dismiss these concerns as the inevitable
repercussions of what are otherwise grand improvements in the country’s
capacity to trade. Combined with the construction of a series of large new
berths at Mombasa capable of housing Panamax-sized vessels, the expansion of
port capacity through an additional container terminal, and the streamlining
of clearance through a single-window system, the container throughput of the
port has surpassed one million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) per year,
growing at a rate of approximately per cent annually since . In August
, two months aer Tanzania began upgrading its Nyahua–Chanya road
and its Chalinze Expressway to a six-lane carriage way, Kenya signed a binding
agreement with Betchel International (US) to design, build and operate a new
expressway connecting Mombasa and Nairobi.
e second half of was marked by two Kenyan elections, the rst in
August and the second in October, following a ruling from the Kenyan Supreme
Court that nullied the rst result. Although both elections were conducted
peacefully, the economic uncertainty surrounding them caused serious disruption
of supply chains along the Northern Corridor and importers in the hinterland
were reluctant to continue operations until the political situation had been
resolved.
Interviewees frequently oered this disruption as further justication
46 Growth of TEU capacity, ODI Report.
47 ‘Tanzania: Kuwait Grants Tz billion for Central Corridor Road Project’,
Tanzania Daily News, March .
48 ‘Uganda on High Alert as Kenya, Rwanda go to polls’, e Monitor, July .
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for Ugandan and Rwandan authorities’ eorts to diversify their access to the
sea, and to increase their use of the Central Corridor.
compounded the Kenyan vision of a united East Africa linked by rail
to the port of Mombasa. In March , Rwanda and Tanzania agreed on an
electric SGR with an open tender, and Rwanda began construction of the line
east of Kigali.
Part of the negotiation included the simultaneous reduction
in road user charges, already synchronised between Tanzania and Rwanda,
which fell to approximately US$ per freight vehicle. Uganda was given
land to construct its own ICD in Mwanza, Tanzania, and the Uganda Railway
Corporation, the Tanzania Ports Authority, the Tanzania Railways Corporation
and the Marine Services determined a tari rate of US$– per foot
containers crossing the lake (signicantly less expensive than the cost of road
transport). In June , a -tonne capacity cargo ship landed at Port Bell
from Mwanza for the rst time since the collision of the MV Kabalega and
the MV Kaawa in . According to the World Food Programme (WFP),
the route across the lake cut transit time from Kampala to Dar es Salaam by
approximately per cent, and costs by per cent.
Kenya quickly struck back, oering Uganda a signicant land holding to
construct an ICD in Naivasha. e intention was to incentivise Ugandan
authorities to stay true to their original commitments on the Northern Corridor
SGR. Kenyan authorities remain concerned about the prospect of a Uganda–
Tanzania railway agreement, with upgraded railways connecting Dar es Salaam
to Mwanza, and Port Bell to Kampala. With Uganda accounting for over per
cent of all transit cargo passing through Mombasa, a competing railway linking
Kampala to the Tanzanian port and oering as little as four-day shipping times
constitutes a very real threat to Kenyan interests. e situation was escalated
49 ‘Is Kagame Looking for an Alternative Route to the Sea?’, e Monitor, March
.
50 ‘Rosier Future as Rwanda Gets Star Borrower Ratings’, e East Aican, June
.
51 ‘DRC, Uganda Engaged on Road User Fee’, Tanzania Daily News, March .
52 ‘Port Bell to Kampala Rail Line due to Re-open’, e Observer, April .
53 ‘Uganda Focuses on Old Railway’, e East Aican, November .
54 ‘Optimism High on Re-Opened Mwanza-Port Bell Route’, Tanzania Daily News,
August .
55 ‘A Shot in the Arm for Kenya’s Railway Project as Uganda Buys Into the Deal’, e
East Aican, March .
56
‘Cargo Destined to Uganda to Take Four Days From Dar Port’, East Aican Business
Week, February .
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further by Tanzanian plans to introduce an international tea auction in Dar es
Salaam, aiming to rival the Kenyan monopoly in Mombasa.
In , deteriorating diplomatic relations between Rwanda and Uganda
radically altered the playing eld for international trade along the transport
corridors. On February , Rwandan authorities closed their two largest
border posts with Uganda, severing freight trade with its northern neighbour.
irty-seven Kenyan vehicles were le stranded, and it was only aer a period
of absolute disruption to the Northern Corridor that trade between Rwanda
and Kenya resumed.
Trade between Rwanda and Uganda remains on hold.
e details of the closure are disputed and tied into historical enmities between
Ugandan and Rwandan elites. Uganda has publicly accused Rwanda of intro-
ducing trade barriers, while Rwandan importers have, for most commodities,
been forced to pivot their operations south where they had not done so already.
In April , Kenyatta returned from China having failed to secure a US$.
billion loan required for Phase III of the Northern Corridor SGR, intended to
connect Naivasha with the town of Kisumu close to the Uganda border. e
government of Kenya was instead given US$ million to upgrade the metre
line that spans the same route. e extension of the line has struggled for two
principal reasons. First, China’s EXIM bank has voiced concerns about the debt
burden involved and in Kenya’s capacity to pay. is situation was not helped
by nancial mismanagement scandals and negative press surrounding Phase I of
the line. e second reason is the increasing uncertainty about the possibility of
extending the line beyond the Kenyan border into Uganda. Feasibility studies
suggest the cost of Phase III, linking Naivasha over ve hundred kilometres
to the western Kenyan town of Kisumu, is unjustiable unless it gives access
to the Ugandan capital Kampala in the short to medium term. is is not
guaranteed, as Ugandan authorities have lowered the priority of developing
the SGR on their side of the border in favour of relaunching trade across Lake
Victoria to Tanzania.
57 ‘Will Uhuru’s Visits Reconcile Uneasy Neighbours Rwanda and Uganda’, e East
Aican, March .
58 Ibid.
59 ‘Sibling Rivalry Turns Ugly’, Aica Condential¸ :, March .
60 ‘Uganda, Rwanda Better O Together an Divided’, e Monitor, March .
61
‘Regional Countries Have Accumulated $. Million in Development Loans’,
e East Aican, August .
62 More critical analysis suggests the line is not viable if it fails to extend the full
distance to Bujumbura in Burundi, see: ‘Kenya Finds Going Tough With Its
Regional Partners’, e Nation, August .
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Two Ports, Two Roads, Two Railways
Table 10.1. Timeline of Northern and Central Corridor developments.
Year Event
(signed in ) Treaty establishing the East African Community (EAC) (originally
Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya) comes into eect.
Protocol for a new East African customs union is ratied by
Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania
Common import taris come into eect throughout the EAC.
e collision of MV Kabalega and MV Kaawa eectively halts trade
between Uganda and Tanzania across Lake Victoria.
e Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency
(TTFA) is launched.
e Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Agreement
(NCTTA) is revised and renewed.
A major disruption to international trade results from the violent
aermath of the Kenyan elections.
Rwanda and Burundi join the EAC.
President Uhuru Kenyatta elected in Kenya.
Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda institute a Single Customs Area.
e EAC Elimination of Non-Tari Barriers to Trade Bill is signed,
but implementation remains patchy.
President John Magufuli elected in Tanzania.
Tanzania pushes a protectionist economic agenda regarding key
commodities.
Construction begins on Phase I of the Northern Corridor SGR,
linking Mombasa to Nairobi.
Rwanda withdraws from the Northern Corridor SGR.
Uganda withdraws from an oil pipeline project with Kenya in
favour of a route through Tanzania.
Ugandan authorities assert that they will not begin construction of
the SGR to the Kenyan border until the Kenyan SGR is guaranteed
to reach the western Kenyan town of Kisumu.
March e government of Kuwait releases a US$ million loan to
Tanzania to being construction on a Nyahua–Chanya highway
along the Central Corridor.
August e government of Kenya signs a binding agreement with Betchel
International (US) to design, build and operate an expressway
linking Mombasa and Nairobi.
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Construction begins on Phase I of the Central Corridor SGR,
linking Dar es Salaam with Morogoro.
e Kenyan SGR launches between Mombasa and Nairobi.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is re-elected in October aer a disputed
August poll. Political uncertainty stalls trade.
Rwanda and Tanzania agree on electric SGR with an open tender.
Rwanda and Tanzania reduce road fees in each other’s favour.
Uganda is given land to construct ICD in Mwanza, Tanzania
A -tonne freight ship lands in Port Bell (Uganda) from Mwanza
(Tanzania) for the rst time in over a decade.
Kenya oers Uganda land in Naivasha to construct a large inland
container depot.
Rwanda closes its two largest border posts with Uganda, restricting
Northern Corridor trade.
e Chinese EXIM bank refuses to loan Kenya the money required
for Phase III of the SGR, linking ICDs in Naivasha with Kisumu in
the west of the country.
Source: Author.
e timeline in Table . shows a clear pattern in which developments to
either one of East Africa’s two largest transport corridors prompts changes to
the other. Beyond the headline events recounted here, a similar pattern can be
seen in the more mundane developments along each route, with greater seaport
container capacity, more dry ports, more paved highways, and other incremental
improvements mirroring each other in the two cases.
Considering the extensive developments that have occurred over the past
years, the question arises whether one corridor has outcompeted the other. is
cannot be answered at the domestic level of the coastal states, since Mombasa
and Dar es Salaam remain subject to autarchic polices regarding port trac.
It is only once goods transit out of (or enter in from outside of) Tanzania and
Kenya that real competition begins. Since importers in the Rwandan capital
make regular use of seaports at both Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, Kigali a
practical site to illustrate dierent dimensions of corridor competition along the
63 is situation may change if the Kenyan Ports Authority continues with a plan to
construct a large inland container terminal in Taita Taevta on the Tanzania border,
which would ‘bring competition to the doorstep of the neighbouring country’; see:
‘East Africa Ports in Fresh Push to Attract Shipping Lines’, e East Aican,
January .
64 See also Hoyle & Charlier, .
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two roads. As a starting point for comparison, I make use of seven factors that
determine competition between the trading corridors: distance from gateway
to market, cost from gateway to market, transit time in days, relative logistics
performance index scores, political stability, security issues and environmental
conditions – looking at each from the perspective of road and railway users.
Corridor Attractiveness: Distance, Expense, Speed,
Bureaucracy and Security
Examining the Northern and Central Corridors from the position of importers
and exporters in Kigali, many of the key metrics of corridor attractiveness favour
Dar es Salaam over Mombasa. Detailed statistical analyses of freight on each
route can be found through the annual reports of the respective transport
corridor authorities. Underlying these statistics is the fact that the Tanzanian
port is approximately kilometres closer over land than its Kenyan rival.
Furthermore, the Northern Corridor journey involves crossing two borders,
choke-points in which system failures, extortion and long queues are all signif-
icant risks. Border concerns feature prominently in the complaints of freight
forwarders, despite the introduction of one stop border posts at Busia (Kenya)–
Busia (Uganda), at Gatuna (Rwanda)–Katuna (Uganda). e additional
distance through Kenya and Uganda is reected in transportation costs, which
were approximately per cent higher on shipments from Mombasa than Dar
es Salaam in early . Although freight forwarders with whom I spoke
tended to be cautiously optimistic about the prospects of the railway improving
shipping in the medium to long term, the introduction of Phases I and II of
the Kenyan SGR, which transfers containers directly from the coast to Nairobi
and Naivasha, was not considered to have made a signicant dierence to the
expense or the time taken to deliver containers to the hinterland.
65 e index scores are an interactive benchmarking tool implemented by the World
Bank: see <https://lpi.worldbank.org/> [Accessed November ]; see Pelletier
& Alix .
66
Northern Corridor Transport Observatory (NCTO), Annual Report , Nairobi,
; Central Corridor Transport Observatory (CCTO), Annual Report , Dar
es Salaam, .
67
‘Who Will Gain Most from Busia Joint Border Post’, e Monitor, February
.
68 Interview, Freight Logistics Manager, Kigali, March ; See also: NCTO,
Annual Report; CCTO, Annual Report.
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Over per cent of Rwandan maritime trade passes through Dar es Salaam,
strongly suggesting that time and cost remain the fundamental determinants of
corridor attractiveness.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that averaging gateway
to market costs and timings can be misleading in East Africa, where the duration
and expense of shipments vary enormously depending on the nature of the cargo,
drivers’ experience, vehicle quality and the cost of fuel. Importers with whom
I spoke tended to be dismissive of statistics claiming one route to be superior
to the other and stressed that the major improvements were down to reduced
clearance time rather than transport time. ey emphasised the fact that it is
only recently that the overall time taken from a container at the port to reach
Rwanda could be counted in days, rather than weeks, and the dierence of a
few days between shipping times was secondary to reliability. ey also noted
that, given Tanzania’s protectionist policies on certain commodities, they were
le with no choice but to look to Mombasa for the import of goods such as
fertiliser and paper.
Whether the corridors perform eciently or otherwise depends in large
part on the skill, networks and prior knowledge of the transporters and freight
forwarders involved with each shipment. Although performance indexes are
available through the corridor authorities, the way in which informal networking
overcomes institutional inertia is extremely dicult to capture and even harder
to institute through policy. Dierent companies have radically dierent experi-
ences of the roads and, according to interviewees, there is little to separate them
in logistical terms, except the fact, mentioned above, that the Northern Corridor
involves two border crossings. Even this was not always cited as a reason to
favour the Tanzanian route, since it aords opportunities as well as potential
delays. Importers bringing goods to Kigali from Dar es Salaam were not always
assured of a backload, and oen return to the port with empty containers. is
was much less likely for vehicles transiting Uganda on the Northern Corridor,
which could pick up goods from Kampala on their way back to Kenya.
69 ‘Relief as Tanzania Ports Authority Open Liaison Oce in Kigali’, e New Times,
August .
70 For a detailed analysis of expenditure on the corridors, see: Andreas Eberhard-Ruiz
and Linda Calabrese, Would More Trade Facilitation Lead to Lower Transport Cost
in the East Aican Community? ODI Brieng Paper, London, ; Andreas
Eberhard-Ruiz and Linda Calabrese, Trade Facilitation, Transport Costs and the
Price of Trucking Services in East Aica, ODI Brieng Paper, London, .
71 See also NCTTCA, ; Eberhard-Ruiz and Calabrese, Trade Facilitation,
Transport Costs.
72 Monios & Lambert, .
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Political stability is tied closely to issues of security on both corridors. e
aermath of the Kenyan election remains fresh in the minds of importers
and freight forwarders throughout the region, and interviewees spoke of a
dicult period and of unpaid debts owed to transporters who lost vehicles
and consignments. Kenyan elections since have triggered a great deal of anxiety
for those involved in the transit trade. Outside of Nairobi, the / crisis
centred on the Ri Valley west of Naivasha, and in Kisumu in the country’s west –
both of which lie in the path of the Northern Corridor. Drivers still consider
these areas dangerous and try to limit their time on roads there, especially aer
dark. Stories of banditry on the Ri Valley’s steeper climbs – in which slow-
moving trucks become a target – circulate widely throughout the East African
transport network.
In Tanzania, by contrast, the election of John Magufuli and his emphasis on
national security is seen by many to have had a stabilising eect. Rather than
concerns surrounding political dissidents, protests and electoral violence, drivers
and importers were more concerned with what they perceive to be increasing
xenophobia in the Tanzanian population and in the attitudes of state representa-
tives.
Importers in Rwanda consistently complained that, while Tanzania has the
biggest trucking eet in the region, Tanzanian drivers and their assistants tended
to lack the same level of professionalism and training as those from elsewhere.
ey felt pressured to make use of Tanzanian transporters since they were less
likely to encounter harassment from ocials and from other drivers. O the roads,
interviewees also cited well-publicised examples of goods disappearing in Dar es
Salaam port as a reason to be cautious of trade through Tanzania.
In terms of environmental conditions, drivers did not consider the roads
dissimilar. Both consist of two lanes of tarmac in relatively good repair, although
with some sections degrading faster than others. e chief concern in both
cases was that, lacking a central divide and with a poorly enforced speed limit,
the road produced a very high number of head-on collisions. According to
gures from Kenya’s National Transport and Safety Authority and Tanzania’s
Central Corridor Transport Observatory, thousands of lives are lost on the
73
‘Why Mombasa Remains Port of Choice for Uganda Even When Crisis Strikes’,
e East Aican, August .
74 In , the Rwandan company Mineral Supply African Ltd and another shipper,
Trading Services Logistics (TSL), lost minerals worth US$ million in Dar es
Salaam port. See: ‘Regional Traders Continue to Face Hurdles on Central Corridor’,
e New Times, July .
75 NCTTCA, .
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corridors each year. Hillslopes in both corridors were considered highly
dangerous, especially where they lacked climbing lanes or where climbing lanes
were misused by drivers. Stretches of each road that saw freight vehicles travelling
through urban neighbourhoods were particularly disliked by drivers due to the
prevalence of -seat Matatu minibuses, which were considered notorious for
causing collisions.
Path Dependencies, Network Effects, First Movers and
Speculation
Corridor competition extends beyond importer and exporter convenience,
reecting the fact that corridors have two distinct categories of stakeholder: those
who extract revenue from access to the corridor, and those for whom corridor
access is an expenditure. Corridors compete not only to be used, but also to
be built, a process that can conict with the metrics of corridor attractiveness
discussed above. In East Africa, government sponsorship is essential to the devel-
opment of large-scale infrastructure, commonly involving presidential interven-
tions. Presidents Kenyatta, Museveni, Magufuli and Kagame have all had a direct
hand in shaping the Northern and Central Corridors; signing o on key initiatives,
negotiating in multinational forums and inaugurating new services.
For states developing transport corridor infrastructure, the extension of routes
into the hinterland is subject to a network eect, in which the value of the service
increases with the number of people using it.
is incentivises coastal states
to push for extensions to the corridors linked to their ports. e process oen
involves more than one mode of transportation, and the use of dry ports to ght
for markets further inland. is requires a dierent approach to the norm for
infrastructure development in the region, which has tended to be fragmented,
relatively uncoordinated, and to have a predominantly national focus.
e decision by Kenyan authorities to develop the Northern Corridor,
furnishing the route with a standard gauge railway, large inland container depots
and modern highways, was based on the idea that increasing circulation and
creating stronger trade partnerships with states in the African interior was in
76 ‘Alarm Over Increased Road Crashes’, e Nation, May ; See also : NCTTCA,
; CCTO, Annual Report.
77 Naudé, e Financial Crisis of ; Piet Buys, Uwe Deichmann, and David
Wheeler, Road Network Upgrading and Overland Trade Expansion in Sub-Saharan
Aica, Washington, D.C., .
