STEG Working Paper Series

Priority Roads: the Political Economy of Africa’s Interior-to-Coast Roads

Roberto Bonfatti, Yuan Gu, and Steven Poelhekke

PriorityRoads.jpeg

Africa’s interior-to-coast roads are well placed to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the best response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of political distortions? To answer this question, we investigate the political determinants of road paving in West Africa in 1965-2014. Controlling for geography and comparative advantage, we find that autocracies more than democracies focused on connecting metal and mineral deposits to ports, resulting in more interior-to-coast networks. This deposit-to-port bias is driven by deposits located on the ruling elite’s ethnic homeland. This suggests that Africa’s interior-to-coast roads were at least in part the result of ethnic favoritism.


This working paper is also available as CEPR Discussion Paper 15354.

Related content

Active project

Clean Water

Research Theme 1: Firms, Frictions and Spillovers, and Industrial Policy • Larger Research Grants
Active project

Private Colonisation

Research Theme 0: Data, Measurement, and Conceptual Framing • Larger Research Grants
STEG Working Paper Series

Worker Mobility in Production Networks

Marvin Cardoza, Francesco Grigoli, Nicola Pierri, Cian Ruane • Research Theme 1: Firms, Frictions and Spillovers, and Industrial Policy
STEG Working Paper Series

The Great Upgrade

Alexandros Ragoussis, Jonathan Timmis • Research Theme 1: Firms, Frictions and Spillovers, and Industrial Policy
STEG Working Paper Series

Occupational Inheritance in Africa

Nicolas Syrichas • Research Theme 2: Labour, Home Production, and Structural Transformation at the Level of the Household
STEG Working Paper Series

Spatial Production Networks

Costas Arkolakis, Federico Huneeus, Yuhei Miyauchi • Research Theme 1: Firms, Frictions and Spillovers, and Industrial Policy