Someone once said, “If you have ten economists in a room they will give you eleven different opinions.” On one matter economists do agree; infrastructure is crucial, more so in developing countries because the top world is already at the top of the game and the rest are only in the chase
Roads, railways, airports, ports, housing, and electricity are vital in allowing workers to find jobs, firms to source workers and suppliers, and firms to find markets, whether local or international.
Every successful historical case of a transition from village-rural life to urban-industrial life has involved a big-push in infrastructure investment. While economists are positive about infrastructure, they are generally pessimistic about Africa, mostly from history.
Concerned reports
Ever present in recent World Bank and African Development Bank (AfDB) reports are concerns that Africa is being held back by an ‘infrastructure deficit’. As an example, the cost of transporting goods is widely held to be the key constraint on the participation of Sub Sahara Africa (SSA) in world trade.
By the 2010s Sub-Saharan African (SSA) had only 31 paved road kilometers per 100 square kilometers of land; less than a quarter the road density of other low-income countries. By 2010 congestion meant that 80% of the total shipping transport time associated with trading with Africa was spent by ships waiting in African ports.
The cost of transporting goods in Ethiopia and Nigeria is estimated to be between 3.5 and 5 times higher than in the U.S. The Zanzibar Development Vision 2050 notes that the poor quality of roads has “led to seasonal flooding, traffic congestion, road accidents and high maintenance costs.”
Today there is a global recognition about the need for better infrastructure in Africa; much of which has originated from Africa. The AfDB estimate that Africa faces an annual infrastructure financing gap of around $100 billion per year. A whooping amount.
What does AU Vision aspire to?
The African Union (AU) Vision for 2063 ‘The Africa We Want’ aspires to build a Pan-African High Speed Train Network to connect all major African cities, and the 16 landlocked countries in Africa to major seaports and neighbouring countries.
In Zanzibar Vision 2050 echoes these continent-wide aspirations and promises “the focus over the next 30 years should be on improving housing supply, road networks, adequate seaport facilities, upgrading the country’s airports and meeting rising energy demand.”
The African vision is rooted in the practical realities of available funding. The 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland established the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) to support public and private investment in infrastructure.
The Africa50 Infrastructure Fund was launched by the AfDB in 2013 to mobilize infrastructure funding. In 2014 the World Bank launched the Global Infrastructure Fund as a platform for identifying, preparing and financing large, complex infrastructure project.
Chinese, Turkish, Indian infra-structure intervention
In 2013 The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched by China as a vast network of road and rail connections, seaports, energy, and manufacturing investment across Eurasia (Asia, Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East) and Africa. The BRI is scheduled to cost between $1 and $8 trillion, depending on the source of estimates.
Much of the infrastructure financing is done by Chinese lenders, in particular China Exim Bank. Currently 138 countries have signed up to the BRI, including at least 38 African countries. Ad this would be a huge boost.
After the West and China, new donors have also emerged, including Turkey, the UAE, Brazil, and India. India hosted the India-Africa forum in 2011 during which it pledged $300 million to support the construction of railways in Ethiopia.
This surge in infrastructure investment is targeted at exactly those sectors World Bank and AfDB studies have identified as being key constraints on economic growth. Landlocked Ethiopia has built a new Chinese-funded railway line connecting Addis Ababa to the port in Djibouti, the service was opened in 2016 and cut the journey time from 12 days to 12 hours. Just imagine from 12 days to 12 hours!
How can we not celebrate this infrastructure renaissance? One reason for potential caution, is that all this has happened before and then ended badly.
The 1960s and 1970s saw massive, often donor funded investment in African infrastructure. The big-push fizzled out; infrastructure investment declined into the 1980s and 1990s. Even the already constructed infrastructure was allowed to decay as longer-term maintenance investment was neglected.
By the mid-1990s, about one-third of SSA roads built during the 1970s were no longer in use. By 1990 80% of Zambia’s road system was in poor condition. In Kenya by the early 1990s, the poor-quality railway line connecting Nairobi to the port city of Mombasa raised the production costs incurred by domestic manufacturing firms up to 100%. Surely not business worth.
More newly infra-structure development
The contention of this article is that Abeid Amani Karume International Airport in Zanzibar is a perfect illustration of why we should be optimistic today. Let us go a bit further back in time; to the era of European colonialism in Africa, when there was also a surge in infrastructure building in Africa.
Currently, the most connected African airports include Cape Town International Airport, Cairo International Airport, Muhammed V International Airport, that is for the North and South. But for East Africa the Kenyatta International Airport is better positioned and that is where Zanzibar can stand a chance of having part of the market.