78 See Hoyle & Charlier, .
79 Naudé, e Financial Crisis of .
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Kenya’s best interest. e project involves a high degree of path dependency,
due to a combination of high setup costs, learning eects, co-ordination eorts
and adaptive expectations.
Uganda and Rwanda are dierently incentivised:
as hinterland states, their best interest lies in diversifying access to the sea,
especially considering Kenya’s reputation as an unreliable trading partner in
times of political unrest.
e asymmetry of incentives between coastal and hinterland states creates
collective action problems in infrastructure development. Commitments,
especially long-term ones, are not always credible. Elsewhere, hinterland
access regimes have been given the autonomy required to counter some of these
problems.
In East Africa, the corridor authorities have struggled in this regard.
Resolutions are not always implemented, and national and EAC regulations
are not always harmonised. e construction of the Northern Corridor SGR
is a clear example of the risks involved. In the absence of eective third-party
enforcement, the project required a high degree of speculation on the part of
government authorities in Kenya. Estimates have suggested the line will only
become viable aer it is extended beyond Uganda into Rwanda, Burundi and
DRC, while its passenger service is likely to be permanently subsidised by freight
on the line.
Rwanda’s withdrawal from the Northern Corridor SGR in favour of a joint
venture with Tanzania was not as concerning to Kenyan authorities as the
prospect of losing the country’s eective monopoly on Uganda’s access to the
coast. Simultaneously, Uganda’s decision to delay construction on its SGR line to
the Kenyan border until the Kenyan line to Kisumu is complete, on the back of
its withdrawal from a shared oil pipeline, were both serious setbacks to Kenyan
interests in the hinterland. If Uganda were to construct an SGR linking
Kampala with Dar es Salaam via Lake Victoria, one interviewee suggested it
would constitute the biggest humiliation in President Kenyatta’s career.
80 See also Martin, .
81 Naudé, e Financial Crisis of .
82 Peter W. De Langen and Ariane Chouly, ‘Hinterland Access Regimes in Seaports’,
European Journal of Transport and Inastructure Research, :, , pp. –.
83 See, for example, ‘Ugandan Traders Ask Tanzania to Harmonise Cargo Transit
Fees’, e Monitor, December ; ‘Is it Time the EAC Walks the Integration
Talk’, e New Times, July .
84
‘East Africa’s Joint Mega Railway Project at the Crossroads’, e East Aican,
January .
85 Interview, Journalist, Nairobi, January .
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ese events raise an important question: under what conditions is moving
rst in corridor infrastructural development a disadvantage at the level of inter-
state competition? Interviewees suggested that Kenya may suer as a result of
its early enthusiasm for large-scale, multilateral corridor projects. e Tanzanian
SGR was planned in the aermath of Kenya’s, and authorities responsible for
it have learnt lessons from their neighbours to the north. Estimates for the
Tanzanian SGR, with funding secured through the Turkish EXIM bank and
not the Chinese EXIM bank, have been signicantly lower than the Kenyan
line, despite the former being electried and the latter running on diesel. e
decision to opt for an open tender stands in obvious contrast to Kenya’s closed
arrangements with the Chinese Road and Bridge Company (CRBC). e
comparisons have already attracted negative press towards the Kenyan project,
while the appeal of the Tanzanian alternative was enough to sway Rwandan
authorities into switching sides.
Gatekeepers, Geopolitics and the Jealousy of Infrastructure
e states described up to this point should not be seen as unitary, autonomous
actors. Even where presidential interventions serve to launch new initiatives,
corridor development is subject to complicated internal negotiations among
rival ministries and stakeholders, and external negotiation with donors, lenders,
construction rms, operators and special interest groups. e overarching agenda
may be to facilitate trade, but decisions remain contentious due to limited funds,
conicting priorities and secondary agendas.
States in East Africa are under particular pressure to provide an attractive
entrepreneurial culture capable of drawing in mobile international capital. To
indicate the scale involved, Tanzania’s Finance Minister, Dr Phillip Mpango,
estimated over US$ billion of private funds would be needed in the country’s
ve-year development plan from to , while estimates of the regional
investment in scheduled transport infrastructure upgrades range up to US$
billion.
In , Kenyan authorities announced a US$. billion price tag
for ve of its key road projects – with the addition that tolling would be key
86 ‘Turkish Involvement in Railway Project Time’, e Citizen, January .
87 ‘Rwanda, Tanzania Agree on Electric SGR, Opt for Open Tender’, e East Aican,
March .
88 See Abrams
89 ‘Private Sector Key to Devt Plan Success – Mpango’, Tanzania Daily News,
February .
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to the projects’ nancial success.
e use of public–private partnerships is
strongly encouraged in regional agreements, and article of the Treaty
for the Establishment of the EAC emphasises strengthening private sector
involvement as a key partner in EAC integration.
e result is the signicant
inuence of private sector actors in state-sanctioned roles, reminiscent of the
rise of mercantile elites in the early discussions of Smith and Hume.
One of the key attractions for private sector actors involved in the devel-
opment of transport infrastructure is the potential to extract revenue available
to gatekeepers of the trading route. Transport corridors embody the interface
between the national and the international – and provide a wealth of what
Cooper would consider ‘gatekeeping’ revenue, in transit fees, container storage,
warehousing, loading and unloading, parking, parking security, cleaning fees,
fuel costs, road taris and demurrage, among others.
All of these sources of
revenue come under threat when hinterlands overlap and alternative routes open
up through separate territories. When inuenced by gatekeeper elites, the logic
of the corridor is to maximise circulation, maximise particular forms of revenue
extraction, and to minimise competition.
Does this logic result, as the managing director of Maersk Line East Africa
has argued, in ‘healthy competition’ between the two corridors, ‘both ghting
for position in terms of some of the swing countries that could export or import
cargo through either corridor’?
e case oers up a mixed picture over the
last years. On the one hand, rapid developments have occurred along each
route, oen mirroring those along the other, and have dramatically reduced the
port-to-market time for containerised goods. Nevertheless, the tension between
revenue extraction and trade facilitation is evident in the frustration of importers
and corridor users in both cases. e majority of importers, drivers and freight
90 ‘Region Plans to Charge for Use of Major Highways’, e East Aican, March
.
91 ‘East Africa Private Sector Feted for Integration Eorts’, e East Aican,
March ; ‘New rust for Eorts to Improve Trade, Investments in East Africa’,
Tanzania Daily News, April .
92
Peter Hall, Markus Hesse, and Markus Jean-Paul, ‘Reexploring the interface between
economic and transport geography’, Enironment and Planning A, , , pp.
–.
93 Frederick Cooper, Aica Since : e Past of the Present, Cambridge, ; ‘KPA
Evacuates Cargo at its Nairobi Inland Container Terminal’, e East Aican, July
.
94 Steve Felder, Managing Director, Maersk East Africa, uoted in ‘Central Corridor
Performs Badly in First uarter of this Year’, e Citizen, June .
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forwarders with whom I spoke were suspicious of the large-scale corridor devel-
opment projects, especially the upgrading of metre gauge railways to a standard
gauge. Many would have preferred the investment to have targeted upgrading the
road network with a four-lane highway and spoke cynically about the opportu-
nities for personal prot aorded by both railways and by the privately owned
ICDs that they serve. e removal of non-tari barriers along the route was
described by one interviewee as a ‘game of whack-a-mole’, in which new fees
emerged as quickly as others were done away with.
Perhaps a greater indictment of healthy competition between the two
corridors can be found in the breakdown of diplomatic relations between
Rwanda and Uganda in early . e situation has its roots in complex
personal disputes and historical conflict dating back to the s.
Nevertheless, it has been manifested in the weaponisation of the Rwanda–
Uganda border, the severance of trade between the two states, and a push by
Rwandan authorities to minimise reliance on the Northern Corridor for the
import and export of essential goods. Although Kenyan vehicles are allowed in
and out of Rwanda at present, drivers speak of a great deal of uncertainty each
time they reach the border post. e East African Business Council (EABC)
has complained openly about the unresolved issues, and Kenya’s President
Kenyatta has repeatedly toured the Great Lakes pushing for trade assurances
and for resolution to the dispute.
is is the point at which Hume’s jealousy of trade nds a strong parallel in
contemporary events. e development of transport corridors constitutes an
investment in brokering revenue, rather than manufacturing revenue, making
states especially vulnerable to the aggressive manoeuvring of their neighbours.
Uganda’s decision to renege on its commitments to extend developments begun
at great expense in Kenya, Rwanda’s choice to sever trade relations with Uganda
and to suspend joint infrastructural commitments, and Tanzania’s choice not to
implement EPAs and to roll out protectionist policies on essential commodities,
all speak to the precariousness of the situation. Print media have framed events
in militaristic language, with the situation between Rwanda and Uganda, as
well as between Kenya and Tanzania, being described as ‘trade wars’ where the
95
One example is the $ transit stickers introduced for containers in Tanzania in
. See: ‘Removal of NTBs Paying Dividends Despite New Setbacks’, e New
Times, August .
96 ‘Sibling Rivalry Turns Ugly’, Aica Condential¸ :, March .
97 ‘Why Kenya is reatened by Uganda-Rwanda Stando’, e Exchange, March
; ‘Will Uhuru’s Visits Reconcile Uneasy Neighbours Rwanda and Uganda’, e
East Aican, March .
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cities of Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali and Dar es Salaam are involved in a ‘game
of check-mating’.
e threats involved in the geopolitics of infrastructure extend beyond the
economic damage that can be exerted on regional rivals. e distribution of
gatekeeping revenue, infrastructural contracts, and the political capital that
accompanies improvements to local infrastructure, all form central components
in political coalition building in East Africa. e capacity for neighbouring states
to undermine all three and potentially to saddle neighbours with heavy debt
burdens based on projects that are no longer economically viable, equips them
with an existential threat to the governing elites across their borders.
Conclusion
is chapter has focused on the geo-political competition underlying transport
corridor development in East Africa. e events and initiatives analysed here
were identied by a range of corridor stakeholders interviewed between
and as key ashpoints for competition. Looking closely at the timeline of
developments since , several central observations can be made.
e rst is the continuity with the past. e rise and fall of the rst East
African Community between and was driven by many of the same
dynamics that exist in the region today. Despite signicant infrastructural and
technological changes, the underlying structural conditions of the region remain
the same as those identied in previous studies now decades old.
Two seaports
– Dar es Salaam and Mombasa – dominate trade ows in and out of East Africa.
e hinterland access regimes extending out from them do not compete at
the domestic level between Tanzania and Kenya. Fierce competition for cargo
begins once they reach the landlocked states of Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, South
Sudan and DRC. is dynamic produces dierent incentives for the coastal and
hinterland states when it comes to corridor development. While Kenyan and
Tanzanian authorities look to monopolise trade ows through ‘their’ corridor,
the states further inland look to diversify their access to the sea.
Second is the accelerating rate of competition. Since , the infrastructural
development of the Central and Northern Corridors has progressed rapidly
and come to resemble an arms race, with developments along one route being
quickly matched by the other. e picture is more complicated than a simple
98
‘Magufuli Meets Kenyatta to Discuss Trade Row’, e Daily Nation, February
; ‘A Shot in the Arm for Kenya’s Railway Project as Uganda Buys into the Deal’,
e East Aican, March .
99 See, for example, Hoyle & Charlier, .
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C, C C 257
dialectic in which the corridors continually become more attractive to road users,
importers and exporters. Recent disruption resulting from the global pandemic,
which began shortly aer the eldwork for this chapter, is unlikely to alter this
trajectory in the mid-long term. e development of the two corridors is being
driven both by the logic of trade facilitation (measured in TEU throughput per
year and the time taken for a container to move from seaports to hinterland
markets), and by the logic of revenue extraction, in which both public and
private sector actors seek to re-co-operate some of the expense of costly corridor
development investments through formal and informal fees and taris.
Third is the geo-political tension provoked by corridor development.
Recent years have highlighted some of the dangers of moving rst and relying
on neighbouring states to stay true to their earlier commitments. Considering
that coalitions and political campaigns are built on the success or failure of
grand projects, the stakes are raised with each perceived success or failure.
A development such as the Kenyan SGR is both extremely costly and path
dependent, especially considering that its long-term viability depends on signif-
icant extensions into the hinterland. Uganda’s decision to de-prioritise linking
up its own railway with the Kenyan line and focus on developing trade across
Lake Victoria to Tanzania has frustrated Kenyan authorities and highlighted the
heavy debt burden that phase I and II of the Kenyan SGR project have incurred.
Tanzania and Rwanda were able to learn lessons from the Kenyan experience
and apply them to their own SGR project. Meanwhile, Rwanda’s closing of its
northern border to Ugandan traders, and Tanzania’s decision not to implement
regional EPAs, highlight the fragility of corridor initiatives; as one interviewee
remarked “even among siblings, the nation comes rst”.
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.
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C 11
Following the Tracks:
Chinese Development Finance and the
Addis–Djibouti Railway Corridor
Y C
Introduction
e ubiquity of Chinese capital is visible across the Addis Ababa skyline: from
glossy skyscrapers and airport terminals to the new modern light rail that glides
through Meskel Square. Ethiopia has been a major beneciary of China’s ‘going
out’ in Africa, which has seen growing ows of trade, investment, as well as aid
and development nance between the two regions. Aer Angola, Ethiopia is the
second largest African recipient of Chinese loans, much of which is channelled
into supporting the country’s infrastructure and industrial development strategy.
In turn, Ethiopia has sought to emulate the East Asian development experience,
developing its industrial capacity and investing heavily in infrastructure connec-
tivity to engender economic transformation through export-oriented growth.
China has become an instrumental partner, in providing both technology and
nancing for Ethiopian ambitions. In turn, Ethiopia and its position in the Horn
of Africa has become another chain-link in the expansion of China’s Belt and
Road Initiative and its maritime trade corridors.
Within this salient relationship, one sector that has received major attention
is transport – specically, railways. As well as the Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit
project, the new Chinese-built Addis–Djibouti line (or Ethio-Djibouti Railway)
has become a agship project in the twenty-rst century Maritime Silk Road, in
Sino-Ethiopian co-operation, and in the Ethiopian government’s ambitions for
economic modernisation. Commencing commercial operation in January ,
the railway is the rst constructed in Ethiopia since the French-built Chemin
de Fer over a century ago, and is notably the rst electried railway in Africa.
Under the government of the Ethiopian People ’s Revolutionary Democratic
Front (EPRDF), and the leadership of former premier, Meles Zenawi (in power
from until his death in ), railway development was one part of a
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C D F A–D R 263
wider industrial strategy that sought to use infrastructure investment to foster
the development of regional economic corridors from Ethiopia’s manufac-
turing centres, to key seaports in Djibouti, and the Addis Djibouti line was to
be the rst of a broader national network that would also connect industrial
hubs in Mekele in the north and Hawassa in the south-west. By lowering the
economic and transaction costs of logistics through infrastructure investment,
the government hoped to foster industrial zone development along these railway
corridors. In turn, this boost to export sectors would generate much-needed
foreign exchange that would repay the borrowing for infrastructure investment,
and in the longer term, to the structural transformation of the economy.
Symbolically, the Addis–Djibouti railway (ADR) carries a special signi-
cance in the China–Africa relationship, as the rst Chinese railway project in
Africa since the Tanzania–Zambia (TAZARA) railway, built in the s with
Chinese aid. Belt and Road Initiative discourse has also enfolded the Horn and
East African regions, making them strategically valuable in Chinese foreign and
economic policy. In Kenya, China Road and Bridge Construction Company
(CRBC), supported by China’s Eximbank, has constructed two phases of a
standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, initially planned to extend
to Naivasha and to the Ugandan border.
In the African context, however, railways have also been historically associated
with the colonisation of Western powers into African states. is has been
reected in the extractive design of colonial railway, which tends to connect
inland resources to ports and colonial metropoles, rather than improving
regional connections. e Addis–Djibouti railway follows this model, but
with the design of boosting the integration of Ethiopian manufacturing into
global supply chains. It is notable for its genesis and development as an Ethiopian
initiative; however its long-term sustainability and nancial viability remains
under question. Initial operation, which remains under Chinese management,
has proved problematic, including technical challenges relating to its electri-
cation, local social impacts and the spillover impacts of sub-regional security
1 ese sections extending towards the Ugandan border have proved a challenge for
the Kenyan government, as Chinese nance has not been forthcoming since the
completion of the section to Naivasha and, as of , plans for funding the SGR’s
extension with China Eximbank have stalled indenitely.
2
T. W. Roberts, ‘Republicanism, Railway Imperialism, and the French Empire in
Africa, –’, e Historical Journal, :, , pp. –.
3
Remi Jedwab, Edward Kerby and Alexander Moradi, ‘History, path dependence
and development: Evidence from colonial railways, settlers and cities in Kenya’, e
Economic Journal . (): –.
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264 Y C
challenges. e case highlights not only the risks and costs to foreign debt
nanced infrastructure, but also the importance of developing domestic capacity
in order to manage it, and ensure its long-term sustainability.
The Rationale for Railway
e expansion of Chinese railway technology into Africa, and the ever-encom-
passing Belt and Road Initiative could hold huge potential for African structural
transformation. Chinese development nance has become an important means
of lling the wider infrastructure investment gap in African economies, which
the African Development Bank estimates to be in the range of US$–
billion annually. Within this, the transport sector is recognised as a key sector
for regional connectivity and in fostering economic agglomeration. While
the impacts of infrastructure on growth are well-documented, particularly in
the impact of road in contribution to economic development, railway devel-
opment in Africa has generally been more problematic. Unlike road transport,
railway systems depend on both the base infrastructure and also an operator
for full service. Operation and maintenance require far more intensive systems
of management, as well as capital-intensive maintenance, all of which are a
challenge in countries where governance and capacity is weak.
However, the potential of railway lies in its contribution to industrial and
urban development and in serving logistical needs – a key constraint for African
industries and particularly manufacturing. For rapidly urbanising African centres
and nascent industrial hubs, rail can serve as a lower-cost option for freight
transportation compared to trucking; railways also serve as a more sustainable,
less polluting transport option for passenger travel. e African Development
Bank’s (Af DB) report on rail also notes its potential to spur the growth of
complementary industries, including food, retail and in maintenance of rolling
stock, and due to its interlinked nature with other core industries such as steel
and energy. As such, ‘railways should be seen as a component part of a wider
4 African Development Bank (ADB), ‘Africa’s Infrastructure: Great Potential but
Little Impact on Inclusive Growth’, in Aica Economic Outlook, Abidjan, .
