If President Buhari is serious about building continental railway lines to boost commerce, here are economically viable routes he should consider rather than the inexplicable Kano to Maradi one that serves no purpose whatsoever

Ayo Akinfe

(1) A a Yaoundé-Douala-Calabar-Ikom line that will transport Cameroonian cocoa to the processing plant at Ikom in Cross River State

(2) A Lomé-Cotonou-Badagry-Apapa-Warri-Port Harcourt line that will link up West Africa’s coastal ports

(3) An Abuja-Niamey-Ouagadougou-Bamako-Conakry-Dakar line that will open up the Ecowas region to finished Nigerian goods

(4) A Maiduguri-Ndjamena-Khartoum line that will link up the world’s three largest gum arabic producers and transport raw produce to a processing plant in Maiduguri

(5) A Lagos-Cotonou-Lomé-Accra-Abidjan cocoa railway network that will serve as the main conduit for the global chocolate industry

(6) A Calabar-Yaoundé-Libreville-Kinshasa line that will link up Nigeria and DR Congo, two of the continent’s economic giants. Between them, they have more natural resources than the rest of the continent put together

(7) A Calabar-Yaoundé-Libreville-Brazzaville-Luanda line to link up Nigeria and Angola, Africa’s two largest oil producers

(8) An audacious Abuja-Yaoundé-Kinshasa-Lusaka-Gaborone-Cape Town line to link up Nigeria and South Africa

(9) An Abuja-Ndjamena-Khartoum-Cairo line linking Nigeria up with Egypt

(10) An East African tourist line from Abuja-Bangui-Lumumbashi-Kigali-Dar-es-Salam-Mombasa. This will offer tourists two weeks of sightseeing

I am sure that if this African renaissance plan was sold to international investors it would excite them a lot and attract investors. I cannot think of an easier way to double Africa’s gross domestic product within five years than this.

At the end of every line must be a processing plant. This plan will have the slogan “No more African raw exports.”

A little bit of imagination is required if we are serious about ending poverty on our continent. As things stand, we appear stuck in an intellectual time warp.