2 - Systèmes de transport pour un développement intégré de l’Afrique : vers un réseau routier et ferroviaire panafricain

Résumé

Africa is a huge continent with so many landlocked regions. Therefore, there is  naka need for adequate, efficient and highly varied transportation systems that can accelerate its development. The lack of adequate communication between production centres and densely populated areas with a high level of consumption is indeed the cause of a deep and pathological unbalance between supply and the global demand of goods and services throughout the continent. Besides the very costly air transport, it is desirable to invest in both road and railways transportations that are more accessible to the majority of the people and that are a genuine catalyst for Africa’s integration and development. Thus, in order to contribute in the thinking on African development alternatives, we see it necessary to lay the foundations of a theoretical outline of a 'Pan African' network of roads and railways aimed at linking the continent’s major economic and demographic areas in order to develop unity and solidarity between African peoples. The 'Pan African' road network would have the form of a reversed isosceles triangle, the three angles of which would be Cape Town in South Africa, Cairo in Egypt and Dakar in Senegal. The general structure of the Pan African railway network would include a big central route from Cairo to Cape Town with an Algiers–Cape Town variant, with a cross-country Dakar– Mombassa line, a peripheral loop uniting all the continent’s coastal areas, and many other highways linking different regions. Setting these structures should be done according to a new conception of regional integration based on trade and investment, a concerted tapping of natural resources, the implication of the private sector, export-based industrialization as well as the development of efficient and profitable infrastructures able to break the cycle of poverty and cycles of violence.