5
See: César Calderón and Luis Servén. Inastructure, Growth, and Inequality: An
Overview, Policy Research Working Paper, Washington, D.C., ; César Calderón
and Luis Servén, e Eects of Inastructure Development on Growth and Income
Distribution, Washington, D.C., , p. ; Christian Volpe Martincus, Jerónimo
Carballo and Ana Cusolito, ‘Roads, Exports and Employment: Evidence from a
Developing Country’, Journal of Development Economics, , , pp. –.
6 ADB, Rail Inastructure in Aica: Financing Policy Options, Abidjan, .
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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C D F A–D R 265
industrial development plan’.
More recently in , the AfDB funded part
of a feasibility study (a total of around US$. million) into the development
of an Ethiopia–Sudan railway link connecting Addis Ababa to the Sudanese
port of Khartoum, in line with the economic development plan of both states,
as well as the broader goal of fostering regional integration.
The Dragon in the Horn of Africa
While much of China’s engagement in Africa has been viewed through the lens
of resource exploitation and Chinese demand for African commodity imports,
Chinese capital has also been owing into Africa in the form of investment
and lending. Chinese state nancing has supported the construction of large
swathes of infrastructure across Africa and the developing world and Chinese
construction contractors, oen winners of World Bank construction projects,
have been responsible for many more.
is rise in Chinese infrastructure lending during the s accelerated aer
the global nancial crisis, at a time when major Western lenders were unable
and/or unwilling to support large infrastructure projects in Africa, despite
the infrastructure gap. In China, industrial overcapacity at home and the lure
of untapped markets abroad have also pushed investors and rms overseas.
Simultaneously, China’s foreign economic policy has encouraged and supported
Chinese (usually state-owned) companies in ‘going out’ through preferential
incentives and benets, as well as through its policy banks, China’s Eximbank
and China’s Development Bank, which oer favourable and quick loans to
governments conditional on the procurement of Chinese goods.
7 ADB, Rail Inastructure in Aica, .
8 AfDB, ‘Ethiopia: The African Development Bank Gives $. Million for
Ethiopia-Sudan Railway Study’, Aican Development Bank <www.afdb.org/en/
news-and-events/press-releases/ethiopia-african-development-bank-gives--
million-ethiopia-sudan-railway-study-> [Accessed May ].
9
Vivien Foster and Cecilia Briceno-Garmendia, Aica’s Inastructure: A Time for
Transformation, Washington, D.C., <https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/
handle//>; Jamie Farrell, How Do Chinese Contractors Perform in Aica?
Evidence om World Bank Projects’, SAIS China Africa Research Initiative Working
Paper, Washington, D.C., .
10 See: Deborah Brautigam, Tang Xiaoyang and Ying Xia, ‘What Kinds of Chinese
“Geese” Are Flying to Africa? Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms’, Journal
of Aican Economies, : supplement , , pp. i–.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
266 Y C
Much of this has been channelled through the Forum of China–Africa
Cooperation (FOCAC) political initiative, the triannual summit that serves
as a platform for bilateral meetings and engagement. e more recent Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI) is the latest emanation of this policy impulse. While the
BRI’s mission aims to foster economic connectivity across the Eurasian ‘belt’
and maritime routes – partly through investments in transportation and commu-
nication infrastructure – it also serves Chinese domestic economic needs, by
oshoring domestic excess capacity. ough many African projects’ inception
pre-dates the ocial Belt and Road discourse, both the Light Rail and ADR, the
Kenyan SGR, the new Chinese naval/logistics base in Djibouti, and commercial
port investments have all been folded into the BRI.
Elsewhere, Chinese companies bringing Chinese high-speed rail technology
are competing against European and Japanese rms to construct lines in Southeast
Asia and North Africa. Rail technology has been designated a key strategic
sector. Having developed through foreign technology transfer and deliberate
government support, Chinese rail exports – and the ‘supply-chain export’ of its
manufacturing chain that international railway projects allow – are now a key
opportunity to oshore Chinese domestic overcapacity. Beyond Ethiopia and
Kenya, Chinese rms have competed for railway contractors in Nigeria, where
Chinese nance and rms are constructing a new line from coastal Lagos to the
northern provincial capital of Kano; in Angola, Chinese rms constructed the
Benguela railway line; and has also nanced locomotive purchases in Zambia.
Chinese companies and nancing have also attracted their share of criticism.
Compared to traditional infrastructure nancing from multilateral development
banks, Chinese loans do not mandate the same kind of open competition as World
Bank or other multilateral development bank (MDB) nancing. Infrastructure
nance guarantees are instead tied directly to procurement of Chinese goods
and services. Chinese loans are oen characterised as ‘no-strings attached’, as
they lack the same kind of conditionality over environmental and social protec-
tions that MDB or Western nancing dictates, generating concerns over their
11 Agatha Kratz and Dragan Pavlićević, ‘Norm-Making, Norm-Taking or
Norm-Shiing? A Case Study of Sino-Japanese Competition in the Jakarta-Bandung
High-Speed Rail Project’, ird World Quarterly, :, , pp. –; Michelle Ker,
China’s High Speed Rail Diplomacy, Sta Research Report: US–China Economic
and Security Review Commission, Washington, D.C., ; Uwe Wissenbach and
Yuan Wang, Local Politics Meets Chinese Engineers: A Study of the Chinese-Built
Standard Gauge Railway Project in Kenya’, Policy Brief: China Africa Research
Initiative, Washington, D.C., .
12 Based on SAIS-CARI data.
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C D F A–D R 267
environmental impacts in the context of weak governance and institutions.
Labour relations have also been a source of controversy, as local employment
and treatment of labour has been a source of unrest in Chinese resource and
construction sector projects.
Beyond environmental sustainability, Chinese-nanced projects and infra-
structure also face long-term project sustainability issues. For example, the
decline of the Tazara railroad aer the departure of Chinese engineers, despite
eorts in skills training, showed the failure in long-term knowledge transfer and
in the self-dependence principles that Chinese aid purported to represent.
e
current surge of Chinese infrastructure projects presents similar risks but also
opportunities to correct these earlier failures.
Ethiopia’s Industrial Ambitions
Like the industrialising Asian economies in the s and s, Ethiopia’s
leadership under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) shares characteristics of a ‘developmental state’: an assertive
central state with a strong orientation towards economic growth and poverty
reduction. Under the late prime minister, Meles Zenawi (–),
Ethiopia consciously borrowed and mimicked Chinese and other Asian newly
industrialised economies’ strategies, attracting FDI in targeted export-industries,
as well as leveraging capital from both traditional aid donors and alternative
‘rising powers’ like China.
13 Frauke Urban, Johan Nordensvard, Giuseppina Siciliano, and Bingqin Li, ‘Chinese
Overseas Hydropower Dams and Social Sustainability: e Bui Dam in Ghana and
the Kamchay Dam in Cambodia: Chinese Overseas Hydropower Dams’, Asia &
the Pacic Policy Studies, :, , pp. –.
14
Ching Kwan Lee, e Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment
in Aica, Chicago, .
15
Jamie Monson and Liu Haifang, ‘Railway Time: Technology Transfer And e
Role Of Chinese Experts In e History Of TAZARA’, in Terje Oestigaard, Mayke
Kaag, Kjell Havnevik and Ton Dietz (eds), Aican Engagements, Leiden, , pp.
–.
16
Christopher Clapham, ‘e Ethiopian Developmental State’, ird World uarterly,
:, , –; Toni Weis, ‘Ethiopia’s Vanguard Capitalists’, Foreign Aairs,
May <www.foreignaairs.com/articles/ethiopia/--/ethiopias-
vanguard-capitalists> [Accessed April ].
17 Fantu Cheru, ‘Emerging Southern Powers and New Forms of South–South
Cooperation: Ethiopia’s Strategic Engagement with China and India’, ird World
Quarterly, :, , pp. –.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
268 Y C
Infrastructure is a crucial component of the government’s long-term devel-
opment strategy, and an integral part of Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation
Plans (GTP I and II), which aim to structurally transform the economy from
an agrarian base to an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse in the region.
Railways are only one part of a wider industrial strategy that seeks to use infra-
structure investment to facilitate economic corridors in an export-led growth
model. By lowering the economic and transaction costs of logistics, Ethiopia
seeks to facilitate industrial zone development and its export and manufac-
turing sectors, in turn promoting the long-term structural transformation of the
economy towards higher value sectors. Priority industries have been targeted for
export promotion, including cut owers, textiles and leather.
Borrowing from Chinese and Asian successes in industrial zone development,
Ethiopia has also heavily invested in developing industrial zones across the
country. One, the Eastern Oriental Zone, was the rst Chinese state-sponsored
zone to be constructed, from –. Since then, other zones have been
constructed by GOE, including around Bole airport in Addis Ababa, and in
some cases with Chinese contractors, such as Havassa and Dire Dawa, south
and east of the capital. Further industrial parks are planned in Adama, Mekele
and Kombolcha, all cities along (planned) railway corridors. A total of
integrated agro-industrial parks are also planned across four dierent states,
targeting the development of its agricultural sector.
is focus on railway infrastructure is also connected to the concept of
‘transit-oriented development’ (TOD), which the GOE has also applied to
its urban railway projects, namely the Chinese-built Light Rail Transit in the
Addis Ababa centre. Urban and cross-national railways stimulate investment
through raising land values and dening industrial and commercial development
corridors, which include the numerous industrial zones. e capital inten-
siveness of railways makes them dicult to justify nancially, however, as many
18 Deborah Brautigam, Toni Weis and Xiaoyang Tang, ‘Latent Advantage, Complex
Challenges: Industrial Policy and Chinese Linkages in Ethiopia’s Leather Sector’,
China Economic Review, , , pp. –.
19 A report by Fudan SIRPA notes that ten industrial parks are planned. In ,
Havasa and Bole Lemi will be completed. In , the three parks of Mekele,
Kombolcha and Adama will be implemented. In addition, there are Kilinto, Dire
Dawa, Bahir Dar, Jimma and the ve parks in the airport’s airport logistics park are
scheduled to be completed by . Take the Hawasa Industrial Park as an example.
As of July , the foreign exchange earning capacity was US$ million.
20 Mentioned by several interviewees at the Ethiopian Railway Corporation: //a ;
//b; //; //.
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C D F A–D R 269
Ethiopian emphasised during interviews; it was not the ‘nancial’ returns but
the broader benets to the economy that made it rational.
Railway Development in Ethiopia
Ethiopia is no stranger to railways. e Addis–Djibouti corridor was originally
the site of a narrow-gauge railway, built by the French in , which led to the
emergence and development of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia’s second largest city. From
to , this was run by La Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Djibouto-
Ethiopien (CDE), which was jointly owned : by the governments of
Djibouti and Ethiopia. However, by the s, the rail was in disrepair and out
of service in tracts, due to lack of infrastructure maintenance, poor management
and the competition of road trucking alternatives.
e aermath of the Ethiopia–Eritrean war changed the calculus, making
the Djibouti port connection a veritable lifeline for now-landlocked Ethiopia,
and revitalised the national necessity of railway. Driven by Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi, in the early s the government created a Technical Advisory
Group under the Ministry of Transport and Communications. e group laid
out a master plan for nine railway lines across the country, a total network of
, kilometres of track. Of this, the Addis–Djibouti line was considered a
priority, while the second to be tendered was the section from Awash to Mekele,
the northern regional capital. e drive for railway was not only motivated by
economic necessity, but also as a means for political and social cohesion. Out
of these plans, the Ethiopian Railway Corporation (ERC) was created in
and tasked with managing the future development of the network.
e GOE turned to several international partners, particularly the Agence
du Developpement Français (AFD) during this period, who agreed to fund the
rehabilitation of the railway. However, in the wake of the nancial crisis, the AFD
was unable to extend sovereign concessional loans to the project that would have
attracted private investment for a new concession.
e European Commission in
also oered € million in development aid to nance its refurbishment, but
the nal sum was far too low – ‘ million is a peanut’ quipped one respondent
21 Arthur Foch, ‘e Paradox of the Djibouti-Ethiopia Railway Concession Failure’,
Proparco’s Magazine, , , pp. –.
22 a, Ministry of Transport.
23 b, ERC.
24 Foch, ‘e Paradox’; Dipti Ranjan Mohapatra, ‘An Economic Analysis of the
Djibouti–Ethiopia railway Project’, European Academic Research, :, , pp.
– .
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Map 11.1. Ethiopia’s railway network and Addis–Djibouti railway.
(Source: Wikipedia open source database <https://commons.wikimedia.org/.wiki/File:Map_of_Addis_Ababa–Djibouti_Railway.png>.)
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C D F A–D R 271
at the ERC.
Aer multiple delays and conicts with the contractor, the refur-
bishment was eventually abandoned around . Meanwhile, the old CDE
company was retrenched, with most of the sta absorbed into the state-owned
Metals and Engineering Technology Company (METEC).
Around this time, Ethiopia had already begun negotiations with new
partners for an electried railway line. Both Brazil and India showed interest,
and Indian consultants were also involved in initial pre-feasibility studies.
However, it was Chinese contractors and Chinese nancing that won the
contract. rough a series of high-level bilateral talks, China negotiated not
only a proposal for the new railway but also pledges for a new industrial
sugar plant at Kuraz and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam transmission
line. Chinese contractors oered a modern railway with a completely new
standard-gauge width track, based on Chinese technology and design, and
China Eximbank would guarantee the funds.
Railway Projects in Ethiopia
Of the nine originally planned major national routes, two have been constructed
as of writing: the Addis–Djibouti line and the Awash–Weldiya Line, while
a further extension from Weldiya to Mekele has stalled (see Map .). is
section details the technical design, specications and the chronology behind
the projects.
The Addis–Djibouti Standard Gauge Railway
e ADR is considered a ‘lifeline’: the corridor forms a backbone that connects
landlocked Ethiopia to the major regional port in Djibouti. e ADR is
intended to substitute for the single, poorly maintained road from Addis Adaba,
which currently channels the majority of Ethiopia’s import and exports. e
total length is kilometres standard gauge railway, of which kilometres
25 b, ERC.
26 While the old CDE workshop and assets remain, both in Addis Ababa and in Dire
Dawa (having now been absorbed into METEC property), they have been largely
abandoned and are not functional. e old CDE workshop in Dire Dawa (which
the author visited), is now preserved largely as a museum. e CDE reportedly still
runs a local freight service between Dire Dawa and Djibouti twice a week, though
this could not be conrmed.
27 MOFEC; May , Ministry of Finance.
28 Infrastructure Consortium for Africa, Brieng Memorandum: e Djibouti–Ethiopia
Railway, no place of publication, .
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are double-track between Addis Ababa and Adama and single-track until its
endpoint in Nagad, Djibouti. Like the Kenyan Madaraka express, the ADR is
built according to the Chinese standard gauge model for Chinese rolling stock,
according to Chinese Class standards with Chinese CTCS signalling and
communications systems. Notably, unlike the Kenyan railway, which uses diesel
locomotives, the Addis–Djibouti rail has the added feature of being electried
along the entire route.
Financing for both the ADR’s construction and the power transmission
lines were provided by China’s Eximbank in two separate packages. Project
construction was nanced through a US$. billion commercial loan, which
covers per cent of the total US$. billion construction project cost.
e Ethiopian government, notably, divided the construction contract into
two sections, from Addis Ababa to Mieso and from Mieso to Dewele at the
border with Djibouti, in order to foster competition and faster completion.
As contractor for the Addis light rail transit project, CREC was a compet-
itive choice for the Addis–Mieso section, with the idea that the railway would
eventually be linked to the urban LRT. Meanwhile CCECC won the eastern
section from Mieso to the Djiboutian border.
Contracts were signed at the end of , and construction began in .
Aer winning the Ethiopian contract, CCECC promptly crossed over the
border to lobby the government of Djibouti for the Djiboutian segment of the
contract as well, also facilitating China Eximbank for nancing.
A separate
loan package for rolling stock procurement was arranged with the China North
Industries Group (Norinco), who later signed a contract with Ethiopia’s METEC
to assemble wagons domestically.
Ethiopia already had a bilateral commitment with China to nance a railway
on the provision that Chinese contractors would be awarded its construction.
However, a conict arose regarding the Ethiopian government’s representative.
Originally, the ADR project was going to be supervised by SweRoad, the
same consultant who supervised the construction of the LRT on behalf of the
Ethiopian government. However, under pressure from Chinese nanciers, the
contract with SweRoad was severed and replaced with a Chinese company, the
CIECC, instead.
29 c, ERC.
30 A loan of around US$ million (based on SAIS-CARI data collection eorts).
31 Africa Intelligence, ‘Ethiopia: SweRoad Wants to Be Compensated’, e Indian
Ocean Newsletter, January <www.africaintelligence.com/ion/business-
circles////sweroad-wants-to-be-compensated,-art> [Accessed
April ].
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Implementation of the project was also complicated by inter-governmental
negotiations with Djibouti over joint management as well as immigration
issues, delaying construction. In January , Ethiopia and Djibouti signed
an agreement to create a joint venture company, the Ethio–Djibouti Railway,
to manage the new trunk line. e negotiation of this was lengthy due to the
issue of ownership shares, as Djibouti would face a diminished share compared
to the : split they enjoyed in the concession for the old CDE railway.
e nal agreement took much of a year, and was a compromise of : in
favour of Ethiopia.
Other Railway Projects
The Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit Project (LRT)
e Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit (LRT) project was the rst rail sector
project to be contracted, constructed and commissioned. e project was
awarded to China Railway Engineering Company No. Bureau (CREC) in
, and the Ethiopian government’s representative was Swedish transport
consultant SweRoad. Financing came in the form of a $ million loan from
China’s Eximbank to the ERC, signed in . e loan was set at a commercial
rate, with a -year tenor and three-year grace period. Construction began in
early and was completed in . Since its completion, a three-year contract
for the management and operation (M&O) of the LRT has been awarded to
a Chinese consortium between contractor CREC and Shenzhen Metro – the
latter’s rst overseas venture. During this M&O contract, the project was
expected to transition to build local capacity with the goal to be solely under
Ethiopian management. As of early , the M&O contract had been extended
by one year to August .
The Awash–Kombolcha–Hara Gebeya/Weldiya Railway
e Awash–Weldiya line is the second national network line to be tendered,
and forms the rst of two sections that connects the ADR to Mekele in the
north. e Awash–Kombolcha–Weldiya (AKH) was contracted to Turkish
construction giant Yapi Merkezi, while the Weldiya–Mekele segment was
contracted to Chinese Communications Construction Company (CCCC). e
Turkish-built section began construction in and is close to completion,
though sta on the project estimate the railway will not be operational until
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274 Y C
at the earliest. However, work on the northern section under CCCC
has stalled due to lack of nancing.
