Dakar-Lagos Highway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dakar-Lagos Highway Map.PNG

The Dakar-Lagos Highway is an international highway project that connects twelve West African states from Mauritania in the northwest of the region to Nigeria in the east, including two feeder roads to countries with no access to the sea, Mali and Burkina Faso .

The eastern end of the highway is Lagos , Nigeria . Some organizations, such as B. the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) , consider Nouakchott in Mauritania as their western end, others, such as e. B. the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa , Dakar in Senegal . Therefore there are also the following names for this street:

  • Nouakchott – Lagos Highway
  • Lagos – Nouakchott Highway
  • Dakar – Lagos Highway
  • Lagos – Dakar Highway
  • Trans-African Highway 7 on the Trans-African Highways network
  • Trans-West African Coastal Highway

Route and condition

Total length and road conditions

The length of the route is 4560 km, of which 83% or 3777 km are paved according to the documents of the African Union (AU), or 4010 km, of which 3260 km are paved according to the African Development Bank (ADB) (the latter is the Nouakchott-Dakar route with a length of 560 km not included). There are around nine unpaved sections and some paved sections urgently need to be renewed. The trunk road has two lanes on the entire route, with the exception of a short four-lane stretch in the eastern third. The 2003 ADB reports indicated that 32% of the road was in poor condition, 9% in good condition and 59% in fair condition.

Operator organizations

The trunk road is a project of ECOWAS and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) of the AU, with the support of the African Development Bank (ADP) . The route is considered No. 7 (TAH 7) on the Trans-African Highways , which includes nine routes.

route

The route connects the following cities and states:

  • Nouakchott in Mauritania - available, according to:
  • Dakar in Senegal (lane) - available, according to:
  • Banjul in Gambia - available, although some stretches are not paved, through Gambia and southern Senegal to:
  • Bissau in Guinea-Bissau - present, after Quebo ; a short distance to the border with Guinea is missing , where construction of a bridge over the Kogon River should start in 2004;
  • There is no 200 km long stretch in Guinea from the border to Boké ;
  • in Guinea, from Boké to Conakry (lane) and the border to Sierra Leone is available;
  • In Sierra Leone a 126 km long section from Pamalap to Freetown (lane) needs to be renovated, the section to Bandajuma exists, 97 km of new road with a new bridge over the Moa River to Zimmi is needed, further to the Liberian border;
  • in Liberia there is the section from Monrovia inland to Ganta , with the approx. 100 km long section Ganta-Tappita-Tobli border to Ivory Coast missing;
  • In the Ivory Coast , a new section to the Liberian border from Toulépleu to Blolekin is needed, with the road from there via Yamoussoukro and Abidjan to the border with Ghana being complete:
  • in Ghana there is a road via Cape Coast and Accra to the border to Togo and 31 km east of Akatsi to Dzodze have been replaced by a new road parallel to the old one;
  • the 80 km through Togo have been replaced by a new road bypassing Lomé in the north ;
  • the section in Benin through Cotonou and Porto-Novo exists to the Nigerian border;
  • about 60 km from the border to Lagos in Nigeria also exist.

Remarks

  1. The highway leaves the coast between Monrovia and Abidjan and runs 400 km inland. Originally it was supposed to follow the coast and the Ivory Coast built an asphalt road west of Abidjan along the coast to Tabou near the Liberian border. Liberia, however, did not build an asphalt road along the coast to Monrovia, so the inland road was used.
  2. The eastern third of the route through the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin to Lagos is the longest completely finished route and probably the oldest and most traveled, so that it is now damaged and continuously clogged and bypasses are being built in Togo and southeastern Ghana had to.
  3. The longest unpaved stretch and the largest gaps in the route are in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with the latter two still recovering from years of civil war.

Access roads and other international highways

Bamako in Mali and Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso (the two ECOWAS countries with no access to the sea) are already connected to the coastal highway via asphalt roads to Abidjan, Accra and Lomé. Lagos is connected by the largest network of asphalt roads in West Africa, in Nigeria, and has connections to the neighboring countries Niger , Chad and Cameroon .

The Dakar-N'Djamena-Highway is another ECOWAS project and runs parallel to the coastal highway , connecting the countries of the Sahel region of West Africa from Dakar to N'Djamena in Chad .

Two more roads are also under construction from Lagos to the Trans-West African Coastal Highway:

Web links