Africa moves on trucks. It has for more than half a century.
From the copper belt of Zambia to the port gates of Mombasa, from Lagos’s industrial corridor to the grain farms of Zambia’s Northern Province, the 18-wheeled lorry has been the default answer to the question of how goods get from one place to another on this continent.
The data is unambiguous. According to the African Development Bank, road transport accounts for more than 80 percent of freight movement between African countries, despite the existence of railways and maritime routes.
In Sub-Saharan Africa specifically, road freight’s share of inland freight volume reaches between 75 and 90 percent.
Rail, by contrast, is marginal — fragmented, underfunded, and in many corridors, barely operational.
Now, the African Union wants to change that. The African Integrated Railway Network — known as AIRN, a rebranding of the earlier African Integrated High-Speed Railway Network — is the continental body’s flagship infrastructure project under Agenda 2063.
Its ambition is sweeping: to replace Africa’s patchwork of colonial-era metre-gauge lines with a unified, standard gauge network connecting all regions and capitals of the continent.
Thirteen pilot projects have been identified to begin the process.
A high-level stakeholder roundtable, convened by AUDA-NEPAD, the African Union Commission, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in collaboration with the International Union of Railways, has been designed to mobilise the technical, financial, and political backing needed to fast-track those pilots.
The question that matters most for Africa’s freight and logistics sector is not whether AIRN will be built.
It is whether it can actually pull cargo away from road. And if it does, what happens to the trucking companies, freight forwarders, and port operators who built their businesses around the asphalt economy?
The State of the Road
To understand the challenge AIRN faces, it is worth being precise about road freight’s dominance — and what sustains it.
The Africa cross-border road freight transport market was valued at USD 9.50 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 18.52 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.7 percent.
That trajectory reflects genuine trade growth, particularly as the African Continental Free Trade Area begins to accelerate intra-African commerce, which today accounts for only around 18 percent of total African trade.
Road holds its position not because it is efficient, but because it is ubiquitous and flexible. Rail infrastructure in most of Africa runs from inland mineral extraction sites to coastal ports — a colonial geography that served export economics but never supported lateral, intra-African trade flows.
Roads, by contrast, reach almost everywhere, even if their quality is uneven.
That dominance comes at a cost. Africa’s logistics expenditure as a proportion of GDP is among the highest in the world.
In Kenya, before the standard gauge railway began operations, transport expenditure accounted for 45 percent of the final cost of goods.
Trucks typically carry 25 to 35 tonnes per trip, travel slowly over long corridors, and are highly sensitive to fuel price volatility — which means logistics costs of between 20 and 40 percent are embedded in the final price of goods for industrial and commercial buyers.
Border delays compound the problem. At major crossings — Beitbridge between South Africa and Zimbabwe, Kasumbalesa between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — congestion has repeatedly stranded hundreds, sometimes thousands, of trucks.
In 2025, more than 1,500 trucks were stranded at Kasumbalesa alone when the introduction of a new electronic seals clearance system on the DRC side caused systemic processing delays.
Emergency coordination between Zambia and the DRC was needed to clear the backlog.
Regulatory fragmentation makes the situation worse. Gross vehicle weight ceilings differ by as much as 18 tonnes across neighbouring states.
Cabotage bans limit foreign trucks to border-in, border-out hauls, inflating backhaul costs and reducing capacity utilisation across the continent’s busiest corridors.
Africa Road Freight & Logistics Snapshot
What AIRN Is Proposing
AIRN’s core proposition is straightforward: replace road’s dominance in long-distance, high-volume freight with standard gauge rail — a mode that moves larger volumes at lower marginal cost, with higher reliability and lower carbon intensity.
The network is premised on Standard Gauge Railway as the universal standard, replacing the patchwork of colonial gauges that have historically prevented interoperability.
The AU’s position is that a continent-wide SGR system, building on pilot corridors, can form the logistical backbone for AfCFTA — described as the effective “veins” of the trade agreement.
Progress already exists on the ground. Tanzania’s SGR buildout is among the most advanced on the continent, with several phases either completed or under active construction, including the Isaka-Mwanza phase at 47 percent completion and the Tabora-Kigoma section under mobilisation.
Kenya’s Mombasa-Nairobi SGR, operational since 2017 and extended to Naivasha in 2019, has demonstrated what standard gauge can deliver on a live freight corridor.
Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa-Djibouti SGR — a 756-kilometre line linking the landlocked Ethiopian capital to a major port — showed that a single train can carry the freight equivalent of approximately 75 road trucks, with the journey time compressed from three days by road to under 12 hours by rail.
The AIRN roundtable process, convened with support from AUDA-NEPAD, the African Union Commission, UNECA, and the International Union of Railways, is focused on mobilising investment and political commitment for 13 defined pilot projects — the first phase of what is intended to be a continent-wide transformation.