Aer winning the construction contract in , Yapi Merkezi played
a signicant role in facilitating a US$ million loan from the Turkish
Eximbank as well as subsequent nancing from European partners, including
Credit Suisse, who supported the project with a total US$. billion loan.
Notably, the AKH railway follows European technical and social standards,
and European nanciers exercised much more stringent requirements for
social impact management schemes for displaced communities along the route.
However, aspects of railway design have had to accommodate to the Chinese
ADR. Beyond its standard gauge, specications for tunnels and curvatures of
the route were altered to accommodate larger Chinese locomotives.
A key technological divergence between the projects are the signalling
systems employed between the two railways, which reflect the differences
in European and Chinese standards. This presents a logistical challenge for
the AKH’s integration with the main ADR trunk line, first in terms of the
hardware to integrate the sections of rail track and of onboard equipment for
the Chinese locomotives, and second the technical and management training
for staff to operate between the two lines. Ensuring cross-compatibility
between the two systems will also require additional funding, a perennial
challenge to Ethiopia’s cash-strapped railway corporation. A further, major
challenge is the financing and construction of corresponding transmission
lines to power the AKH–ADR line. One respondent noted that, “even if
we install everything, we cannot test it because there is no power supply”.
Railway and Ethiopia’s Industrial Ambitions
The industrial export ambitions of Ethiopia’s leadership, combined with the
constraints of its landlocked geography and dependence on the entrepôt of
Djibouti, has made the Addis–Djibouti Corridor an essential component
of its industrialisation strategy. Djibouti has also been a major recipient
32 China Eximbank has yet to disburse funds for the CCCC project, despite the project
being tendered on the basis of the loan, and construction to date has proceeded using
Ethiopian Birr (ETB). ERC representatives state that Eximbank refused to disburse
nance for a second railway until the rst Chinese railway (ADR) was shown to
be successful. is chapter does not delve into the northern project’s issue, but it
does illustrate the wider nancial constraints the Ethiopian government faces in its
infrastructure ambitions.
33 a, Addis Ababa.
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C D F A–D R 275
of Chinese infrastructure financing in the region, and forms an important
strategic Belt and Road partner in the region: as well as being the site of
a new multi-purpose free trade zone, Djibouti is also the site of the first
Chinese ‘naval base’ in Africa.
The Doraleh Multipurpose Port (DMP) which opened in May was
constructed by CCECC, the same contractor as the railway, with a loan
from China Eximbank. At a project cost of US$ million for Phase
and Phase , it has the capacity to handle . million tons of goods per year.
In contrast to Kenyan ports and other major African ports, the Djibouti
Doraleh Container Terminal (which Djibouti holds the status of primary
shareholder) has a higher than average efficiency for the region, with a crane
productivity of moves per crane hour. Ethiopia revenue and customs
also has an internal dry port located at Modjo, between Awash and Addis
Ababa where containers from the railway would be offloaded. These comple-
mentary infrastructures are also essential to the eventual functioning and
economic feasibility of the Addis–Djibouti railway.
According to a UNCTAD report, the volume of road freight trans-
portation between Addis and Djibouti was , trucks per day, which
includes fuel tankers and container vehicles on average. The
capacity of a cargo train of ,–, tons of freight would be equivalent
to between – truckloads. At current volumes of cargo, the report
estimates a need for trains and wagons moving daily. As of early ,
the number of trains moving daily between Addis and Djibouti was four
(two daily in each direction), as the ERC and EDR company sought to start
slowly and increase gradually.
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Table 11.1. Railway projects constructed in Ethiopia.
Project Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit
Addis–Djibouti/Ethio-Djibouti
Railway (EDR)
Awash–Kombombla–Hara Gebeya/
Weldiya Railway (AKH)
Specications Two electried lines:
north–south connecting Menelik
Square to Kality; (. km)
east–west line from Ayat to Torhailoch
(. km)
km total length electried
standard gauge railway
Double track km; single track
km
Chinese Class standard
CTCS Signalling systems
km total length electried
standard gauge railway, single track
European Class
ERMTS Level Signalling system.
Contractor China Railway Engineering Company
(CREC) No. bureau
China Railway Eryuan Engineering
(design)
Employers Rep: Sweroad
O&M: CREC & Shenzhen Metro
Company
China Railway Engineering Company
(CREC) No. bureau
China Civil Engineering Construction
Company (CCECC)
Norinco (locomotive supplier)
Employers Rep: CIECC
O&M: CREC & CCECC
Yapi Merkezi & Yapiray
Bombardier
Molinari (equipment suppliers)
Employer’s Rep: Systra MD
O&M: N/A
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Financing US$ million
per cent China Eximbank
Total cost US$. billion
China Eximbank loan of US$.
billion, in three tranches, signed
(Libor m + ), -year tenor, six-year
grace period. Tenor renegotiated to
years in .
Total cost US$. billion
Turkish Eximbank loan of US$
million, estimated rates between –
per cent, -year tenor.
Credit Suisse loan of US$. billion, in
two tranches of US$ million and
US$ million. Terms unveried.
Other nanciers include Swedish
Exportkreditdamnden, Danish Eksport
Kredit Fonden; Swiss Export Risk
Insurance
Status Commercial operation since
Daily capacity of , passengers.
Construction completed
Commercial operation since January
One passenger train every other day
(Addis/Djibouti)
Four freight trains every day (from
mid-)
Phase I per cent completion, Phase
II initiating. Reading for testing/
operation in /
Source: Author.
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Operational Challenges
Construction of the Addis–Djibouti railway was completed in early .
However, it was not until January that it nally opened to commercial
operation. ough it earned recognition as the rst contemporary railway
constructed in Sub-Saharan Africa, the implementation and operation of the
railway has faced a number of operational challenges in the years following its
completion. ese include technical challenges, low uptake and last-mile issues
and security challenges and local impacts.
Technical Challenges
Electrication and power supply have been a major issue in the commission and
operation of the railway in its rst year. e Ethiopian government intended
the ADR project to run on ‘clean’ energy from Ethiopia’s abundant hydropower
resources, and pushed hard for the railway to be electried along the entire route.
is choice itself was a point of contention – Chinese contractors as well as
American bidders initially submitted tenders for diesel-fuelled railway systems
(as is the case in Kenya’s SGR) but this was a point of no-compromise for
Ethiopian decision-makers. However, the added complication of constructing
the power transmission system and linking it to the physical railway infra-
structure was an added obstacle, as power failures delayed the railway during
the testing phase, and delayed the railway’s commission by a year, despite the
project being physically complete.
Technical issues with the power supply have also been problematic for the
railway during its rst months of operation. Since commercial operations began,
power problems due to overvoltage issues in the stretch between Dire Dawa
and Djibouti has caused repeated service interruptions, and is a challenge to
the Ethiopian Railway Company’s technical capacity.
While the long-term
environmental and economic rationale for electrication holds, in the short and
medium-term it has been a major obstacle to operation.
Last-mile and Uptake
Compared to the neighbouring Chinese-built SGR in Kenya, the Ethiopian
railway’s service uptake in its rst year has been relatively weak, in both passenger
and freight numbers. While railway freight volumes have been rising – the EDR
34 ough lessening in frequency, this is a technical problem where surges in the
electrical grid (due to Ethiopia’s export of power to its neighbours) lead to
overvoltage in the railway transmission line, akin to blowing a fuse.
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company estimates that around a total of , tonnes were transported in
using the railway – less than per cent of this was export goods. Part of this is
due to the last-mile costs of the railway: construction of railway links to the major
industrial zones were not part of the initial trunk line construction contract and
are still being nalised. e construction of the Modjo dry port (which serves
as an inland point where goods can be transported and stored, mitigating long
wait times or hold-up at the port) was completed in , the same year that the
railway began commercial operation. However the added logistics costs of having
to transport to Modjo, and the additional transaction costs of stevedoring and
freight forwarding, has made export rms understandably reticent to use railway
to ship cargo over trucking, which, despite higher overall costs and time, allows
greater exibility over time, and perhaps reliability.
Some of these last-mile costs are also due to political economy factors:
the monopoly of the state-owned Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service
Enterprise (ESLSE) has a monopoly over stevedoring and freight forwarding
services; road freight is also ‘dominated’ by a small number of Ethiopian
companies with vested interests against railway competition.
Social and Security Challenges
While the railway has been relatively low prole in terms of its environmental
impacts compared to neighbouring Kenya, where environmental and wildlife
concerns were a major issue in the construction phase, the Ethiopian railway
has suered from problems of local social impacts in its operation phase, and in
turn been impacted by them. e problem of animal collisions along the track
in the remote Somali regions on the unfenced railway line has been a hindrance
to the railway, which is subsequently unable to run at full design speed. As well
as contributing to local grievances against the railway project, it is a major cost
to the ERC, which have had to regularly compensate local farmers and establish
frameworks to report and manage compensation for such incidents.
More worryingly, ethnic clashes between Afar and Somali groups in the
eastern parts of the country have negatively hampered the operation and
uptake of the railway in its debut year. While these are not directly caused
35 Interview, Addis Ababa, January .
36 Foch, ‘e Paradox’.
37 e Economist () reports on the perverse incentives for camel owners generated
by the policy of compensating livestock killed in collisions on the ADR, as the
compensation price is set too high above market value. is has led to incidents
involving droves of camels killed on the tracks.
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by the railway’s construction, the railway has become a ashpoint for existing
social grievances and inter-ethnic tensions in the region, as a representation of
a federal project and perceived to have little benet for the local communities
that it bypasses. Collisions with livestock have also contributed to these resent-
ments. ere have been reports of multiple instances where the railway and road
were blockaded by local protestors: in one case the passenger train was held
up overnight, with all passengers forced to remain on board until local repre-
sentatives were able to negotiate with protesting groups for their safe release.
is has had an unambiguously detrimental impact on the railway’s uptake and
its reputation: despite improvements in passenger numbers in mid- and a
doubling of freight trains by the third quarter, numbers had fallen by the end
of the rst year due to stoppages caused by security issues.
Implications for African Agency
Despite the challenges highlighted above, many of which were results of decisions
made by Ethiopian actors, the Addis–Djibouti railway is notable in its represen-
tation of a case of an African borrower that has been able to exercise signicant
agency vis-a-vis its Chinese partners. At each design and construction stage,
Ethiopian decision-makers made conscious trade-os with respect to nancing
and implementation.
Overwhelmingly, many of these decisions were governed by political consid-
erations. One ERC respondent even described the pressure of completing the
railways on time to meet the GTP Phase as “a pressure point”. is prioriti-
sation of speed above all else motivated strategic decisions such as the division
of the Addis–Djibouti and Awash–Mekele lines into dual segments, intro-
ducing competition between contractors. is decision incentivised the rms’
lower-cost bids during the tender process – one factor that contributed to the
ADR’s substantially lower total project cost compared to the Kenyan SGR.
However, prioritising speed came with other costs. One major weakness has
been the lacklustre eorts at technology transfer and capacity building during
the project construction phase. One ERC respondent noted that they “tried to
voice needs during the approval process”. e lack of institutional and technical
capacity was a huge disadvantage in bargaining or pressuring external partners.
In contrast, ERC respondents noted a much stronger emphasis on skill training
38 a, CCECC.
39 , ERC.
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during the construction of the Turkish phase of the project, showing they had
learned the second time around from their experiences with Chinese contractors.
ere are several areas where Ethiopia’s elite exercised agency and made
conscious choices within the constraints of technological specifications.
Electrication for the line is also a distinctive feature that the Ethiopian
government strongly pushed, though this has not been without challenges, as
detailed previously. e absence of fencing for large sections of the Addis to
Djibouti route is another example of this. Although fencing is standard design
in China’s railways, the ERC was motivated by considerations both for cost-
saving and for not cutting through local communities. is choice has, as noted,
generated major operational problems with livestock collisions, forcing limits on
train speed and generating local grievances, and illustrates some of the challenges
in transplanting foreign technological systems and practices into new contexts.
e unintended consequences it has generated also demonstrates the need for
new legal and regulatory frameworks.
ese challenges highlight the political will and ambition within Ethiopia’s
governmental institutions, but also the weakness of capacity in terms of evaluating
and managing large-scale infrastructure projects. In the design and negotiations over
the railway, lack of technical capacity has been a hindering factor for Ethiopia. A
long-term meta-challenge for Ethiopia’s railway institutions will be the development
of a managerial infrastructure and a body of technical expertise to accommodate the
dierent technologies that it has absorbed, and to eventually integrate those technol-
ogies. Long-run operation requires the parallel development of regulations, protocols
and operating procedures. By not relying solely on Chinese material technology,
Ethiopia is better positioned to be less dependent on China for this aspect. However,
it now faces the challenge of integrating two foreign systems while developing its
own indigenous standards, and will still depend heavily on the intervention and
management of Chinese operating rms in the meantime.
The Dragon’s Gold: Finance and Debt Issues
Compared to private sector commercial nancing, the major advantage to
Chinese loans has been nancial exibility in the post-construction phase.
One ERC respondent noted the Chinese were more “exible” and “willing to
support you”.
In Ethiopia’s case, the government has struggled to repay external
debts due to the ongoing shortage of foreign reserves. Poor export performance
and years of internal instability le the country by with dollar reserves
40 , ERC.
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worth only one to two months of imports. e shortage has also made many
railway-related expenditures unaordable including spare parts, locomotives and
management fees for the railway’s O&M. On the Eximbank loans itself, aer
the expiration of the grace period, Ethiopia has reportedly struggled to repay the
interest, let alone principal, on the commercial loans. e IMF in classed
the country as ‘at high risk’ of debt distress.
On this, China appears to have been remarkably lenient. Ethiopia was able
to default on its loan repayments to China for one year, which was mutually
agreed upon and came with no penalty. Additionally, in late aer high-level
bilateral talks and via the FOCAC platform, the original SGR loan terms were
renegotiated from a - to -year tenor, or repayment period.
On the part
of the contractors, the SOEs have had to swallow their costs: the optics of the
Belt and Road demands that the projects continue to run, even if the Ethiopian
state cannot pay for them.
e political advantages that Chinese nancing entails have been a boon
for cash-strapped Ethiopia, but it has perverse implications for the balance of
power between the ERC and its Chinese contractors. While the ERC nds itself
dissatised with aspects of the railway’s quality and management, it has limited
bargaining power vis-à-vis the companies. On the ADR, due to delayed O&M
contract payments, ERC sta found themselves regularly surrounded by CREC
and CCECC sta pressuring them for payment; they also made several conces-
sions to assuage contractors. e manager of the light rail notes that it took two
years to pressure the contractor to provide resources for a new maintenance
workshop, and even then it was only made possible by pulling political strings,
negotiating and involving the Chinese economic counsellor’s oce.
As debt sustainability becomes increasingly salient, the Ethiopian government
has sought other options. Under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, there has also
been an eort to diversify away from Chinese debt nancing, towards public–
private partnerships, encouraging private sector involvement in railways. China’s
Eximbank has also shown greater risk aversion to further railway lending, given
the huge losses that have come out of lending to the project. e extension of the
Awash line to Mekele was contracted to China Communications Construction
Company (CCCC); however China Eximbank funding for the project has not
41 , Kality.
42
International Monetary Fund, e Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Sta Report; and Statement by the Executive
Director for e Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Country Reports: Article
IV Consultation, Washington, D.C., .
43 , ERC.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
C D F A–D R 283
been so forthcoming, and it is unlikely until condence is restored in the perfor-
mance of the Addis–Djibouti line.
Conclusion
e Addis–Djibouti Railway reects the opportunities and challenges for
African governments who seek to leverage Chinese development nance, and
the resources that Chinese partners can provide in terms of infrastructure
development resources. Chinese nance has been a valuable resource for
Ethiopia’s infrastructure and industrial development, which implicitly reects
the African developmental state’s conscious mimicry of the Asian development
model. However, choosing Chinese nance has not been without problems
for the African state. Despite decisive leadership and a strategic developmental
vision, Ethiopia has suered in the undertaking of the project due to challenges
of technical capacity and in prioritisation of political goals in the railway’s
construction, at the expense of more diligent evaluation of its technical and
economic feasibility. e challenges that have emerged from its operation have
tested the Ethiopian Railway Company, as well as the managerial capacity of
the Chinese contractors tasked with running the railway as a business. Ensuring
the transfer of skills and embedded knowledge from the Chinese contractors
to local sta, and moving away from dependence on Chinese contractors, will
be a long-term objective and challenge.
For the time being, there is little appetite on both sides for further railway
nance. e nancial burden of the railway’s debt nance has strained the
capacity of Ethiopia’s cash-strapped government to repay, but the case also
illustrates the other side of the ‘debt-trap’ narrative: while Chinese lending
has contributed to higher debt, as a partner it has also shown much-needed
exibility in the face of Ethiopia’s repayment struggles. For China, Ethiopia
remains a key strategic partner, even if, in the railway sector, the light at the
end of the tunnel seems dim.
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
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C 12
Corridors of Opportunity?
African Infrastructure and the Market
Expansion of Chinese Companies
E G
Introduction
In May , I was conducting observations at a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
business fair in Beijing, when I heard a curious exchange between the secretary
general of a Chinese government-aliated BRI think-tank and the director of
a private maritime investment fund. Upon meeting for the rst time, the pair
began discussing their respective jobs and their involvement in BRI. To my
surprise the think-tank secretary general, a BRI ‘veteran’, used the Mandarin term
for BRI – 一带一路, yi dai yi lu – as an ‘activity’, asking whether the director
of the investment fund was ‘belt-and-roading’. Aer that conversation, I began
noticing that, dierently from what I had observed during my previous eldwork
trip to Beijing in , this formulation, whereby the BRI is something that is
‘done’, an ‘activity’ (or even a ‘profession’), had become part of the vocabulary of
state ocials and business people alike. As the BRI continues to make headlines
and to be the subject of lively scholarly and policy debates, this vignette speaks
to the fact that, although no consensus has been reached on what BRI actually
is, what it encompasses, and, in turn, what the implications of being (or not
being) part of it are, the BRI is something ‘to be done’.
In a recent Diplomat commentary, Jiang echoed this sentiment, stating that
‘[t]he BRI is nowadays like a growing adolescent during puberty. It genuinely
aims to do things, but rarely contemplate[s] the “why” and “how”.’ e fog
surrounding the BRI has not, however, hindered its expansion. Since the then
1 你做一带一路吗？ni zuo yi dai yi lu ma?