In the 19th century, the British built the railway line connecting Nairobi to Mombasa, the French had the line connecting Brazzaville to Pointe Noire, and the Italians the line connecting Addis Ababa to Djibouti. Why didn’t this infrastructure-boom generate sustainable economic growth and what lessons can we learn regarding the contemporary infrastructure-boom in SSA?
A good starting point to help us answer these questions is the enduring radical classic book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’, published by Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney in 1972. Rodney taught at Dar Es Salaam University in the 1960s and 1970s. Rodney wrote that colonialism was a system of exploitation structured around extracting profits for the colonizing ‘mother’ country.
Road and rail infrastructure was built to connect areas of raw material production and mines to ports, not to connect up African population centres and expand local market opportunities. In Ghana, the British built railways that passed through low-populated tropical forests and helped turn them into cocoa plantations exporting to Britain.
Infrastructure was about asserting colonial control not integrating the African continental economy or allowing Africa the opportunity to development trade links outside of Europe. Rodney noted that at independence a telephone call from Accra to Abidjan had to go via an operator in London then via Paris.
From Rodney we need to ask the question, is the recent African infrastructure renaissance helping to better integrate the African economy or is it locking Africa more closely into external markets for its raw materials.
Scholars have expressed some concerns. The boom in Chinese manufacturing exports over the last few decades has required huge imports of oil, copper, iron ore, aluminium ore, and cobalt (for mobile phones and laptops). The surge in Chinese mineral commodities from $40 billion in 2010 to $375 billion in 2010 was clearly tied to Chinese investment in African infrastructure, much of it targeted to accessing raw materials.
I argue here that this concern is greatly exaggerated. Though China has greatly increased its influence in Africa, it is firstly not a colonial one (obtaining any sovereign authority), secondly, China is counter to promote its priority road building program.
New Africa infrastructure approach
In Tanzania the ruling government has engaged China to advance their proposals to build a mega-port and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Bagamoyo. In Ethiopia the government have leveraged China to build roads, railways, and dams to support their industrialization drive.
In Zanzibar the international terminal of Abeid Amani Karume International Airport was built by the Chinese Beijing Construction Engineering Group and inaugurated in 2020. While the airport does have a direct connection to Guangzhou, China, this is no replica of colonial era infrastructure.
I remember travelling to Africa twenty years ago, there were typically direct flights on British Airways from London to Anglophone Africa and one had to travel via Paris on Air France to access Francophone Africa.
Why AAKIAZ is ready for the challenge
Today, Zanzibar airport offers direct connections to Tanzania (seven domestic destinations), to Africa (South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Egypt), the Middle East (Oman, Qatar, Dubai, Israel), and to Europe (Turkey, Romania, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Germany, Netherlands), in all 29 destinations across 18 countries.
Globally the aircraft business is booming whereas in 2023 both international and domestic movements have increased by 20.4 percent and 11.0 percent as compared to 2022. Meaning Zanzibar has well got its share, albeit small.
This is indicated by official statistics showing both the AAKIA and Karume Airport Pemba had a total passenger reach of 2,040,161 divided into outgoing 1,031,000 and arriving totaling 1,009,042. Th number of passengers arriving in Zanzibar increased by 20.3 percent recorded in 2023 compared with 2022.
On the cargo side numbers confirms that a total 3,812.7 tons were off-loaded as imported goods, while 235 tons of freight were loaded as exported goods, showing an increase of 36.0 percent as compared to 2022.
The five-year trend on cargo indicates that the number of cargos handled has been fluctuating each year, although it attained the maximum numbers in 2023. What is to be noted importantly Zanzibar sends a low of number of cargo, because it has what you may call low productions level aimed for export to available or potential market according to foreign airlines destinations. It is indeed a call for Zanzibar on this ad probably the intended Zanzibar Industrial Park may feel this void.
But there is also huge potential market for Zanzibar airport to tune Tanzanian national economy whereby the growth of tourism standard call for huge in-bound meat, poultry agricultural produces as well as flowers for Zanzibar market but also as transit to the bigger in Europe and Africa markets through Zanzibar if prices are competitive.
With plans well underway to expand the Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (AAKIA) as well as such other like the Dunga Industrial Park there will be more opportunities, if all is well organized for Zanzibar to make finish goods reach around East Africa and beyond thus making the said airport busier and useful
The room as such is also available to integrating the African economy (and so supporting the AU 2063 Agenda for the Africa We Want), and about connecting Zanzibar to the rest of the world.
Abeid Amani Karume International Airport is symbolic of this New Africa notion.
Africa Urban Lab (AUL), Zanzibar
