Africa’s route to prosperity is not just a rocky road

Any first-time visitor to Africa is faced with a whirl of new experiences, but the awful roads are guaranteed to make an impression. That is true even in many cities – when I visited Douala, the commercial hub of Cameroon, I was appalled to realise that a four-wheel-drive vehicle was all but a necessity.
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More rigorous studies have also found that the cost of transporting goods around west Africa is astonishingly high. One, albeit 15 years old, went so far as to conclude that road transport in Francophone Africa was six times more expensive even than in Pakistan.

Pity the entrepreneur who wants to do business under such conditions..