Ten trans-African highway corridors that boost trade
As Africa looks inwards for trade, the Trans-African Highway network which comprises transcontinental multi-billion road projects will come in handy. The aim is to promote trade and alleviate poverty through trade. Herein are some of the mega projects in the continent:
Cairo-Dakar Highway
The Cairo-Dakar Trans African Highway stretches along the African north and west coasts.
It constitutes the continuation of the coastal highway and has a total length of 8636km that runs through Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal. Several other Trans African Highways connect to it: the Cairo-Gabarone in Cairo, the Tripoli-Windhoek in Tripoli, the Trans Saharan in Algiers and the Trans Sahelian in Dakar.
It has an important divergence of its characteristics ranging from a totally missing link in Mauritania to motorways in many of the other countries traversed.
Mombasa-Nairobi-Addis Ababa Road Corridor
The Mombasa-Nairobi-Addis Ababa Road Corridor Project - Phase III is part of the TransAfrica Highway network designed to promote trade, regional integration and alleviate poverty through highway infrastructure development and the management of road-based trade corridors.
This project, which is in it’s third and final phase, involves the construction to bitumen standard of 320km road sections including the 122km Turbi-Moyale road section, in Kenya, and the 198km Hawassa-Ageremariam road section, in Ethiopia. It includes trade and transport facilitation and capacity building consultancy services.
Lagos-Mombasa Highway
The Lagos–Mombasa Highway is a Trans-African Highway project and is the principal road route between West and East Africa.
It has a length of 6,259km and is contiguous with the Dakar-Lagos Highway with which it will form (when complete) the longest east-west crossing of the continent for a total distance of 10,269km.
Part of the transcontinental road network under development by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (ADB), and the African Union, the route crosses Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Kenya.
The highway was considered to run from Bangassou in the Central African Republic to Buta in DR Congo via Bondo, but after the Congo civil wars, the tracks between those towns became impassable posing logistical nightmare for the contracted road engineers.
Tripoli-Windhoek-Cape Town Highway
The Tripoli–Cape Town Highway is Trans-African Highway 3 in the transcontinental road network being developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the African Union.
The route has a length of 10,808km and has the longest missing links and requires the most new road construction.
South Africa was not originally included in the route which was first planned in the Apartheid era.
It is meant to be the second link between North and Southern Africa, with the Cairo-Cape Town Highway being the other route, passing through East Africa.
The route passes through Libya, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Republic of the Congo (ROC), the western tip of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Angola, Namibia and South Africa.
Algiers-Lagos Highway
The completion of a strategic section in the Chiffa Gorge gives a decisive boost to the project, whose idea was conceived more than fifty years ago, to put up a road linking Algiers and Lagos.
This is the most strategic of the expressway being built between Algiers and El Menia, over more than 800km, essentially doubling the length of Algeria’s National Road 1.
When the giant project is complete, a 4,500km motorway will be delivered between Algiers and Lagos, of which 2,500km will be in Algeria.
To achieve it, 5km of tunnels and 14km of bridges and viaducts, the highest piers of which reach 70m, have been built since April 2013 by China State Construction Engineering Corporation, in particular in association with the Algerian public groups Sapta and Engoa.
Cairo-Gaborone-Cape Town Highway
The Cape to Cairo Road or Pan-African Highway, sometimes called the Great North Road in sub-Saharan Africa, was a proposed road that would stretch the length of Africa, from Cape Town to Cairo, through the Cape to Cairo.
The proposal was similar to the Cape to Cairo railway line, another infrastructure project proposed through the colonies before independence. Neither was completed before British colonial rule ended in the colonies.
In the 1980s the plan was revived with modifications as the Cairo–Cape Town Highway, known as Trans-African Highway 4, in the transcontinental road network being developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (ADB), and the African Union, as part of the Trans-African Highway network. Firstly, the Cairo–Cape Town Highway passes through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia while the Cape-to-Cairo Road goes directly through South Sudan from Kenya.
Dakar-Ndjamena Highway
The Trans-Sahelian Highway or Trans-Sahel Highway is a transnational highway project to pave, improve and ease border formalities on a highway route through the southern fringes of the Sahel region in West Africa between Dakar, Senegal in the west and Ndjamena, Chad, in the east.
The roads branching from it link remote northern Sahelian regions to their capitals and to each other.
They also connect the landlocked countries in the heart of West Africa to the ports along the coast.
This boosts economic integration in the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS).
This corridor runs from Dakar to N’Djamena covering a distance of about 4,500km in between seven countries namely; Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad.
N’Djamena-Djibouti Highway
This corridor traverses desert or semi-desert areas in the West and Mountains in the East with Sudan, in the centre.
The corridor serves as an artery of goods and passengers between the landlocked parts of Sudan, Ethiopia and Chad to the capitals of the three countries as well as to the Ports of Nigeria in the West and main ports in the East like the Ports of Sudan and Djibouti.
The N’djamena-Djibouti corridor, as indicated by ECA (Economic Commission for Africa) starts in N’djamena in Chad running Eastwards through Chad and Sudan, turning to South East to Ethiopia and ending in Egypt.
The total length of this Trans African Highway (TAH) corridor is 4,200km. Half of this distance consists of missing links, mainly in the central sections of the corridor.
Dakar-Lagos Highway
The Trans–West African Coastal Highway is a transnational highway project to link twelve West African coastal nations, from Mauritania in the north-west of the region to Nigeria in the east, with feeder roads already existing to two landlocked countries, Mali and Burkina Faso.
The eastern end of the highway terminates at Lagos, Nigeria. Some organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) consider its western end to be Nouakchott, Mauritania, and others such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa consider it to be Dakar, Senegal, giving rise to these alternative names for the road: Nouakchott–Lagos Highway, Lagos–Nouakchott Highway, Dakar–Lagos Highway and Lagos–Dakar Highway.
The Corridor between Dakar and Lagos follows mostly the coastal line and it connects the capitals of the countries involved. It has a total length of 4,010km of which about 3,260km are in various conditions with respect to maintenance.
Beira-Lobito Highway
The Beira–Lobito Highway is another transcontinental road network being developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (ADB), and the African Union.
The route has a length of 3,523km (2,189 miles) crossing Angola, the most southerly part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and central Mozambique.
Currently traffic predominantly uses the eastern side of the corridor to ports in Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa as the the western section of the corridor from Kuito in Angola to Kolwezi in DRC is undergoing repairs. - Source; Oxford Business Group/Africa Development Bank/NEPAD