The SGR Freight Evidence: What the Numbers Show
Kenya’s Mombasa-Nairobi SGR remains the most studied freight rail case in East Africa.
The 472-kilometre line was designed with a structural axle load of 25 tonnes and a freight capacity of up to 22 million tonnes of cargo per year, operating at 80 to 100 kilometres per hour for freight.
The cost comparison with road freight is instructive. SGR cargo rates on the Mombasa-Nairobi corridor have been approximately KES 50,000 per container, compared to KES 90,000 by road — a saving of roughly 44 percent per container.
In 2021, Kenya Railways further reduced SGR cargo tariffs by 15 percent to promote use of the Naivasha Inland Container Depot, bringing the rate for a 20-foot container on the upward journey to USD 510, down from USD 600.
The impact on port operations has been tangible. The SGR has helped decongest the Port of Mombasa, enabling faster movement of goods from port to the hinterland and reducing cargo dwell times.
The Naivasha Inland Container Depot has become an increasingly important node in the corridor, shifting where consolidation, deconsolidation, and customs processes happen — a structural change that 3PLs and freight forwarders operating through Mombasa have had to accommodate.
The SGR’s limitations are equally instructive. The Mombasa-Nairobi section cost approximately USD 3.8 billion — financed 90 percent by China’s Exim Bank — and the line has not yet been extended to the Ugandan border at Malaba. Uganda’s planned 1,724-kilometre SGR extension is estimated at a further USD 12.8 billion.
These capital requirements illustrate the scale of investment AIRN’s continental ambitions will demand, and the debt sustainability questions they raise for host governments.
Rail vs Road Freight Efficiency (Africa Case Studies)
Rail transport costs approximately KES 50,000 per container compared to KES 90,000 by road — making rail about 44% cheaper per container.
One freight train can replace approximately 75 trucks, significantly reducing road congestion and emissions.
Transit time has been reduced from 3 days to under 12 hours.
The Standard Gauge Railway can handle up to 22 million tonnes per year at full utilisation, positioning it as a major logistics backbone in the region.
How Much Freight Can Rail Realistically Capture?
The honest answer is: significant, but selective — and only over a multi-decade horizon.
Rail is inherently suited to high-volume, long-haul, point-to-point freight where origin and destination are both served by rail infrastructure.
Bulk minerals, agricultural commodities, containerised imports, and manufactured goods moving along established corridors are natural rail cargo.
Time-sensitive, small-batch, or last-mile freight — which dominates much of Africa’s retail and consumer supply chains — will remain on road regardless of what AIRN builds.
The World Economic Forum has projected that AfCFTA will increase intra-African freight demand by 28 percent by 2030, requiring approximately 2 million additional trucks, 100,000 rail wagons, 250 aircraft, and more than 100 vessels.
The framing is significant: rail is not expected to replace road, but to absorb a meaningful portion of demand growth. The 100,000 additional rail wagons signal the scale of investment expected in rail freight capacity even under a road-dominant scenario.
AfCFTA’s broader trade trajectory reinforces the opportunity. Intra-African trade is projected to grow by 109 percent by 2035 under full AfCFTA implementation, with intra-African trade expected to reach USD 230 billion by 2026.
Even if road retains its dominant modal share, the absolute volume of freight moving through the continent will be large enough to sustain a far more active rail freight sector than currently exists.
The Sub-Saharan Africa rail freight market — currently estimated at USD 4.77 billion in 2025 — is projected to reach USD 6.19 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 5.26 percent.
South Africa’s Transnet Rail Infrastructure Manager concluded its first slot allocation process in August 2025, conditionally granting 11 private Train Operating Companies access to 41 routes across six key corridors.
The reform is expected to unlock up to R100 billion in private rolling stock investment and add an estimated 20 million tonnes of freight annually from the 2026/27 financial year.
By August 2025, rail’s share of South Africa’s total freight payload had already risen to 14.5 percent — up 3.2 percentage points year-to-date, the strongest performance in years, though still well below the historical average of around 22 percent.
A key structural constraint for AIRN’s freight ambitions is electrification.
High-speed rail requires electrified lines, and Africa’s chronic energy deficit has already tempered the original ambitions of the project — reflected in the AU’s renaming from the African Integrated High-Speed Railway Network to simply the African Integrated Railway Network.
Diesel traction remains more feasible in the near term across most of the continent, but limits the speed and efficiency improvements available to freight operators.
What This Means for Road Hauliers
For road freight operators, the AIRN era is not an existential threat — it is a structural pressure that will express itself unevenly across different market segments and corridors.
