Africa's Railway Infrastructure Deficit
The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has released its annual report titled ‘State of Africa’s Infrastructure Report 2024,’ which indicates that progress in expanding and improving the rail network as outlined in the African Union’s railway initiative has been limited to date.
According to the report, out of the ambitious plan to construct 30,200 kilometers of new railway routes, only 4,000 kilometers have been completed. The AFC emphasized that this goal encompasses not only the establishment of new routes but also a significant effort to modernize the existing rail networks.
The report acknowledges some achievements, such as the successful completion of the 768-kilometer standard gauge railway connecting Djibouti and Addis Ababa in 2018, as well as the 700-kilometer Mombasa-Naivasha railway built between 2017 and 2019.
However, it points out that inadequate funding has severely impacted the extension of Kenya’s railway system to Uganda and has slowed the development of Tanzania’s planned railway network, which aims to link Lake Victoria with Rwanda and Burundi. The AFC report estimates that addressing the railway infrastructure deficit could require an investment ranging from $65 billion to $105 billion annually until 2050, based on the costs associated with recently constructed rail lines across the continent. Furthermore, the AFC noted that private sector investment in railway infrastructure has remained disappointingly low, consistently falling between $5 billion and $6 billion during the periods of 2002-2012 and 2012-2022, as reported by the World Bank.
Recent railway projects that have made headway and attracted investment continue to follow a traditional Pit-to-Port model. Examples include the TransGuinean Railways in Guinea and the Pepel-Tonkolili Railway along with Pepel Port in Sierra Leone. While these initiatives contribute positively to the economic growth of African nations by increasing export revenues, they often lead private sector interest towards single-purpose rail lines instead of fostering investments in cross-border projects that could promote broader domestic and regional development. An exception to this trend is the Lobito Corridor, which connects the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Angola. The AFC is taking the lead in developing the Zambia-Lobito segment, aiming to create an economic corridor that links these three significant countries. The report also highlights several challenges facing the railway sector in Africa, including neglect, insufficient funding, and a decline in freight traffic, which creates a vicious cycle of underinvestment. For instance, in Ghana, the rail network was capable of transporting around two million tonnes of cocoa, timber, bauxite, manganese, and other minerals in the late 1960s.
However, by 2018, rail transport had dwindled to approximately 750,000 tonnes of manganese. Similarly, the Senegal-Mali railway, which once handled 1.5 million tonnes of freight at its peak, completely ceased operations in 2018 due to flooding. Among the busiest railway networks in Africa, alongside those in South Africa and Eswatini, are the networks in Mauritania, Gabon, and Mozambique. The AFC pointed out that while efforts for regional integration have begun in southern and eastern Africa through the development of new rail lines and the extension of existing ones, there is a notable absence of rail integration in the western part of the continent. Achieving effective connectivity in this region will depend on initiatives such as the reopening of the Dakar-Bamako railway line and the extension of the Togo line and the Abidjan-Ouagadougou line, which would create a transport ring through Niger.
