Trans-National Railway system is the easiest and fastest way to facilitate the carting of goods and services from one country to another in the West African sub-region, Mr Prince Mba, President of Forum for Equity has said.
“Under the current system, where we have very long road journeys, with very bad roads in our various countries, the fastest and safest means of transport to encourage intra-African trade is the use of railways in the sub-region.”
Mr Mba who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra on Wednesday called on West African leaders, who were currently in Ghana deliberating on the use of a common currency-Eco to add the railway construction into their agenda as a major way of integrating the sub-region and subsequently the entire continent.
“We cannot talk of intra-African trade and regional integration, if we do not have railways running through the region to facilitate our plans and intentions.”
He suggested to the leaders to construct railways from Lagos through Cotonou, Lome to Accra and to Ouagadougou and Abidjan, while similar ones could also be constructed from Niger to Mali, through Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Ghana.
He said trade volumes from the coastal countries to the landlocked countries were growing by the day and it was only fair that such a means of transport was carried out to facilitate their activities in coming days.
Mr Mba said much as the use of a common currency was necessary to empower the economies of various beneficiary countries, the construction of railways was the real panacea to the challenges of trade and commerce in the sub-region.
He said considering the fact almost all the countries in the sub-region were agrarian by nature, the only way they could transport their produce especially the perishable ones was through rail transport that was faster and cheaper.
Forum for Equity is human rights Non-Governmental Organisation that ensures that the national cake in terms of development was evenly distributed in the country to ensure fairness.
Under the ECOWAS protocols, there have been suggestions to have common highways in the sub-region and feasibility studies had begun to have the Lagos-Cotonou-Lome-Abidjan highway.
There are similar plans to have another from the Senegal to the landlocked countries of Mali and Burkina Faso and suggestion is to buttress the already laid down procedures that had been put in place in the past deliberations.
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