2
Yuan Jiang, ‘e Continuing Mystery of the Belt and Road’, e Diplomat, March
<http://bit.ly/OVhQXW> [Accessed March ].
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A I C C 287
called One Belt One Road – the literal translation of the Chinese yi dai yi lu –
was rst presented by President Xi in , the BRI has gone from a Eurasian
corridor to a global initiative expected to enhance policy, infrastructure, trade,
nance and people-to-people connectivity. When BRI guidelines were published
by the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission in , this
initiative encompassed the Silk Road Economic Belt – a system of land-based
infrastructure to recreate the Tang Dynasty’s Silk Road – and the Tnenty-First
Century Maritime Silk Road – a maritime connectivity initiative aimed to
increase links between China, South East Asian nations and India. It was only
in , during the BRI Forum, that the African continent was referred to as
the ‘natural’ extension of the BRI and was formally included in this initiative,
with East Africa’s coast as the mooring point.
Since then, an increasing number of African infrastructure initiatives,
including transport corridors, have been labelled as being part of the BRI.
Among the African transport corridors discussed in this volume, the Northern
Corridor, connecting Mombasa port in Kenya to Uganda and Rwanda
(see Lamarque in this volume), and the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Corridor,
connecting Ethiopia to Djibouti (see Chen in this volume), were included
under the BRI umbrella in .
e bundling of African transport corridors
into BRI comes at a time when Sino-African engagement in infrastructural
development has prompted a rapidly expanding body of literature.
Indeed,
3 National Development and Reform Commission, ‘Vision and Actions on Jointly
Building Silk Road Economic Belt and st-Century Maritime Silk Road’, National
Development and Reform Commission, <https://bit.ly/CRNJuI> [Accessed
June ].
4 丝绸之路经济带 – sichou zhi lu jingji dai.
5 世纪海上丝绸之路 – er shiyi shiji haishang sichou zhi lu.
6
Belt and Road Forum, ‘第二届‘一带一路’国际合作高峰论坛圆桌峰会联合
公报 Di Er Jie ‘Yi Dai Yi Lu’ Guoji Hezuo Gaofeng Luntan Yuanzhuo Fenghui
Lianhe Gongbao (Joint Communique of the Leaders’ Roundtable of the Second
Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation]’, Xinhua News, <https://
bit.ly/VCuqM> [Accessed January ].
7 Belt and Road Forum.
8 See among many others Chris Alden, Cobus van Staden, and Yu-Shan Wu,
‘e Flawed Debate around Africa’s China Debt and the Overlooked Agency
of African Leaders’, Quartz Aica, <http://bit.ly/OgmpJi> [Accessed
December ]; Giles Mohan and May Tan-Mullins, ‘e Geopolitics of South-
South Infrastructure Development: Chinese-Financed Energy Projects in the
Global South’, Urban Studies :, , pp. –; Folashadé Soulé-Kohndou,
‘Bureaucratic Agency and Power Asymmetry in Benin-China Relations’, in Chris
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288 E G
the process of respacing
Africa through the development of infrastructure,
unfolding since the late twentieth century, coincided with a push towards
internationalisation of Chinese companies. Already at the end of the s,
the Chinese government had published a set of guidelines under the ‘going
out policy’
for companies to access nancial incentives in the form of prefer-
ential lines of credit, access to preferential foreign exchange rates and trade
insurances to support their overseas expansion.
In the aermath of the / nancial crisis, as overseas demand
for Chinese goods declined, the reduction in exports posed a severe risk to
the protability of many businesses, particularly in the manufacturing and
construction sectors. e Chinese government introduced a stimulus package
which encompassed a broad programme of development of the national infra-
structure systems. However, this was not enough to mitigate the overcapacity
crisis in the construction sector.
To avoid economic stagnation and debt crises,
Alden and Marcus Power (eds), New Directions in Aica-China Studies, London,
, pp. –; Yuan Wang and Uwe Wissenbach, ‘Clientelism at Work? A Case
Study of Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway Project’, Economic History of Developing
Regions, , , pp. –; Ian Taylor and Tim Zajontz, ‘In a Fix: Africa’s Place
in the Belt and Road Initiative and the Reproduction of Dependency’, South Aican
Journal of International Aairs , , pp. –; Pádraig R. Carmody, Ian Taylor
and Tim Zajontz, ‘China’s Spatial Fix and ‘Debt Diplomacy’ in Africa: Constraining
Belt or Road to Economic Transformation?’, Canadian Journal of Aican Studies,
, pp. –; Ian Taylor, ‘Kenya’s New Lunatic Express: e Standard Gauge
Railway’, Aican Studies Quarterly, :–, , pp. –; Xiao Han and Michael
Webber, ‘From Chinese Dam Building in Africa to the Belt and Road Initiative:
Assembling Infrastructure Projects and eir Linkages’, Political Geography, ,
, pp. –; Tom Goodfellow and Zhengli Huang, ‘“Contingent Infrastructure
and the Dilution of ‘Chineseness’”: Reframing Roads and Rail in Kampala and
Addis Ababa’, Enironment and Planning A: Economy and Space, , pp. –.
9 Ulf Engel and Paul Nugent, ‘e Spatial Turn in African Studies’, in Ulf Engel and
Paul Nugent (eds), Respacing Aica, Leiden, , pp. –.
10 走出去政策 – zou chu qu zhengce.
11 Barry Naughton, e Chinese Economy: Transition and Growth, London, .
12 Taylor and Zajontz, ‘In a Fix: Africa’s Place in the Belt and Road Initiative and the
Reproduction of Dependency’.
13 Nicholas R. Lardy, Sustaining China’s Economic Growth Aer the Global Financial
Crisis, Washington, D.C., , p. .
14 Ngai-Ling Sum, ‘e Intertwined Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Hopes/ Fears:
China’s Triple Economic Bubbles and the ‘One Belt One Road’ Imaginary’, Territory,
Politics, Governance, :, , pp. –.
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A I C C 289
companies were told to ‘turn the challenge into an opportunity by “moving
out” this overcapacity’. Former Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei suggested
that new clients and markets should be found overseas and Chinese companies
were encouraged to ‘closely study the investment environment abroad’ and ‘act
without delay’ as ‘a “win–win” future awaits’. e renewed push towards inter-
nationalisation to sustain the recovery of the national economy relied upon
‘exporting’ overcapacity beyond Chinese borders.
Meanwhile, the promotion of the principle that infrastructure needs to be
built, upgraded and rendered more ecient to decrease transportation costs
and increase African states’ ability to deliver economic and social development
continues to dominate international discourse and to be promoted by interna-
tional organisations.
On the African continent, the push towards regional and
15 Yafei He, ‘China’s Overcapacity Crisis Can Spur Growth through Overseas
Expansion’, South China Morning Post, January .
16 Ibid. It should be noted that the Chinese political economy is characterised by an
apparent dichotomy between state oversight and operational autonomy of Chinese
state-owned companies, particularly overseas. See for instance ierry Pairault, ‘Les
Entreprises Chinoises Sous la Tutelle Directe du Gouvernement Illustrées par Leur
Investissement en Afrique [Chinese Enterprises under Direct Supervision as Shown
by eir Direct Investment in Africa]’, Économie Politique de l’Asie, :, ; Kjeld
Erik Brødsgaard, ‘“Fragmented Authoritarianism” or “Integrated Fragmentation”?’,
in Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard (ed.), Chinese Politics as Fragmented Authoritarianism,
London, , pp. –. Although the geo-political signicance of African
infrastructure to the Chinese state should not be overlooked, Chinese companies
operating overseas have increasingly gained autonomy with regards to decision-
making processes for the participation to international tenders for infrastructure
projects not nanced by Chinese actors. Many scholars have underlined the
fragmented nature of Chinese governance in relations to Sino-African engagement,
thus demystifying Fishman’s ‘China Inc’. narrative. Ted C. Fishman, China Inc.: e
Relentless Rise of the Next Great Superpower, nd ed., New York, . See among
others: Katy N. Lam, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises in West Aica, London,
; Ian Taylor and Yuhua Xiao, ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity: “China Inc”. and Its
“Imperialism” in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Asian Politics & Policy :, , pp. –;
Deborah Brautigam, Xiaoyang Tang, and Xia Ying, What Kinds of Chinese ‘Geese’
Are Flying to Aica? Evidence om Chinese Manufacturing Firms, Washington, .
17
Sum, ‘e Intertwined Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Hopes/ Fears: China’s
Triple Economic Bubbles and the ‘One Belt One Road’ Imaginary’.
18 Ulrikke Wethal, ‘Building Africa’s Infrastructure: Reinstating History in
Infrastructure Debates’, Forum for Development Studies, :, , pp. –;
Paul Nugent, ‘Africa’s Re-Enchantment with Big Infrastructure: White Elephants
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290 E G
continental integration
has played a key role in repositioning infrastructure
at the centre of African developmental agendas.
at of the African Union
(AU), for instance, aims to ‘connect Africa with world-class infrastructure’
and
the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates a current ‘nancing gap’ of
US$– billion a year to reach this goal. In other words, the conjunction
of the growing demand for infrastructure in Africa and the necessity to address
China’s over-accumulation crisis through the ‘moving out’ of overcapacity
created the conditions for the proliferation of Chinese participation to Africa’s
infrastructure, including transport corridors.
Nonetheless, increased engagement also meant more scrutiny. e sustain-
ability of China–Africa engagement has been questioned by political leaders,
civil society organisations and the public well beyond Africa. Debt sustain-
ability concerns have emerged as African governments’ debt to China increases,
and security concerns grow in parallel with the increase in risk assessment
mechanisms. us, this chapter aims to explore Chinese interests in African
transport corridors, suggesting that participation in Africa’s transport corridor
development is prompting Chinese companies in related and unrelated sectors
to venture along corridor routes to expand their businesses. To do so, I will
rst discuss the two main vehicles for China–Africa engagement, namely the
FOCAC and the BRI. In this section, I will rst underscore China’s own
experience in infrastructure construction and transport corridor development,
to then investigate the inclusion of African transport corridors in the BRI and
FOCAC. In the second section, I will explore the challenges to the sustainability
of Chinese engagement in African transport corridors, focusing on Chinese loan
conditionalities and security presence. Lastly, in the conclusion, I will reect
on the key ndings.
Dancing in Virtuous Circles?’, in Jon Schubert, Ulf Engel and Elisio Macamo
(eds), Extractive Industries and Changing State Dynamics in Aica, London, ,
pp. –; Didier Péclard, Antoine Kernen and Guive Khan-Mohammad, ‘États
d’Émergence: Le Gouvernement de la Croissance et du Développement en Afrique’,
Critique Internationale, , , pp. –.
19 See Daniel C. Bach, Regionalism in Aica: Genealogies, Institutions and Trans-State
Networks, London, .
20 Nugent, ‘Africa’s Re-Enchantment with Big Infrastructure: White Elephants
Dancing in Virtuous Circles?’.
21 African Union, Agenda : e Aica We Want, Addis Ababa, .
22
AfDB, Aica’s Inastructure: Great Potential But Little Impact on Inclusive Growth,
Abidjan, .
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A I C C 291
Channelling Sino-African Engagement
e rst time China formally engaged with African nations continent-wide was
in at the Bandung Asian–African Conference in Indonesia. Starting from
ideology-driven engagement in the s, China’s foreign policy for Africa has
evolved into engagement mainly driven by pragmatism, as China has attempted
to assume a leading role among developing countries. e economic growth of
China drove the leadership of many African, Asian and Latin American states
to increasingly look to China as a possible strategic partner, and economic
engagement assumed a central role in China–Africa relations. As early as the
s, growing China–Africa engagement brought to light the need for an inter-
national forum to facilitate multilateral co-operation. Moving away from bilateral
coordination was deemed necessary to address the concerns of asymmetric
power between China and single African nations, as well as to channel Chinese
engagement towards initiatives aimed at continental integration.
On the one hand, continental integration has been at the centre of Africa’s
developmental agenda since the early independence period. Already in ,
the Organisation of African Unity was established to safeguard the conti-
nent’s political independence and secure its economic development. Africa’s
integration agenda was then relaunched through the Lagos Plan (), which
proposed the consolidation of African countries into regional economic
communities (RECs). e RECs are envisioned to operate as building blocks
for wider forms of integration, such as the AU’s Agenda mentioned earlier.
On the other hand, China’s limited experience in multilateral co-operation
was already recognised as a challenge to China–Africa engagement in the last
decade of the twentieth century.
erefore, several African leaders suggested
the formation of a platform for engagement with China, referring to other
23 Delegates from Asian and African countries participated in the Bandung
conference held in Indonesia, and in this setting what Chinese scholars consider
Zhou Enlai’s ‘Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence’ were brought as the base
of Chinese foreign policy. ese principles, namely mutual respect for territorial
integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal aairs,
equality and mutual benet and peaceful coexistence still guide, at least rhetori-
cally, Chinese foreign policy and are said to be the basis of China’s African policies
of and . See Bruce Larkin, China and Aica, –: e Foreign
Policy of the People’s Republic of China, Berkeley, , p. .
24 Chris Alden, China in Aica, London, , p. ; Anna Samson, ‘A “Friendly
Elephant” in the Room? The Strategic Foundations of China’s Multilateral
Engagement in Asia’, Security Challenges, :, pp. –; Henning Melber,
‘Europe and China in Sub-Saharan Africa: Which Opportunities for Whom?’, in
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292 E G
multilateral platforms such as the European Union–Africa Summit or the
Tokyo International Conference of African Development.
Within China,
scholars also called for the government to further their eorts in providing
a platform and a framework for Sino-African engagement. ese factors,
together with Chinese companies’ requests for support in entering African
markets and the pressure caused by African nations establishing diplomatic
relations with Taiwan,
all contributed to the creation of the Forum on China
Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
Since its formation, FOCAC has served several purposes. First, it has
been a platform to evaluate the evolution of the relations between China
and African nations and put China–Africa co-operation initiatives on public
display. Second, FOCAC oers the opportunity to set the agenda for the
next three years, dening both Chinese and African nations’ key projects
and diplomatic agendas. ird, in addition to ministerial meetings attended
by government ocials, FOCAC oers ocials and businesspeople several
opportunities to carry out detailed discussions over future plans in the many
FOCAC thematic sub-sessions. Although nancial commitments witnessed a
substantial increase – jumping from US$ billion in to US$ billion in
investment in – FOCAC commitments have also reected the evolving
nature of China–Africa engagement. Table . summarises the key commit-
ments made by China to African counterparts between and .
Xing Li and Abdulkadir Osman Farah (eds), China–Aica Relations in an Era of
Great Transformations, Farnham, , pp. –.
25 Guimei Yao, ‘中非合作论坛及其对中非经贸合作的影响 Zhong fei hezuo luntan
ji qi dui zhong fei jingji hezuo de yingxiang [Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and
Its Impact on China-Africa Economic Cooperation]’, in Gongyuan Chen (ed.), 中
国与非洲新型战略伙伴关系探索 Zhongguo yu feixhou xinxing zhanlue huoban
guanxi tansuo [Exploration of the New Strategic Partnership between China and
Africa], Beijing, , p. .
26
Fei Gao, ‘当前非洲形势和中非关系 Dangqian feizhou xingshi he zhong fei guanxi’
[Current Situation in Africa and China-Africa Relations], 西亚非洲 Xiya feizhou
(West Asia and Africa], , , pp. –.
27 Sven Grimm, e Forum on China-Aica Cooperation (FOCAC) – Political Rationale
and Functioning, Stellenbosch, .
28 中非合作论坛 – zhong fei hezuo luntan.
29 Ian Taylor, e Forum on China-Aica Cooperation (FOCAC), London, .
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Table 12.1. Key FOCAC nancial commitments.
2006 2009 2012 2 015 2 018
Double aid to Africa
by
Debt cancellation:
matured interest-free
loans to governments
US$ billion
investment in
dierent forms
China–Africa
Development Fund
US$ billion
US$ billion in
concessional loans
US$ billion for
African small
and medium size
enterprises
Debt cancellation:
interest-free loans
due to mature by the
end of
US$ billion
investment
China–Africa
Development
Fund (established
in ) received
a budget of US$
billion
US$ billion investment in
dierent forms:
– US$ billion in concessional
loans and export credits*
– US$ billion in grants
– US$ billion to the China–
Africa Development Fund
– US$ billion in loans to African
small- and mid-sized rms
– US$ billion for the
enhancement industrial capacity
$ million towards peace and
security over ve years
US$ billion in investment in
dierent forms:
– US$ billion new credit lines
– US$ billion in grants, interest
free and concessional loans
– US$ billion for a fund for
development nance
– US$ billion to nance imports
from Africa
– US$ billion from Chinese
companies
China–Africa Peace and Security
Fund under BRI
* Concessional loans (援外优惠贷款 – yuanwai youhui daikuan) are one of the two preferential loan types that the Chinese government provides
through China Export Import Bank (China Exim Bank), together with preferential buyer’s credit (优惠买方信贷 – youhui maifang xindai) – a type
of export credit. Typically, concessional loans are xed interest rate (– per cent) loans with long-term maturity (usually – years) and requires
an inter-governmental agreement. Preferential buyer’s credit does not require an inter-governmental agreement, and it refers to a loan covering up to
per cent of the total cost of a project implemented by a Chinese company, its interest rates are similar to those of concessional loans.
Sources: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, Forum on China–Aica Cooperation Johannesburg Action Plan (–) (Beijing: Ministry
of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, ; Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, Forum on China–Aica Cooperation Beijing Action Plan (–
(Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, ); Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, Forum on China–Aica Cooperation Beijing Action
Plan (–) (Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, ; Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, Forum on China–Aica Coopera-
tion Addis Ababa Action Plan (–) (Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, ; Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, Forum
on China–Aica Cooperation Beijing Action Plan (–) (Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, ; Ministry of Foreign Aairs
of the PRC, Forum on China–Aica Cooperation Sharm El Sheik Action Plan (–) (Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
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for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
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294 E G
During the FOCAC China also pledged to donate a US$ million
building purposed to host the headquarters of the AU. e ocial publications
that resulted from the FOCAC directly mention the AU parliament for
the rst time, reiterating support to pan–African initiatives already displayed in
the China’s Africa Policy () published earlier the same year. During the
FOCAC, Chinese President Xi discussed the need for a comprehensive
strategic partnership between China and Africa, and the need to align FOCAC
commitments to the AU’s Agenda , which already shared the objective of
enhancing connectivity. Notwithstanding the rhetorical alignment of FOCAC
objectives with the African regional and continental integration agenda, African
national governments and RECs continue to drive the push for connectivity
(see Cissokho in this volume). e rhetorical emphasis on partnership would
suggest support for African integration initiatives, particularly when several
Chinese political gures, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and the
Minister for Foreign Aairs Wang Yi, have expressed support for the importance
of an African goal of connectivity and integration.
