Transport and Communication in the World
Senior 6 · Geography
Transport and Communication in the World
Lesson 2 of 4
25 min
Kigali is more than 1 000 km in a straight line from the Indian Ocean, and much farther by road. Its imports and exports use two main routes (Figure 1): the Northern Corridor from Mombasa through Kenya and Uganda, and the Central Corridor from Dar es Salaam through Tanzania, crossing into Rwanda at Rusumo. Every delay at a port, a weighbridge or a border adds to the price of fuel, cement and medicines in Kigali. Why are some places well served by transport and others not, and how can a landlocked country improve its links?
Figure 1: Rwanda's routes to the sea (schematic, not to scale).
Definition
Transport corridor: a main route, often combining road, rail, pipeline and border facilities, that links a port to inland countries.
Landlocked country: a country with no coastline, which must send its sea trade through neighbours' territory and ports.
Non-tariff barrier: anything other than a tax that slows or blocks trade: roadblocks, slow paperwork, repeated weighbridges, different rules.
One-stop border post (OSBP): a border crossing where the officials of both countries work together in one place, so travellers and lorries are checked once instead of twice.
Gauge: the distance between the rails of a railway. Trains cannot run directly between lines of different gauges.
Standard gauge railway (SGR): a railway with rails 1 435 mm apart, faster and able to carry heavier loads than the older narrow-gauge lines of East Africa.
| Group | Factor | Effect and example |
|---|---|---|
| Physical | Relief | Steep slopes and mountains raise the cost of roads and especially railways (railways need gentle gradients); Rwanda's hills force winding roads |
| Drainage | Rivers, swamps and lakes need bridges and causeways, but navigable rivers and lakes give cheap routes (Lake Kivu) | |
| Climate | Heavy rain washes out earth roads and causes landslides; ice closes waterways in winter (the St Lawrence); fog grounds aircraft | |
| Vegetation and soils | Dense forest and soft, swampy soils make building costly, as in the Congo Basin | |
| Economic | Capital and technology | Railways, ports and airports cost billions; tunnels and bridges need advanced engineering |
| Traffic and resources | Routes are built where there is enough traffic: mines, cash crops, towns and trade | |
| Level of development | Rich countries have dense networks; poor, thinly settled areas have few routes | |
| Political and historical | Government policy | Plans and budgets decide which routes are built and maintained |
| Regional cooperation | Shared corridors, customs unions and one-stop border posts in the East African Community | |
| Colonial history | Most African railways run from a port to a mine or farming area, not between neighbouring countries |
Worked example 1: what faster borders are worth
Problem. An illustrative lorry drives 1 700 km from a port to Kigali at an average moving speed of 50 km h⁻¹ and crosses two borders. If each border takes 24 hours, what is the total journey time? If one-stop border posts cut each crossing to 4 hours, what is the percentage saving?
Solution.
Cutting time at borders nearly halves the journey without building a single kilometre of new road. Each day saved lowers the cost of hiring the lorry and its driver, and so the price of goods.
Worked example 2: the cost of a blocked canal
Problem. Avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope adds roughly 6 000 km to an illustrative Asia–Europe voyage. A container ship sails at about 30 km h⁻¹ and burns about 100 tonnes of fuel a day. Estimate the extra time and fuel.
Solution.
Longer voyages tie up more ships to carry the same trade, so freight rates rose on many routes. Goods from Europe bound for Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, which normally come through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, also took longer and cost more, and landlocked importers such as Rwanda paid the extra.
Warning
Common mistake. Blaming every transport problem on physical geography. Rwanda's hills do make building costly, but many of the biggest delays are human: slow paperwork, repeated checks, poor maintenance and missing regional agreements. Good answers separate physical, economic and political problems and match each with a solution.
Tip
Exam technique. Use the corridor as a case study: route (port, countries, border points), problems (distance, delays, gauge, maintenance, landslides), improvements (SGRs, OSBPs, single customs territory, dry ports). A simple sketch map earns marks.
UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD): "Key to progress: Why landlocked countries need extra help with trade and development challenges". Listen for the extra costs that landlocked countries face and the solutions the economists suggest, and compare them with this lesson.
Practice
Summary
Sources and credits
Photos: Rusumo border between Rwanda (Kirehe) and Tanzania (UWIMPUHWE Va, CC0) and Kenya Railways DF8B locomotive on the new SGR line (Erasmus Kamugisha, CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
Video: "Key to progress: Why landlocked countries need extra help with trade and development challenges", UN Trade and Development, embedded from YouTube.
Figure 1, the worked examples and exercises: written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
