Despite improvements in the quality of trunk roads, Africa continues to be handicapped by very high road-freight tariffs. These range from $0.05 per ton-kilometer in southern Africa to $0.13 per ton-kilometer in Central Africa, compared to levels of $0.02 to $0.04 in other parts of the world (see table).
The costs of trucking in Africa—even when road quality and corruption are taken into account—are not significantly higher than in other parts of the world. The main reason for the high tariffs paid in the region is the lack of competition in the trucking industry, which allows firms to sustain high profit margins. In Central and West Africa particularly, trucking industry cartels and restrictive practices in traffic allocation and dispatching are responsible for low vehicle mileages and poor fleet quality. In southern Africa, a more liberal regulatory environment and a greater prevalence of direct bilateral contracting between truckers and their clients keeps freight tariffs down.
Of equal concern are long administrative delays at border crossings. These keep the effective velocity of international road freight below 12 kilometers per hour, or about as fast as a horse and buggy, even though trucks are managing speeds on the order of 60 kilometers per hour when in motion.
Overview of key road-freight parameters on main international corridors