Africa's inland waterways are vastly underused. Moving goods and people by water is much cheaper than by land, with transport costs on inland waterways estimated to be between 30% and 60% lower than bulk transport by road and rail. Yet in Africa roughly 80% of freight travels by road, compared with 45% in America and 25% in Europe. Partly as a result, transport costs in Africa can be up to five times higher than in America. Only 16% of Africa's trade is intra-regional, compared with 58% in Asia and 67% in Europe.
Unlike in Europe, Africa's longest river systems are not connected to each other. Cataracts, rapids and other obstacles impede navigation, especially for larger cargo ships. Colonial rulers built infrastructure to extract resources from the continent, not to encourage intra-African trade. Shipbuilding capacity on the continent is negligible; large vessels are usually disassembled before travelling overland and reassembled at the waterside.
The Great Lakes region connects ten countries with a combined population of 520m, yet maritime infrastructure there has been neglected for decades. With decent infrastructure, Burundi could import maize from Zambia via Lake Tanganyika; instead it largely comes by road, tripling transport costs.
Decades of conflict in South Sudan have destroyed its river transport and ruined trade along the Nile. In Egypt, once the dominant mode of transport, the Nile now carries less than 1% of the country's internal trade. Since 2014 Egypt has built more than 6,300km of roads while leaving its river ports to rot.
In Nigeria, dredging the Niger river and building canals to connect its tributaries could create a network of waterways spanning 28 of the country's 36 states—a project that would be both transformative and cheaper than building more roads, according to Lanre Badmus of the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.
The African Development Bank is pushing a $12bn plan for a water-transport corridor from Lake Victoria to Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Uganda recently began to import fuel from Kenya via Lake Victoria, thanks to a new pipeline from the coast to Kenya's lakeside city of Kisumu. East African countries want to harmonise policies, renovate ports and revitalise trade on the Great Lakes.
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