Given the expected growth in economic output and international trade (6-8% per year), there will be a very large increase in demand for freight and transport services by 2040. The structure of these trade flows is expected to change significantly over the next 30 years. Trade in the African Regional Transport Infrastructure (ARTIN) corridors is expected to grow faster than overall trade.

The forecast demand by the corridor expects a shift from 2009 corridor share to the most efficient corridor shares. In the future, containerized cargos will dominate port traffic and port traffic growth. The importance of multimodal transport of containers will increase substantially along ARTIN corridors. Air passenger flows are dominated by nine countries, which are major tourist destinations and major regional air transport hubs.

Five countries (Republic of South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and Nigeria) account for more than half of total African trade, and they will continue to dominate in the future. Transit traffic from landlocked countries is expected to increase more than tenfold over the next 30 years. This will create major infrastructure capacity problems. Sensitivity analysis shows that even with a lower economic growth rate, the 2030 projected demand will be realized by 2040.

Planning to meet this demand is on and most African countries are preparing and constructing roads, thanks to the massive infrastructure loans from China. This has crated enormous opportunity throughout Africa for various organizations ranging from materials providers to small companies doing sub-contracting on major road works going on throughout African.

These companies need proper organization and proper people skills for them to fully tap into the opportunities presenting themselves in this sector. Mentor HRS continues to support all players in this sector improve people capacity and organizational structure to meet the new demands in the transport sector in Africa.