According to the AfDB,
Chinese engagement has been focusing on projects that involve single countries,
instead of regional projects involving multiple countries. e Africa Growing
Together Fund jointly managed by the People’s Bank of China and the AfDB
was supposed to be a response to this claim,
but little eorts were made in
directing these funds to multilateral projects.
Aer the nancial crisis of /, as funding from countries belonging
to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
and Bretton Woods institutions decreased and the demand for infrastructural
investment in the African continent continued to increase, China began to ll
the gap. Between and , the African transport sector alone recorded a
total of US$. billion commitments from Chinese lenders. Simultaneously,
Chinese construction companies’ revenues from projects in Africa grew from
US$ billion in to US$. billion in , the highest ever. e infra-
structure nancing trend, together with the grouping of many transport infra-
structure projects – and the corridors they belong to – under the BRI umbrella,
30 For the full policy paper see Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, China’s Aican
Policy, Beijing, <https://bit.ly/xiXf EH> [Accessed April ].
31 Yi Wang, Wang Yi: Pan-Aicanism Is the Direction for Aica and in Tune with the
Times, Beijing, .
32 AfDB, AfDB Announces US$ Billion Fund with China, Abidjan, .
33 China Africa Research Initiative (CARI), ‘CARI Loan Database’, Washington,
<http://bit.ly/PwgCb> [Accessed January ].
34 Ibid.
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A I C C 295
underlines the relevance of connective infrastructure to Chinese actors. Indeed,
the strong focus on infrastructure connectivity of BRI is rooted in China’s own
experience of developing transport corridors.
Between and , China used . per cent of its yearly gross domestic
product (GDP) for the development of its national infrastructure system. e
high spending is underpinned by China’s infrastructure-driven development
model. In China, infrastructural investments were rst directed towards estab-
lished economic hubs (for instance Shanghai or Chongqing), and then to
emerging economic ones (such as Kunming or Xiamen). Nonetheless, the
Chinese experience with infrastructure development is not linear and faces several
sustainability challenges both nationally and internationally, and I will return
to this point soon.
China’s infrastructure development process culminated in
the creation of national transport corridors to supply coal – the main source of
China’s energy for the past years – and other natural resources to the eastern
part of the country, where most of industrial and nancial activities are located.
Nationally, China’s focus on the construction of transport corridors is motivated by
the asymmetrical distribution of natural resources and production activities across
the territory. Since the s, coal has been transported across China through
interregional transport infrastructure systems, known as coal corridors.
In , China became a coal importer, and the necessity to import from
Russia and Mongolia arose,
culminating in the development of the China–
Mongolia–Russia economic corridor in . e China–Mongolia–Russia
economic corridor is one of the six proposed corridors under the umbrella of the
BRI. At this initial stage, the BRI was envisioned to address the Asian ‘infra-
35
Yougang Chen, Stefan Matzinger, and Jonathan Woetzel, Chinese Inastructure:
e Big Picture, Hong Kong, .
36 Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duo and Nancy Qian, On the Road: Access to Transportation
Inastructure and Economic Growth in China, Boston, .
37
Xiaoyang Tang, ‘Co-Evolutionary Pragmatism: Re-Examine “China Model” and Its
Impact on Developing Countries’, Journal of Contemporary China, :, ,
pp. –.
38
Shengkui Chen, Zengrang Xu, and Lei Shen, ‘中国省际煤炭资源流动的时空演
变及驱动力 Zhongguo sheng ji meitan ziyuan liudong de zhi kong yanhua ji qudong
ji (Spatial-Temporal Processes and Driving Forces of Interprovincial Coal Flows in
China]’, 地理学报 Dili xuebao (Acta Geographica Sinica], :, , pp. –.
39 Hongyan Yu, ‘China Becomes a Net Coal Importer in ’, China Daily,
February .
40 Crossing Central Asia, the BRI also envisions the development of the ‘New Eurasia
Land Bridge’, a railway link through Russia and Kazakhstan towards Europe and
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296 E G
structural gap’. rough several renements, the BRI has gone from a corridor
initiative to promote the development of Asian connective infrastructure to a
global initiative encompassing projects in a diverse array of sectors, from infra-
structure to education. For instance, in January , Lin Yifu, Honorary Dean
of Peking University National School of Development suggested that African
markets could bring signicant opportunities to Chinese companies’ interna-
tionalisation journey, and should therefore be part of BRI. In the same month,
Special Envoy to the AU Zhang Ming met with Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, then
Chairperson of the AU Commission to sign a memorandum of understanding
concerning the development of infrastructure networks across the continent.
en, during the BRI Forum, the African continent was formally included
in the BRI and, in , the BRI was integrated in the FOCAC agenda, giving
China yet another opportunity to showcase the opportunities BRI could bring
to African nations, particularly in the infrastructure sector.
In Kenya, the port of Lamu stands out as a recent addition to the BRI maritime
portfolio. Lamu port – currently under construction – is nanced by the Kenyan
government and is being built by China Road Bridge Corporation, a subsidiary of
the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) China Communication Construction
Company. is SOE is no stranger to the Kenyan construction market. In May
, China Road Bridge Corporation completed the construction of the
kilometres standard gauge railway (SGR) between the capital Nairobi and the
the ‘China–Central Asia–West Asia Economic Corridor’ linking China to the
Central Asian republics, Iran and Turkey. In South Asia, the BRI umbrella covers
the ‘China–Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor’, expected to connect China
to South East Asian nations. e ‘China–Bangladesh–India–Myanmar Economic
Corridor’ is currently the slowest-moving BRI project in the region, due to the
security concerns among India and China, which have both attempted to retain
their sphere of inuence in South Asia though bilateral investment or cross-border
infrastructure funding. See Christian Wagner, ‘e Role of India and China in
South Asia’, Strategic Analysis, :, , pp. –. Lastly, the ‘China–Pakistan
Economic Corridor’, expected to run from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang
to Gwadar port in Pakistan is also facing security challenges, as Gwadar port poses
a threat to India’s inuence in the Bay of Bengal. See David Brewster, ‘Is India
“Losing” the Bay of Bengal?’, e Interpreter, March .
41 Yifu Lin, ‘林毅夫：‘一带一路’需要加上‘一洲’ Lin Yifu: ‘yi dai yi lu’ xuyao
jia shang ‘yi zhou’’ (Lin Yifu: e ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ Needs to Add ‘One
Continent’], China Observer, .
42 He Xiao, ‘African Agenda with the Belt and Road Initiative’, in Cai Fang and
Peter Nolan (eds), Routledge Handbook of the Belt and Road, London, , pp.
–.
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This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
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and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A I C C 297
country’s biggest port, Mombasa.
It should be highlighted that the contract
for the construction of Lamu port was signed in , the same year the BRI
was rst presented, while the loan for the construction of the Nairobi–Mombasa
SGR was agreed between China Exim bank and the government of Kenya in
, when Kenya was not yet part of the BRI. Yet, during the BRI Forum of
, both Lamu port and the Nairobi–Mombasa SGR were included under the
BRI umbrella, together with the broader corridor initiatives they belong to.
e Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor, which
encompasses Lamu port, is now considered one of the ‘key strategic corridors’
of the BRI even though it was initiated and designed by the governments of
the three African countries it is envisioned to connect. Similar examples of
pre-existing corridors that were relabelled BRI can be found in the Horn of
Africa – such as the Djibouti–Addis Ababa Railway discussed in this volume
by Chen – and in South East Asia.
Bundling African transport corridors into the BRI can serve several purposes.
e BRI is a global initiative that would require capital-intensive investment over
a long period of time. rough the inclusion of pre-existing projects in the BRI it
is possible to continue its expansion and begin to address the investment sustain-
ability concerns. Moreover, the BRI provides a platform to showcase connectivity
projects and attract further investment for other components of the corridors,
such as operation contracts, special economic zones (SEZs), or urban devel-
opment projects. e BRI label thus serves its purpose of accelerating the quest
for funding, either from other Chinese actors, national or international investors.
Nonetheless, an increased spotlight can also throw into relief the many concerns
surrounding Chinese-sponsored infrastructure projects. Some of these concerns
were addressed by President Xi during the FOCAC meeting in Beijing.
At this meeting, in addition to a pledge of US$ billion in dierent forms,
the forum orbited around issues arising in China–Africa engagement. First, debt
sustainability was at the centre of discussions. Even though China pledged the
same amount as in , the composition of these nancial commitments stands
43
Uwe Wissenbach and Wang Yuan, Aican Politics Meets Chinese Engineers: e
Chinese-Built Standard Gauge Railway Project in Kenya and East Aica, Washington,
; Taylor, ‘Kenya’s New Lunatic Express: e Standard Gauge Railway’.
44
Belt and Road Forum, ‘第二届‘一带一路’国际合作高峰论坛圆桌峰会联合公
报 Di er jie ‘yi dai yi lu’ guoji hezuo gaofeng luntan yuanzhuo fenghui lianhe gongbao
[Joint Communique of the Leaders’ Roundtable of the Second Belt and Road
Forum for International Cooperation]’.
45 Interview, Chinese scholar, Beijing, May .
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298 E G
out. Overall, preferential and concessional lending decreased, while interest-
free loans increased. e pledge also included US$ billion, which should be
invested by Chinese companies directly, reducing the government’s commitments
to US$ billion. Second, Xi Jinping also reiterated the (at least rhetorical)
importance of the non-interference principle guiding Chinese foreign policy.
is was a way to address the critiques received from the West, concerned that
China’s rst foreign military base overseas in Djibouti was the beginning of
China’s military expansion. e formulation of the non-interference foreign
policy principle, however, predates the rapid increase of Chinese engagement
overseas and the country’s growing prominence in the international sphere,
raising questions about its contemporary signicance.
Infrastructural Engagement ‘with Chinese Characteristics’
Chinese funding is marketed as having ‘no-strings attached’, as the ocial
narrative suggests that loans from Chinese financial institutions do not
require conditionality. In this sense, Chinese loans are portrayed as being in
stark contrast to Western lending, which typically relies on conditionalities of
‘good governance’, environmental protection and ethical labour practices. Yet,
although Chinese loans might be portrayed as being without conditionality,
‘China attaches commercial conditions to its loans’, thus relying on ‘loan-debt
contractuality’.
e loan frameworks not only vary according to the funder, but
are also tailored ad hoc for each project. For instance, the case of the
46 Deborah Brautigam, ‘China’s FOCAC Financial Package for Africa : Four
Facts’, CARI, September .
47
Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC, ‘China’s Initiation of the Five Principles
of Peaceful Coexistence’, Beijing: Ministry of Foreign Aairs of the PRC,
<https://bit.ly/glVm> [Accessed May ].
48 Chris Alden, ‘China and Africa: e Relationship Matures’, Strategic Analysis,
:, , pp. –; Chris Alden, ‘Beijing’s Security Plans beyond Djibouti
and the Horn’, Italian Institute for International Political Studies, September
<www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/beijings-security-plans-beyond-djibouti-
and-horn-> [Accessed April ]; Zheng Chen, ‘China Debates the
Non-Interference Principle’, e Chinese Journal of International Politics, :, ,
pp. –.
49 Mohan and Tan-Mullins, ‘The Geopolitics of South-South Infrastructure
Development: Chinese-Financed Energy Projects in the Global South’, p. .
50
Sum, ‘e Intertwined Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Hopes/ Fears: China’s
Triple Economic Bubbles and the ‘One Belt One Road’ Imaginary’, p. .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A I C C 299
resource-for-infrastructure (RFI) agreement signed between the Angolan
government and China Exim bank in to nance the post-conict recon-
struction of the infrastructure system oers a good example. e RFI framework
allows governments to access nancing for the development of infrastructure
‘without …having to produce sucient revenues to support its nancing’, but
instead pledging to provide resources for the repayment.
China’s deal with Angola was inspired by the agreement between China
and Japan, when Japanese companies developed transport and power infra-
structure in China in exchange for oil. e agreement with Angola required
a xed price for oil to be exported to China, but when oil prices dropped
during the nancial crisis of /, the Angolan government was forced
to borrow again in order not to default on the US$ billion loan, further
adding to the national debt. Similarly, a RFI loan agreement between
the Ghanaian government and China Development Bank amounting to US$
billion was renegotiated in light of uctuating oil prices.
From Mohan and
Tan-Mullins’ analysis, it emerges that the loan conditions ‘meant that China
remained relatively insulated from the risk of non-payment’ while succeeding
in entering the Ghanaian oil market, speaking to the long-term outlook oen
associated with Chinese engagement in Africa.
Similarly, risk associated with funding infrastructure is also mitigated through
the stipulation of conditionalities with regards to the acquisition or hiring of
Chinese goods and services. Indeed, the majority of Chinese loans require the
signing party to contract a Chinese construction company without any public
51 Havard Halland, et al., Resource Financed Inastructure, Washington, , p. .
52 Deborah Brautigam, China in Aica: What Can Western Donors Learn?, Oslo,
.
53 Kevin Acker, Deborah Brautigam, and Yufan Huang, Debt Relief with Chinese
Characteristics, Washington, .
54 Mohan and Tan-Mullins, ‘The Geopolitics of South-South Infrastructure
Development: Chinese-Financed Energy Projects in the Global South’.
55 Ibid, p. .
56 ierry Pairault, ‘Examining the Importance of the New Silk Roads for Africa and
for Global Governance’, in Maria A Carrai, Jean-Christophe Defraigne and Jan
Wouters (eds), e Belt and Road Initiative and Global Governance, Cheltenham,
, pp. –.
57 See for instance Michael Mitchell, Omoruyi Ehizuelen and Hodan Osman Abdi,
‘Sustaining China–Africa Relations: Slotting Africa into China’s One Belt, One
Road Initiative Makes Economic Sense’, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, :,
, pp. –.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
300 E G
tendering processes. For instance, China Exim Bank loans are contingent on at
least per cent of the contract content – such as machineries, materials, or
goods – to be Chinese. Between and , Chinese actors have funded
one-h of infrastructure projects in Africa and have constructed one-third of
them.
It is estimated that per cent of projects with Chinese funding also
have a Chinese contractor, with decision-making processes taking place behind
closed doors.
Chinese contractors are oen chosen through private decision-making among
Chinese ministries and the China International Cooperation Development
Agency (CICDA) in Beijing. CICDA replaced the State Aid Department
in , yet the channelling processes for infrastructure sponsoring overseas –
and foreign aid more generally – have not evolved greatly since the mid-s.
In , then Chinese Minister for Trade Wu Yi formalised new guidelines
for foreign aid – which also includes concessional loans for infrastructure
development – based on the principle that nancing should be channelled
through already consolidated aid processes.
Although only slight changes
have taken place in the decision-making processes for overseas infrastructure
development, the modalities of engagement have evolved greatly in the past
decades, prompting growing alarm over the sustainability of China–Africa
infrastructure development.
In Tanzania, former President Magufuli’s policy shi lead to the Bagamoyo
port project being suspended indenitely. e government of the previous
president, Jakaya Kikwete – who was born in Bagamoyo– and Chinese port
operation giant China Merchants Port had signed a US$ billion framework
58
Deborah Brautigam, ‘Aid “With Chinese Characteristics”: Chinese Foreign Aid and
Development Finance Meet the OECD-DAC Aid Regime’, Journal of International
Development, :, , pp. –; Lucy Jane Corkin, ‘Chinese Construction
Companies in Angola: A Local Linkages Perspective’, Resources Policy, :, ,
pp. –.
59 Deloitte, Aica Construction Trends Report , Nairobi, .
60 Jonathan E. Hillman, ‘e Belt and Road’s Barriers to Participation’, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, <http://bit.ly/GGoquo> [Accessed
March ]; Suisheng Zhao, ‘China’s African Relations and the Balance with
Western Powers’, in Jing Men and Benjamin Barton (eds), China and the European
Union in Aica, Farnham, , pp. –.
61 Interview, Chinese scholar, Beijing, July ; Interview, Senior Representative
of Chinese state actor, Beijing, July .
62
Deborah Brautigam, ‘Aid “With Chinese Characteristics”: Chinese Foreign Aid
and Development Finance Meet the OECD-DAC Aid Regime’, p. .
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.
This book is based on research from a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant
for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns
and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]
A I C C 301
agreement in .
Bagamoyo port was expected to address the congestion
of the rst Tanzanian port, Dar es Salaam, but it was stalled in following
the election of former President Magufuli. His concerns revolved around
the unfavourable contract conditions, given that China Merchants Port was
rumoured to have set the condition of years for the port operation conces-
sion. e long concession period was seen as an attempt to reduce the govern-
ment’s sovereignty over Tanzanian assets, as the Chinese company was believed
to have set this condition to eventually take control of the port.
In summary, lack of transparency and accountability are a recurring critique
of the ‘no-strings attached’ engagement. For example, in a newspaper
article suggested that Mombasa port had been agreed as guarantee in case the
government of Kenya defaulted on the loan repayment, which resulted in
public discontent and demands for accountability.
Kenyan President Kenyatta
stated he would publish the contract of the Nairobi–Mombasa SGR to put
rumours to rest, yet no contract has been released. Against this background,
ongoing debates among African elites, business people and civil society organi-
sations are centred on the evaluation of whether the infrastructure being
constructed reects the needs and demands of African countries.
Debt Sustainability Concerns and African Transport
Corridors
African governments’ debt to Chinese state actors was estimated to be between
US$billion and US$ billion in , amounting to per cent of their
total stock of debt, compared to US$ billion owed to the World Bank.
With regards to infrastructure, Chinese lending to African nations increased
signicantly over the last decade. Between and , Chinese policy banks
63 Tairo Apolinari, ‘Tanzania Surrenders Bagamoyo Port Project to Chinese Firm’, e
EastAican, October .
64 Interview, Senior Manager of Chinese state-owned company, Hong Kong, May
.
65 e Citizen, ‘How the Dream for a Port in Bagamoyo Became Elusive’, e Citizen,
June .
66 Paul Wafula, ‘Chinese Firm Withholds Key Detail in SGR Deal Review’, Daily
Nation, December .
