African Roads: A Continental Problem
John Kostka
If you were to take a drive in Africa today, you would find it very difficult. A mixture of poor road design and a lack of road maintenance serve to make African roads the most dangerous in the world, claiming 650 lives every day (Gale). The poor conditions caused by a lack of funds to repair roads built during the years of colonial foreign investment impact Africans all over the continent and pose a challenge to governments, which struggle to maintain the roads within their countries.
Within Africa, the poor roads can severely hamper transit. In Kenya, poor road design has created roads so narrow that there is only a possibility of 3 feet of clearance between cars. This flaw makes it so that in order to safely pass an oncoming car at about 50 mph, one would only have about 0.048 seconds to react, making things unlikely to end well. If you are traveling by bus, as many Kenyans do, and you happen to pass another bus, the margin of error is less than a foot, giving the drivers eleven inches to squeeze past each other! (Africa Mg.). Roads like these also have an economic impact. Poor roads make it difficult for goods to be shipped out of the continent, reducing any capacity for economic development. African shipping costs are 63% higher than anywhere else and this in turn causes transport fees to total 30-50% of the export value (UN). In landlocked nations like Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Mali, and Niger, transport costs can constitute up to three fourths of the total export value of goods (UN). So because of the poor roads, Africa remains largely unindustrialized, with little potential for economic growth, impacting the lives of many.
Governments are working to amend the situation and get around monetary constraints by organizing major road construction efforts with the help of foreign investment. Nigeria, for example, has devised the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan, which will focus on infrastructure development and road construction. All at a cost of three trillion dollars over the next thirty years (Kimani). This is more than the Nigerian Government is able to spend, creating a need for outside help. The UK Department for International Development funded Nigeria infrastructure Advisory Facility is helping to facilitate this work. But as of yet, no major investment has been made (Kimani). Kenya is taking a different approach, using a “Annuity Financing Framework” where the government works directly with private financers. The Kenyan government expects that with this kind of funding they will be able to build better roads, making Kenya more hospitable to foreign investment and trade, and increasing connection between regions (Kimani). The success of these various projects is not determined, and only time will tell if they get off the ground and actually impact the lives of people on the continent. Taking in the sum of the issue and the measures being taken to solve the problem, one can see the problem is acute, threatening the lives of people across Africa, and slowing economic and industrial development of the African continent. Also apparent is the lack of funds to achieve the road building goals, which makes progress difficult. The situation is dire, but sadly, a resolution still seems far away.
Works Cited:
Africa, Mg. “Africa Has the World's Deadliest Roads: Why This Could Actually Be a Design Problem-and
How Every Trip Cheats Death.” "MG Africa", MG Africa, 5 Mar. 2016,
mgafrica.com/article/2016-03-04-africa-has-the-worlds-deadliest-roads-why-this-could-be-a-design-problem. Accessed Sept. 2018.
Galegroup. “African Roads- 650 Killed Each Day in Road Accidents.” "Galegroup.com", Galegroup.com, 24 Oct. 2017, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511112747/SUIC?u=los42754&xid=00834e30. Accessed
June 2018.
Kimani, Eric.
“Road Construction in Africa.” "Construction Review Online", Construction Review Online, 18 Sept.
UN. “On Bumpy Roads and Rails.” "United Nations", United Nations, 10 Apr. 2014,
www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2014/bumpy-roads-and-rails. Accessed Nov. 2018.
My favorite part of the article is how you expressed the idea of how there is little passing room between cars and busses, because you showed the outrageous nature of the situation very nicely through the slightly humorous tone.
ReplyDeleteI think my main take-away is how much of an economic impact the roads have, due to the difficulties of transporting exports.
My follow up question is: How much of an impact (if any) does this issue have on foreign economies?
My favorite part of this article is actually the topic itself- I never would have thought of insufficient and unsafe roads as a topic for this project. My main take-away is that the poor roads are a big problem that hinders the transport of goods and threatens lives, but there is not enough funding for the effort to fix the problem. My question is: in which African countries does this problem have the biggest impact?
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