Africa 24 Media Photography

Mali’s road network comprises about 15, 100 km of highways, serving taxis, motorbikes, trucks and personal vehicles. Bamako, the capital of Mali is connected with various regions across the country by road, while its main economic link to the coast is a paved road between Bamako and Abidjan in Ivory Coast.

Due To isolation and inadequate investment in road infrastructure, poor road conditions and the prevalence of banditry mars road transport in the landlocked West African nation. Trucks carry far more of the goods moving across West Africa than any other form of transport. But whether it’s the trucks or taxis, road transport in Mali is costly, at times treacherous and takes too long. And the challenges are diverse. In some cases, agents of the states have been accused of using weighbridges to extort money from truck drivers, and not requiring them to either pay a fine for overloading or offload excess cargo. Too many checkpoints along the road corridors have been identified for slowing the movement of goods and people as well as encouraging corruption. Truck drivers are parting way with thousands of dollars in bribes every year and the movement of goods is slowed to a standstill as a result. The Malian drivers hence need an improved road transport system. This can easily be done through increased investment in infrastructure, preventing overloaded trucks from using the highways reducing or completely overhauling checkpoints and using information technology to track truck movements if a more efficient, more competitively priced and faster transportation system is to become a reality in Africa’s seventh largest country..

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