67 Edwin Okoth, ‘SGR Pact with China a Risk to Kenyan Sovereignty, Assets’, Daily
Nation, January .
68 Jubilee Debt Campaign, Aica’s Growing Debt Crisis: Who Is the Debt Owed To?,
London, , pp. –.
302 E G
oered loans and credit lines to African countries for a total of US$.
billion, most of which was devoted to infrastructure construction, oen imple-
mented by Chinese contractors. In , African governments remained the
main funders of infrastructure projects, funding around . per cent of
infrastructure projects valued at US$ million or more, while funding from
Chinese sources increased to . per cent from . per cent in .
e
Infrastructure Consortium for Africa highlights an increase in Chinese funding
from US$. billion in to US$. billion in . Figure . shows
69 Deborah Brautigam and Kevin Gallagher, ‘Bartering Globalisation: China’s
Commodity-Backed Finance in Africa and Latin America’, Global Policy, :, ,
p. .
70 Deloitte, Aica Construction Trends Report .
71 Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA), Inastructure Financing Trends in
Aica – , Abidjan, , p. .
Figure 12.1. China’s commitments to fund African Infrastructure (–)
in US$ billion.
(Sources: ICA, Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA,
; ICA, Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ;
ICA, Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ; ICA,
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ; ICA,
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ; ICA,
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ; ICA,
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ; ICA,
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, ; ICA,
Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – , Abidjan: ICA, .)
A I C C 303
the trends in Chinese commitments to fund infrastructure projects in Africa
between and , which have shown a substantial increase in ,
and .
e sustainability of Chinese loans and the nature of their conditionalities are
being questioned by political leaders, civil society organisations and the public
across African nations, China and the West. In Washington, the long-standing
narrative of the ‘China reat’ was considerably fuelled by the Trump admin-
istration, which labelled Chinese lending practices ‘debt trap diplomacy’. is
suggests that Chinese loans are aimed to ‘trap’ borrowing countries in unrepayable
loan agreements and to then appropriate infrastructure upon default.
e ‘debt
trap’ narrative builds upon the case of the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka, where,
upon default of loan repayments, the Chinese state-owned China Merchants
Ports obtained the concession of the port and surrounding land for years.
Nevertheless, through the analysis of loan data, scholars have suggested that
Chinese nanciers have been turning to debt relief programmes – such as debt
restructuring or cancellation – as opposed to asset seizures. us, the political
narrative constructed around the case of Hambantota is hardly convincing, as
this case represents an exception rather than a model being replicated elsewhere.
What instead captures the attention in regard to the case of Hambantota
port is its multi-sector model, as the port was envisioned to follow the
Port+Park+City model. This engagement blueprint is inspired by the
experience of Shekou industrial zone in the s, which is considered the
72 For further details on the origins and development of the ‘China reat’ narrative
see Herbert Yee and Ian Storey, China reat, Hoboken, ; in China-Africa
studies see Deborah Brautigam, ‘A Critical Look at Chinese ‘Debt-Trap Diplomacy’:
e Rise of a Meme’, Area Development and Policy, :, , pp. –; and Stacey
Links, ‘Ascertaining Agency Africa and the Belt and Road Initiative’, in Florian
Schneider (ed.), Global Perspectives on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Amsterdam,
, pp. –.
73
Brahma Chellaney, ‘China’s Debt-Trap Diplomacy’, Project Syndicate, <http://
bit.ly/pJRuK> [Accessed November ].
74 Maria Abi-Habib, ‘How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port’, e New York
Times, June ; Jonathan E. Hillman, ‘Game of Loans: Sri Lanka’, in Jonathan
E Hillman (ed.), e Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century,
New Haven, , pp. –.
75
Acker, Brautigam, and Huang, ‘Debt Relief with Chinese Characteristics’; Deborah
Brautigam, Yufan Huang and Kevin Acker, Risky Business: New Data on Chinese
Loans and Aica’s Debt Problem, Washington, .
76 港口+园区+城市 gangkou + yuanqu + chengshi.
304 E G
rst ‘seed’ of the Shenzhen SEZ, which is now oen hailed as the ‘template’ of
the so-called ‘China Model’ of development.
Now also an ocial blueprint
of the BRI, the Port+Park+City Model encourages Chinese actors to not
only participate in port construction, but also to develop a network of related
infrastructure surrounding the port, specically SEZs. is understanding
of transport corridors (see Nugent and Lamarque in this volume) resembles
the latest characterisation of the BRI umbrella discussed earlier. e now
suspended Bagamoyo port project was envisioned to include a SEZ funded by
the Omani Sovereign Fund, while the Kenyan government is currently accepting
privately initiated investment proposals
for the concession of operations of
Lamu port. In the latter, China Merchants Port is negotiating the development
of Lamu metropolis and a SEZ as envisioned under the LAPSSET corridor
masterplan. e sustainability of China Merchants Port’s investment oer
for Lamu operations relies on securing dierent contracts under evaluation by
Kenyan state actors.
First, there is a concessional contract for Lamu port operations of years,
which is deemed to be double what the Kenyan Ports Authority considers the
life of the physical infrastructure of a port. Second, there is the design and devel-
opment of Lamu city. ird, land is to be allocated for the creation of a SEZ.
Simultaneously, China Merchants Port is rumoured to have requested a contract
for Mombasa port expansion, which echoes the concerns raised around the
rumoured collateralisation of Mombasa port as part of Nairobi–Mombasa SGR
contract discussed earlier.
e negotiation of sustainable nancing agreements
continues to remain a priority.
In Kenya, total debt to Chinese lenders amounts
77
Xiangming Chen, ‘. e BRI and Development’, Regional Studies Policy Impact
Books, :, , pp. –.
78 Belt and Road Initiative Portal, ‘‘一带一路’建设海上合作设想 Yi dai yi lu jianshe
haishang hezuo shexiang [Vision for Maritime Cooperation Under the Belt and
Road Initiative]’, Belt and Road Initiative Portal, <http://bit.ly/GFPQAr>
[Accessed June ].
79 ese dier from public tenders in that they are unsolicited.
80
Gediminas Lesutis, ‘How to Understand a Development Corridor? e Case of
Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia-Transport Corridor in Kenya’, Area, November
, pp. –.
81 Interview, ocial of state corporation, Lamu, February ; Interview, senior
ocial of state corporation, Mombasa, March ; Interview, ocer of state
authority, Nairobi, March .
82 ierry Pairault, ‘Djibouti’s Chinese Debt’, e China Aica Project, July ;
Chris Alden and Lu Jiang, ‘Brave New World: Debt, Industrialisation and Security
A I C C 305
to about per cent of these governments’ total debt. Even considering recent
debt restructuring initiatives in light of the COVID- pandemic,
concerns
remain over whether any of the Chinese-funded projects are at risk of default
on loan repayment.
China’s Security Presence Along African
Transport Corridors
Initial analysis of overseas engagement suggested that Chinese companies
undertake projects in countries considered ‘risky’ by other nanciers, such as
Western rms or international organisations.
Yet, this trend does not mean
that all Chinese actors have a higher appetite for risk. Instead, the increase in
economic interests in African nations led to the realisation that the Chinese
internationalisation journey might be at risk due to political and economic
shocks. During the early stages of the ‘going out’ process, the limited interna-
tional expertise of Chinese companies pushed abroad by the government meant
that excessive risks were being taken. Risk assessment mechanisms have been
a focal point of project evaluation in recent years, showing that more attention
is paid to the debt sustainability issues. is also derives from the negotiation
trajectories of African partners and Chinese companies, the latter of which
are aware of possible risks posed by highly-publicised projects, such as those
in China–Africa Relations’, International Aairs, :, , pp. –; Taylor,
‘Kenya’s New Lunatic Express: e Standard Gauge Railway’; Carmody, Taylor and
Zajontz, ‘China’s Spatial Fix and ‘Debt Diplomacy’ in Africa: Constraining Belt or
Road to Economic Transformation?’.
83
Jubilee Debt Campaign, ‘Africa’s Growing Debt Crisis: Who Is the Debt Owed
To?’; Constant Munda, ‘Public Debt Repayment Hits Shtrn for First Time’,
Business Daily, February ; Alden and Jiang, ‘Brave New World: Debt,
Industrialisation and Security in China–Africa Relations’. In Kenya, the govern-
ment’s debt rose substantially in light of the expiration of grace periods in December
: see Business Daily, ‘Payment of External Debt Nearly Doubles in Months
to Dec’, Business Daily, March .
84
CARI, ‘Debt Relief Dashboard’, CARI, <http://bit.ly/lkWTBS> [Accessed
March ].
85 Bala Ramasamy, Matthew Yeung and Sylvie Laforet, ‘China’s Outward Foreign
Direct Investment: Location Choice and Firm Ownership’, Journal of World
Business, , , pp. –.
86 Katy N. Lam, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises in West Aica, p. .
306 E G
under the BRI umbrella.
At the same time, Chinese companies are increas
-
ingly embedded in the socio-economic environment of the host country.
In
alone, Chinese rms established , companies in Africa, most of which
are in Zambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda and
Angola. is signals that companies’ roles are evolving, perhaps moving away
from dependency on Chinese nancing for their business expansion.
When Chinese engagement with Africa nations began increasing at the end
of the twenty-rst century, Chinese companies were ‘ying the ag of non-inter-
ference’, and they had little capacity to be involved in security. Chinese interna-
tionalisation processes carried on as if no security risks were present. is approach,
however, changed due to Chinese companies’ increasing economic interests and
the growing numbers of Chinese citizens living and working on the African
continent. e turning point occurred during the Arab Spring in , when China
needed to evacuate over , Chinese nationals from Libya. Due to China’s
then weak security capabilities in the region, they had to rely on Greek ships to
complete the rescue mission. Unable to protect its citizens and their businesses,
China’s security strategy shied. Not surprisingly, during the FOCAC of ,
China made its rst security commitments to African counterparts, announcing
further nancial assistance. During the FOCAC, President Xi announced
the establishment of the China–Africa Peace and Security Fund, which encom-
passes security assistance programmes under BRI, and the rst China–Africa
Peace and Security Forum took place in , suggesting that security is gaining
a prominent role in China–Africa engagement.
87 Kejin Zhao, ‘‘一带一路’不应回避的十大问题 ‘Yi dai yi bu’ bu ying huibi de shi da
wenti [Ten Issues at Cannot Be Overlooked in the Belt and Road Initiative]’, 鳳
凰 Fenghuang (Phoenix), <http://bit.ly/OSVnz> [Accessed September
].
88 Elisa Gambino, ‘La Participation Chinoise dans le Développement des Infrastructures
de Transport au Kenya: Une Transformation des Géométries du Pouvoir? (Chinese
Participation in Kenyan Transport Infrastructure: Reshaping Power-Geometries?)’,
Critique Internationale, , , pp. –.
89
Interview, Director of investment fund, Beijing , May ; Interview, Manager of Risk
Management Company, Nairobi, July ; Lam, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises
in West Aica, pp. –. Ministry of Commerce of the PRC, ‘中国对外投资发展
报告 Zhongguo dui wai touzi fazhan baogao [Report on the Development of China’s
Outward Investment]’, Beijing: Ministry of Commerce of the PRC, , p. .
90 Alden, ‘China and Africa: e Relationship Matures’, p. .
91 Alden, ‘Beijing’s Security Plans beyond Djibouti and the Horn’.
92 Alden, “China and Africa: e Relationship Matures’.
A I C C 307
e most notable example of Chinese presence in African security is the
presence of the rst overseas military base of the People’s Liberation Army Navy
(PLAN) in Djibouti. Negotiations concluded in , but this military base
had long been in the making. In , China had joined anti-piracy missions
in the Gulf of Aden, and the PLAN had been surprisingly public about the
need for an overseas base to support their anti-piracy missions. Once the
Chinese military base in Djibouti became a reality, the debate around the use
of overseas ports for Chinese military purposes intensied. Chinese maritime
investment began to be associated with the so-called ‘String of Pearls Strategy’,
which refers to the creation of a Chinese maritime network across the Indian
Ocean with the nal goal of becoming a maritime power.
According to this
line of enquiry, China is seeking to increase its inuence in the Indian Ocean
through the expansion of its dual-use port network, but evidence of Chinese
militarised maritime expansion remains highly questionable.
China’s increasing
focus on security should not be seen merely through the lens of securitisation,
but as an attempt to support Chinese companies’ further internationalisation.
Indeed, even more vital to the market expansion and capital growth of Chinese
companies – a path underpinned by the development–security nexus – is the
engagement of Chinese security companies in African nations.
Although security along African transport corridor routes is only discussed
with regards to coastlines, the surge in risk assessment practices has resulted in
the further presence of Chinese companies in the eld of risk mitigation, shiing
to a more active approach in addressing security issues that pose a risk to the
economic development of Chinese businesses. e expansion of the BRI umbrella
to African transport corridors signies that security services will be required
along corridor routes. ese security services range from static guards deployed
to protect construction sites, manufacturing plants, residential compounds or
people, to security in hostile environments, for instance anti-piracy. In the
93 Susanne Kamerling and Frans-Paul Van Der Putten, ‘An Overseas Naval Presence
without Overseas Bases: China’s Counter-Piracy Operation in the Gulf of Aden’,
Journal of Current Chinese Aairs, :, , pp. –.
94 David Brewster, ‘Silk Roads and Strings of Pearls: e Strategic Geography of
China’s New Pathways in the Indian Ocean’, Geopolitics, :, , pp. –.
95 Dual-use refers to a type of port design which makes the port viable for both
commercial and military purposes, usually associated with deep-water ports. Toshi
Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Star Over the Pacic: China’s Rise and the
Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, Annapolis, ; Devin orne and Ben
Spevack, Harboured Ambitions: How China’s Port Investments Are Strategically
Reshaping the Indo-Pacic, Washington, .
308 E G
Horn of Africa, the Chinese maritime security company Hua Xin Zhong
An is widely employed on commercial ships.
Nearby, on the coastal land
of Kenya, where the threat of Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab persists,
the Chinese SOEs building the LAPSSET corridor component at Lamu
port employ former Chinese People’s Liberation Army personnel as heads
of security, in charge of training Kenyan security contractors and watching
over the construction site perimeters through security cameras. Employing
former members of the military or the police is a common practice in the
security industry worldwide, but until Chinese national laws required
chief executive ocers of Chinese security companies to be former People’s
Liberation Army or police members. New security markets also mean new
opportunities to engage in the intelligence eld. Most of the services oered
by Chinese intelligence rms are in the public security sphere, such as facial
recognition or trac control programmes deployed in collaboration with
governments. In , the Zimbabwean government and the Chinese intel-
ligence company CloudWalk signed a strategic partnership for a country-
wide facial recognition programme. In , Huawei installed the ‘Safe City’
system made of , cameras and trac surveillance systems in Nairobi.
e spatial expansion and business development of Chinese contractors in
a specic country leads to more companies in the same, related, or unrelated
industry also venturing into the same country to expand their businesses. e
case of China–Djibouti engagement oers insights into the interconnectedness
amongst Chinese actors in dierent, yet interrelated, sectors. In addition to
hosting the rst PLAN overseas military base, Djibouti–China engagement in
the infrastructural sector has prompted reections on the sustainability of the
debt accumulated,
but has also prompted a series of new engagements in other
sectors. Currently, it is estimated that Djibouti’s debt to Chinese lenders is over
per cent of the country’s GDP, as Chinese nancing for infrastructure –
such as the expansion of the Goubet Salt port, the Addis–Djibouti Railway
96 Hua Xin Zhong An (Beijing) Security Services, 华信中安(北京) 保安服务 –
hua xin zhong an (Beijing) baoan fuwu. See Alessandro Arduino, e Footprint of
Chinese Private Security Companies in Aica, Washington, .
97 Interview, employee of Chinese SOE, Lamu, February .
98 Arduino, e Footprint of Chinese Private Security Companies in Aica.
99 Hongpei Zhang, ‘Chinese Facial ID Tech to Land in Africa’, Global Times, May
.
100 Pairault, ‘Djibouti’s Chinese Debt’.
101
Mordechai Chaziza, ‘China Consolidates Its Commercial Foothold in Djibouti’,
e Diplomat, January .
A I C C 309
and the Doraleh Port – amounts to a total of US$ million. Nevertheless,
this comes as Djibouti and China have established a strategic partnership to
strengthen economic relations through an array of projects. ese not only
revolved around transport infrastructure quickly folded under the BRI umbrella,
but also on the development of related projects, such as a SEZ and a pipeline
to transport oil to the port of Djibouti. In December , China Merchants
Port signed a US$ million deal with the Djibouti state-owned Great Horn
Investment Holding for the development of a Port+Park+City project on the
model of the abovementioned Shekou in Shenzhen.
In other words, the networks among Chinese companies and their relations
with state actors – what Lam refers to as ‘Chinese embeddedness’ – are
vital. is suggests that the relationship between state support in the form of
nancial incentives and Chinese companies’ operations abroad is central to
their spatial expansion. As Chinese companies expand their businesses along
African transport corridors – and BRI routes – the services of other Chinese
companies, such as security and intelligence rms, will be needed, thus
suggesting a similar ‘going out’ path to that of their clients. is engagement
pattern, as shown in this chapter, is increasingly taking place along the routes
of African transport corridors.
102 CARI, ‘CARI Loan Database’.
103 Xinhua News, ‘China, Djibouti Agree to Establish Strategic Partnership’, Xinhua
News, November .
104 Jevans Nyabiage, ‘China Merchants Signs US$ Million Deal for Shekou-Style
Revamp of Djibouti Port’, South China Morning Post, January .
105 Lam, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises in West Aica, p. .
106
See for instance Arduino, e Footprint of Chinese Private Security Companies
in Aica; Donghoon Hahn and Keun Lee, ‘Chinese Business Groups: eir
Origins and Development’, in Sea-Jin Chang (ed.), Business Groups in East Asia:
Financial Crisis, Restructuring, and New Growth, Oxford, , pp. –; Jun
Zhao, ‘Ownership Structure and Corporate Diversication Strategies of Chinese
Business Groups’, Management Research Review :, , pp. –; Lucy
Jane Corkin, ‘Chinese Construction Companies in Angola: A Local Linkages
Perspective’; Haifang Liu, ‘Associations as Social Capital of ‘New Chinese
Migrants’ in Africa: Empirical Investigations of Ghana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania
and South Africa’, in Scarlett Cornelissen and Yoichi Mine (eds), Migration and
Agency in a Globalising World, London, , pp. –; Lam, Chinese State-
Owned Enterprises in West Aica.
