Transport Corridors in Africa

In-depth examination of the inherent tensions and dynamics of transport corridors in Africa: between short-term optics and long-term durability; between regional integration and national interest; between the facilitation of trade and the generation of corridor revenue.

In-depth examination of the inherent tensions and dynamics of transport corridors in Africa: between short-term optics and long-term durability; between regional integration and national interest; between the facilitation of trade and the generation of corridor revenue.

The image of the corridor, a central pathway of road and rail carving its way through Africa's interior, has guided the coordination of transport and trade developments on the continent in recent decades. Existing analysis of the "Corridor" - a label with a great capacity to change shape, guiding funding and infrastructural priorities at different times and in different settings - tends to be presentist, technical, and conveyed in the language of transport economics. The chapters collected here showcase a more varied approach, offering perspectives from academics and policy-makers coming from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. They capture the varied forms of the corridor concept (developmental, transport, and trade corridors), the multiplicity of actors (including China and the European Union), as well as the different permutations of the infrastructure itself, in corridors linking coastal states and in others that link coastal states with the hinterland. The breadth of cases allows for a comparative perspective of East, West, and Southern Africa, as well as the basis of comparisons outside of the continent in Europe, South Asia, and elsewhere.
The motivations behind corridor initiatives in Africa range enormously, from resource extraction to urban development and poverty reduction. A lot depends on scale, and this collection places the grand designs thrashed out at continental and regional economic forums alongside the individual concerns of drivers and cross-border traders hauling goods across the continent's checkpoints. What emerges are a number of central tensions in the study of transport corridors: between short-term optics and long-term durability; between road and rail as modes of transportation; between regional integration and national interest; between the facilitation of trade and the generation of corridor revenue; between different port configurations; and between local dynamics and the dynamics of long-distance transportation.

This book is available as Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: Transport Corridors in Africa: Synergy, Slippage, and Sustainability
Paul Nugent and Hugh Lamarque
2. Infrastructure, Development and Neoliberalism in Africa: The Concept of Transport Corridors in Uganda
Sidy Cissokho
3. Hidden in Plain Sight: The Temporal Layers of Transport Corridors in Uganda
Isabella Soi
4. From Priority Projects to Corridor Approaches: The African and European Transport Networks in Perspective
Sergio Oliete Josa and Francesc Margrinyà
5. The Political Economy of West African Integration: The Transport Sector on Two Port Corridors
Bruce Byiers and Sean Woolfrey
6. The Dakar-Bamako Corridor: Between Boom and Contradictions
Jérôme Lombard
7. Privatising the Port: Harbouring Neoliberalism in Lomé
Nina Sylvanus
8. A Time for Realignment? Retrofit in the Golden Era of the Cameroonian Railways
José-María Muñoz
9. When is a Corridor Just a Road? Understanding Thwarted Ambitions Along the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor
Paul Nugent
10. The Jealousy of Roads: Construction, Circulation, and Competition on East Africa's Transport Corridors
Hugh Lamarque
11. Following the Tracks: Chinese Development Finance and the Addis-Djibouti Railway Corridor
Yunnan Chen
12. Corridors of Opportunity? African Infrastructure and the Market Expansion of Chinese Companies
Elisa Gambino