期刊名称：The Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa (JSDA)
电子版ISSN：1520-5509
出版年度：2011
卷号：13
期号：7
出版社：Institute of Sustainable Development in Africa
摘要：Efficacious transportation facilitates tourism, trade and commerce. Developing countries often are facing transportation constraints such as inadequacy of infrastructures, institutions and regulations. Global competition for Africa natural resources has brought it under spotlight when this continent is confronting numerous political, social, environment, economic and humanitarian crises. Majority of African countries, with immense development potentials and resources, are facing inadequate land transportation facilities. More than a century of deprivation and insufficient investment in land transportation infrastructure has led to poor accessibility among most of African countries. The objective of the study reported herein was to address and appraise land transportation in Africa, focusing on its intra-continent and cross border attributes. To assess land transportation in Africa, firstly the information about existing rail and road links were collected and their regional subnetworks were defined. To complete these sub-networks, the marine links between the important seaports were added. Subsequently, the Africa continent land-sea network was characterized. This resulted in two multimodal sub-networks: railsea and road-sea. In the second step, the multimodal sub-networks were modeled and deployed in the form of adjacency matrices and a number of preliminary network analyses were performed. For these sub-networks, deploying network algorithms such as shortest-path, several accessibility and connectivity indices were defined and computed. To improve the accessibility of these land-sea multimodal sub-networks and to introduce efficacious trade corridors, few cross border and key land links were identified and evaluated. The proposed and expanded sub-networks were then compared with the existing sub-networks. Significant accessibility enhancement was achieved by proposed highway and railway expansions. This study is a preliminary step in appraising Africa regional transportation that could be conducive to domestic and international trade and travel facilitation and integration. Africa member states and international agencies may utilize the study approach and findings to enrich regional trade, commerce and tourism.