310 E G
Conclusion
e growing participation of Chinese actors in the elaboration of African
transport corridors can be traced to the intersection of the push towards the
internationalisation of Chinese companies and the increasing demand for infra-
structure funding across the African continent. Chinese contractors and funding
bodies are furthering their presence in Africa through channels such as the
FOCAC or the BRI, but they are not shielded from challenges and critiques.
Here, I specically discussed the questionable nancial sustainability of Chinese
funding for Africa’s infrastructure and the growing Chinese security engagement
along African transport corridors. On the one hand, debt to Chinese nanciers
continues to pose sustainability challenges even in light of shiing negotiation
trajectories of African governments. On the other hand, the increased expansion
of Chinese contractors on transport corridor routes suggests that companies in
related and unrelated sectors will follow.
I have also highlighted that, even when African transport corridors are
being grouped under the BRI umbrella, China is not setting the agenda for
corridor development. Indeed, the corridors agenda had already been adopted
by African actors – at the continental level, such as the AU and the AfDB,
and at the government level, as the Kenyan and Djiboutian cases exemplied –
before Chinese actors became major players in Africa’s infrastructural devel-
opment. is means that Chinese actors engage in segments of African transport
corridors rather than in the agenda setting and governance of said corridors. Yet,
African transport corridors can be neatly folded into the BR I, pointing to their
relevance to Chinese actors. rough Chinese partner companies and business
groups ranging from contractors to third-sector services already operating in the
African countries involved in corridor development, other Chinese companies
can identify possible clients with the goal of expanding their overseas businesses.
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317
Index
Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire , , , ,
Abidjan–Lagos Corridor (ALCo) , ,
, , , , , , –, ,
, , ,
Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Organisation
(ALCO) , ,
Abidjan—Ouagadougou Railway
Corridor , ,
Abram, Simone
Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway
(ADR) , , , , –, ,
, ,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia , ,
Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit ,
, , ,
Addis–Djibouti Corridor , , ,
Addis–Djibouti rail line
Addis–Djibouti railway ,
Adedeji, Adebayo
Africa Growing Together Fund
Africa Regional Transport Infrastructure
Network (ARTIN) , , ,
African Continental Free Trade Area
(AfCFTA) , , , ,
African Development Bank (AfDB) ,
, , , ,
African Governance and Space project
(AFRIGOS) , , n.
African Integrated High Speed Railway
Network (AIHSRN)
African Union (AU) , , , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
African Union’s Programme for
Infrastructure Development in
Africa (PIDA) , , , , ,
–,
Agenda , , ,
Ahidjo, Ahmadou Babatoura ,
Ahmed, Abiy
Akuo-Addo, Nana ,
ALCO Management Authority
(ALCoMA)
Alpers, Edward
Aného, Togo n.
Anglo-German-Belgian Boundary
Commission
Angola ,
Ankole kingdom , , ,
Antwerp, Belgium port
APM Terminals , ,
Asante kingdom ,
Asia , , , , , , , , ,
, ,
Asian Development Bank , ,
Asigamé see also Grand Marché
Awash–Kombolcha–Weldiya Railway
(AKH) ,
Bagamoyo Port, Tanzania , , ,
Baganda (people) n., ,
Bakiga (people) ,
Bakooki (people)
Bamako , , , , , ,
Bandung Asian–African Conference
Basigi (people)
Belgian Congo ,
Benin , , , , , , ,
, –
Berbera Port, Somalia
Bolloré Africa Logistics , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
, , ,
Bolloré, Vincent , n.
318 I
Boluda Corporation Maritima ,
Bordereau Electronique de Suivi de
Cargaison (BESC) ,
Borderless Alliance , , , ,
n., ,
bribery , , , , , , ,
see also corruption
Brookings Institution ,
Buganda kingdom , , , , , ,
, , ,
Buhari, Muhammadu , ,
Bunyoro kingdom , , , , , ,
, ,
Bunyoro-Kitara empire ,
Burkina Faso , , , , , ,
, , -, , , , ,
Burkina Shippers Council see also
Conseil Burkinabè des Chargeurs
Burkinabé (people) ,
Burundi ,
Cameroon , , , , , ,
, –, , , , ,
Cameroon Fourth Railway Project
Cameroon Ministry of Transport ,
Cameroon Railway Master Plan
(RMP)
Campaoré, Blaise, president of Burkina
Faso
Camrail see also Regifercam
cash crops , , , ,
Central African Republic (CAR) , ,
,
Central Corridor, of Africa , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
,
Central Corridor railway, of Africa
Central Corridor Transit Transport
Facilitation Agency (TTFA)
Chad , , , ,
Chaln, Brenda , n.
China , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
and debt , , , , ,
,
and Ethiopia , , ,
and infrastructure , ,
and loans , , , , ,
, , , , ,
China–Africa Peace and Security
Fund
China Civil Engineering Construction
Company (CCECC) , ,
China Development Bank ,
China Eximbank , , , ,
, ,
China Harbor Engineering Company
(CHEC) n.,
China International Cooperation
Development Agency
(CICDA)
China Merchant Holding International
(CMHI) ,
China Merchants Port , , ,
, ,
China North Industries Group
(Norinco)
China Railway Engineering Company
(CREC) , ,
China Road and Bridge Company
(CRBC) , ,
Chinese Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) , , , , –,
, , , ,
Chinese Communications Construction
Company (CCCC) , ,
Chinese Export Import (EXIM)
Bank , , , , ,
–, n., , , , ,
Climate, Infrastructure and Environment
Executive Agency (CINEA) ,
coastal ports , , , ,
Cogefar-Hochtief consortium ,
Cold War , , ,
colonial period , ,
colonial rule see also colonial period
colonialism ,
Common External Tari (CET) ,
Compaoré, Blaise
I 319
Comtois, Claude
Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) ,
connexité , , ,
Conseil Burkinabè des Chargeurs
(CBC) , , , , , ,
,
Conseil d’Entente
continental integration , , , ,
Cooper, Frederick
corridor competition , , , ,
corridor (denition) , , , , ,
corridor development , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
corridor infrastructure , , , ,
corruption , , , , , ,
Cosco shipping company
Côte d’Ivoire , , , , n.,
, , ,
Cotonou, Benin port , ,
COVID- , , , , , , ,
, see also pandemic
Cowen, Deborah
Credit Suisse
Dakar–Bamako axis , , , ,
,
Dakar Bamako Railway (DBF)
Dakar–Bamako railway line , ,
Dakar, Senegal , , , , ,
–, , , , ,
Dangote, Aliko
Dangote Group
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania , , , ,
, , , , , ,
Debrie, Jean ,
debt , , , , , , , , ,
, , , ,
and China , , , ,
and Ethiopia , ,
public , ,
sustainability , , , ,
Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) , ,
development corridor , , , , ,
Development Projects Observed
(Hirschman)
Dikoumé, Albert
Dire Dawa, Ethiopia
Djibouti , , –, , ,
Djibouti–Addis Ababa railway , ,
Djibouti Doraleh Container
Terminal ,
donors , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
Doraleh Multipurpose Port (DMP)
Douala, Cameroon , , ,
Douala–Edea railway , , ,
Douala–Yaounde Corridor ,
Douala–Yaounde railway line , ,
, , ,
Dubai Port World (DPW) , ,
Durban, South Africa , ,
duty (fee) , , , , , ,
, see also taxes
EAC Economic Partnership Agreements
(EPAs) , ,
East African Business Council
(EABC)
East African Community (EAC) , ,
, , , , ,
East India Company ,
Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) , , ,
, , , , –
economic corridors , ,
ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme
(ETLS) , ,
Enlai, Zhou n.
Ethio-Djibouti Railway
Ethiopia , , , , , , ,
, , , ,
Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation
Plans (GTP) ,
Ethiopian People ’s Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF) ,
320 I
Ethiopian Railway Corporation
(ERC) , , , ,
Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service
Enterprise (ESLSE)
Ethiopia–Sudan railway
Europe , , , , , , , , ,
, ,
European–African Association
European Commission n., , ,
,
European Development Fund
(EDF) , ,
European Economic Community
(EEC) , , , n.,
European Investment Bank (EIB)
European Transport Corridors
European Union (EU) , , , , ,
,
nancial crisis () , , , ,
,
Fioramonti, Lorenzo
First Railway Project of Cameroon ,
, ,
Five Principles for Peaceful
Coexistence n.
Forum on China-Africa Cooperation
(FOCAC) , , , ,
, , ,
France (French) , , , , ,
, ,
Francophone countries , , , ,
,
free trade , , , , , ,
free trade area (FTA)
French colonial administration , ,
frontier zones , , , ,
gatekeeping revenue , , ,
German Ministry for Economic
Cooperation
Germany, government of ,
Ghana –, , , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
Ghana Ports and Harbour Authority
(GPHA) , ,
global nancial crisis ,
global trade , , ,
Gnassingbé , Eyadéma , , n.,
,
Gnassingbé, Faure (son of Eyadema) ,
, ,
Gnassingbé, Kpatcha (son of
Eyadema) n.
Godard, Xavier
Good, Charles ,
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
Grand Marché
Great Britain (British) , , , , ,
,
Great Lakes Region , , , , ,
Gulf of Guinea , , ,
Hambantota Port
Haute Volta see also Burkina Faso
Hawassa, Ethiopia
He Yafei
Hibou, Beatrice
hinterlands , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , ,
,
Hirschman, Albert , ,
HIV/AIDS ,
Horn of Africa , , , , ,
Hume, David , , ,
India , , n.
industrialization ,
industrial parks , ,
informal transactions , , , ,
infrastructure decit , , , ,
infrastructure investment , , ,
inland container depots (ICDs) ,
,
Institutional Architecture for
Infrastructure Development in
Africa (IAIDA)
I 321
interlacustrine region , ,
interlacustrine trade
International Development Agency
(IDA)
internationalization , , , ,
International Monetary Fund (IMF) ,
, , ,
International Road Federation
international trade , , , , ,
,
intra-African trade ,
intra-regional exchange/trade , , ,
investors , , see also donors
Italo-German consortium ,
ivory , , , , , , ,
Japan
jealousy of trade ,
Jiang, Yuan
Kabaka Semakokiro kingdom ,
Kabarega (king of Bunyoro)
Kampala, Uganda , , , ,
Karagwe, Tanzania ,
Katwe salt mine , ,
Kayes Bridge ,
Kayes, Mali ,
Kenya , , , , , , ,
, ,
Kenyan Ports Authority n.,
Kenyatta, Uhuru n., , ,
, ,
Keynesian economics ,
Khartoum, Sudan
Kigali, Rwanda , , ,
Kigezi, Uganda , , ,
Kikwete, Jakaya
Kooki kingdom
Kopyto, Igor
Kraké–Seme border , , ,
Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau
ban k
Kuru–Maiduguri railway
Kuti, Fela
La Compagnie du Chemin de Fer
Djibouto- Ethiopien (CDE) ,
La Coopérative Nationale des
Transporteurs Routiers du Togo
(CNATROT)
Lagos, Nigeria port , ,
Lake Tanganyika ,
Lake Victoria , , , , ,
Lamu port project , , , ,
Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia
Transport (LAPSSET)
Corridor , ,
liberalization ,
light rail transit (LRT) , , ,
Lin Yifu
Lomé Container Terminal (LCT) ,
, ,
Lomé Corridor , ,
Lomé, Togo , , , –, , ,
long-distance trade , , , , ,
longue durée , ,
Maastricht Treaty
Maersk Group , ,
Magufuli, John , , , , ,
Mali , , , , , , ,
Maputo Corridor
Mattheis, Frank
Mediterranean Shipping Company
(MSC) , , , , , ,
,
Mekele, Ethiopia
Mélon, Jean-Francois
Meridian Port Services (MPS) ,
Metals and Engineering Technology
Company (METEC) ,
metropole , ,
micro-nations , n.,
migrants ,
mining , , , , , , , ,
missing links , , , ,
322 I
mobility index
modernity ,
Modjo, Ethiopia ,
Mombasa, Kenya , , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge
Railway
motorization
Mpango, Phillip
multilateral development bank
(MDB) , ,
multimodal corridor
multimodal systems ,
multi-modal transport , ,
MV Kaawa ferry ,
MV Kabalega ferry ,
Nacala Corridor ,
Nacala Development Corridor
Nagad, Djibouti
Nairobi, Kenya , ,
Nairobi–Mombasa SGR , , , ,
Naivasha, Kenya , ,
National Development Plan (NDP)
nationalism , ,
Newbury, David ,
New Partnership for Africa’s Development
(NEPAD) , ,
Nigeria , , , –
Ninot, Olivier
Nkrumah, Kwame
non-tari barriers (NTB) , , ,
,
Non-Tari Measures (NTM) n.
Northern Corridor , , , ,
, , , ,
Northern Corridor SGR project ,
, ,
Northern Corridor Transit and Transport
Agreement (NCTTA)
Notteboom, eo , ,
Nyamwezi traders ,
Oce du Chemin de Fer du
Transcamerounais (OCFT) ,
, , , , ,
oil boom ,
oil crisis
oil-producing countries ,
Olympio, Sylvanus
Omugabe of Ankole
One Belt One Road
One Road, One Vision , ,
one-stop border posts (OSBPs) , ,
, , , , ,
Organisation des Transporteurs du Faso
(OTRAF) , , , , ,
, ,
Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD)
Organisation of African Unity ,
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso , ,
, , , ,
Owen, Wilfred , ,
pandemic , , ,
People’s Liberation Army Navy
(PLAN) ,
Peters, Deike ,
Piot, Charlie ,
Piraeus, Greece port
Plan for an Emerging Senegal (PES)
port authorities (PAs) , , , ,
Port Autonome de Lomé (PAL) ,
,
Port+Park+City Model , ,
private indirect government , ,
privatisation , , , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
Programme for Infrastructure
Development in Africa
(PIDA) , , , , , ,
–, , ,
PSA International n.
public–private partnerships (PPP) ,
, , , ,
Raballand, Gaël ,
railway infrastructure , ,
Regifercam company , , , ,
—, , ,
I 323
regional economic communities
(RECs) , , , , , , , ,
, , ,
Regional Economic Communities
Transport Coordination Committee
(REC-TCC)
regional integration , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
regionalism , ,
Reli Assets Holding Company Ltd
(RAHCO)
resource-for-infrastructure (RFI)
Ri Valley ,
roadblocks , , , , , ,
Roman Empire , , , ,
Roosevelt, Franklin
Rostow, Walter Whitman
Rwanda , , , , , , ,
, , ,
Sahel–Benin Union n.
Sahelian countries , , , ,
Sahel Region ,
Sall, Macky
salt trade , , , , , ,
Seck, Assane
Second Railway Project , ,
Second World War
Senegal , , , ,
Senegalese corridor , , , ,
Shekou industrial zone ,
Shenzhen special economic zone
Silk Road , ,
Singapore , n.,
single market , ,
Sino-Africa ,
Skinner, William
slave trade , , ,
Smith, Adam ,
Sofrerail company , ,
South Africa , , ,
special economic zones (SEZ) , , ,
,
Speke, John Hanning
standard gauge railway (SGR) , , ,
,
in Kenya , , , , , ,
in Tanzania , ,
in the Northern Corridor , ,
,
Nairobi-Mombasa , , , ,
state-owned enterprises (SOE) , ,
Strauss-Khan, Dominque
Sub-Saharan Africa , , , ,
Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy
Program (SSATP) , ,
Swahili region , , ,
SweRoad ,
syndicats see also unions
Tabora, Tanzania
Taiwan
Tanganyika ,
Tanzania , , , , , , ,
Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority
(TAZARA) n., , ,
taxes , , ,
Tema, Ghana , , , , ,
–, , ,
Tema–Ouagadougou Corridor , ,
, , ,
Terevaninthorn, Supee
think tanks , , ,
Togo ,, , , , , , ,
, , , ,
and Ghana , ,
and unions , ,
ecology , ,
Port , , , , , , ,
private investment , , ,
Togo Invest Corporation
Togo Shippers Council
Tony Blair Institute for Global
Change
Tooro kingdom ,
Towa-Fotso, Luc
trade barriers
trade routes , , , , , , ,
324 I
traders , , , , , ,
African , ,
coastal , , , , , ,
small-scale , , , , , ,
,
trade wars
TradeMark East Africa (TMEA)
Trans-African Highway (TAH) , ,
, , ,
Transcam ,
Transcamerounais n., –, ,
trans-continental corridors ,
Trans-European Transport Network
(TEN-T) , , , , –
transit-oriented development
(TOD)
transit trade , , , ,
transnational spaces ,
transport corridor (denition) ,
transport corridor development ,
transport infrastructure , , , , ,
, , , , , , , ,
,
and corridors , , , ,
and economic development , ,
,
and the World Bank , ,
post-war , ,
Transport Research Program , ,
Transrail
transshipment hubs
Treaty for the Establishment of the East
African Community
Treaty of Rome
truckers , , , , , ,
Burkinabe , , ,
Ghananian , , ,
unionized , ,
Tufour, Augustine Kwabena
Turkish Eximbank ,
Uganda , , , , , , ,
, ,
Uganda Railway
Uganda Railways Corporation ,
UNAIDS West Africa Initiative
undeveloped countries ,
UN Economic Commission for Europe
(UNECE)
Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest
Africaine (UEMOA) , , ,
,
Union Nationale des Transporteurs
Routiers (UNATROT) , ,
,
unions , , , , –, , ,
, ,
United Nations Economic Commission for
Africa (UNECA) , , ,
United States (US) , , ,
UN Transport and Communications
Decade in Africa ,
Unyamwezi see also Tananzia
urban centres , , , ,
Uzoigwe, G.N. ,
Vansina, Jan ,
Vincent, Daniel n.
Volta Lake
Wade, Abdoulaye ,
Walvis Bay
Walvis Bay Corridors
Walvis Bay–Lubumbashi–Ndola
Corridor
wandewa see also traders
West African Economic and Monetary
Union (WAEMU) ,
West Africa Trade Hub (WATH) ,
,
World Bank , , , , , , , ,
, ,
and Cameroon , , , ,
,
and China , ,
and privatization , , , ,
World Bank Western Africa
Department
World Food Programme (WFP)
Wu Yi
xenophobia
I 325
Xi Jinping , , , ,
Yaounde–Ngaoundere rail line , ,
Yaounde–Otele–Maloume rail line
Yapi Merkezi construction company ,
,
Zambezi Valley Spatial Development
Initiative
Zambia ,
Zambian Copperbelt n.
Zanzibar , , ,
Zenawi, Meles , ,