Long-haul, high-volume bulk corridors are most at risk of losing share to rail. Mineral and agricultural commodity flows along corridors such as the Northern Corridor (Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala-Kigali), the Central Corridor (Dar es Salaam-Isaka-Kigali-DRC), and the Lobito Corridor in Southern Africa represent the battleground.
Road operators who have built their businesses around these specific corridors will face the most direct competition as SGR sections are completed.
Conversely, road freight’s role in first- and last-mile logistics, cross-border feeder routes, and time-sensitive consumer goods delivery is not meaningfully threatened by AIRN on any realistic timeline.
According to the World Bank, nearly 60 percent of Africa’s population lives in rural areas with limited or no all-weather road access — which means that even as rail corridors develop, the final delivery leg will depend on road transport for decades to come.
The more sophisticated road operators are already positioning for an intermodal future — operating as feeders to rail terminals rather than end-to-end long-haul providers.
The development of inland container depots and dry ports along SGR corridors creates demand for short-haul trucking to and from rail heads.
This is a different business model from long-haul cross-border trucking, but it is not necessarily a smaller one.
What This Means for 3PLs and Freight Forwarders
Third-party logistics providers and freight forwarders face a more complex strategic question than road hauliers.
Their value proposition is modal agnosticism — finding the most efficient route regardless of mode. AIRN, if it delivers, creates new routing options and potentially new pricing leverage for shippers.
The development of inland container depots along rail corridors — Naivasha in Kenya, Isaka in Tanzania — has already begun to alter where 3PLs anchor their operations.
As AIRN pilot corridors become operational, the consolidation hubs of the continent will shift.
3PLs who invest in operational capability at these new nodes will capture the transition; those who remain anchored to road-only networks may find themselves dis-intermediated by operators who can offer genuinely multimodal solutions.
Digital logistics platforms — which have attracted USD 1.8 billion in African startup investment over the past five years — are increasingly building multimodal visibility.
Real-time tracking, AI-driven route optimisation, and mobile payment integration are already compressing the efficiency gap between formal logistics providers and informal trucking networks.
As rail becomes a real routing option on more corridors, 3PL platforms that can integrate rail schedules, capacity, and pricing will hold a structural advantage.
Cross-border customs facilitation remains a critical enabler. One-Stop Border Posts have demonstrated genuine impact — the Mwami/Mchinji post cut processing times by 60 percent in 2024 — but the pace of rollout remains slow.
3PLs who develop deep expertise in customs compliance and documentation across multiple jurisdictions will retain competitive advantage regardless of modal shift direction.
What This Means for Port Operators
Ports sit at the intersection of maritime, road, and rail — and AIRN’s evolution cuts both ways for port economics.
The positive case is straightforward: more functional rail hinterland connections increase a port’s effective catchment area.
Mombasa’s port has already benefited from SGR connectivity, with faster container clearance reducing dwell times and improving throughput economics.
As AIRN extends rail deeper into landlocked territories — Rwanda, Uganda, DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe — ports along the East and West African coastline that sit at the terminus of those corridors stand to increase their volumes materially.
For Southern Africa’s ports — Durban, Beira, Walvis Bay — AIRN-linked rail development on the Lobito Corridor and the broader Southern African network creates an opportunity to compete more aggressively for central African mineral and agricultural flows currently dominated by road or routed through less efficient ports.
The risk for port operators lies in misalignment between port investment and rail investment timelines.
Ports that expand container handling capacity in anticipation of rail-driven throughput growth, but see AIRN pilot projects delayed, will face stranded assets and depressed utilisation rates.
The history of African infrastructure megaprojects — including the Kenya SGR, whose extension to Uganda has been repeatedly deferred — is a reminder that announced timelines and delivery timelines are rarely the same.
By 2030, maritime trade in Africa is expected to grow from 58 million tonnes to 132 million tonnes.
Against that backdrop, port investment is broadly justified regardless of AIRN’s pace — but the distribution of that growth between competing ports will be materially shaped by which hinterland rail corridors are built first and fastest.
The Investment Picture
AIRN will not build itself. The African Development Bank has been active in rail financing across the continent: a USD 1 billion corporate loan to Transnet in South Africa for freight rail recovery and growth, approved in July 2024; a USD 266 million loan from the New Development Bank for Transnet rail infrastructure modernisation; and a USD 40 million loan to Mozambique’s Rail and Port Authority for the Ressano Garcia railway line.
A further AfDB loan to Mauritania’s SNIM will facilitate acquisition of 36 locomotives and 1,743 wagons to expand iron ore rail capacity as part of a USD 467 million logistics expansion programme.
These are corridor-level investments. AIRN’s ambition — a continent-spanning SGR network based on 13 pilot projects — requires a different order of capital mobilisation.
The AUDA-NEPAD and AU Commission roundtable process is explicitly designed to attract private sector investment alongside development finance, recognising that public balance sheets alone cannot fund the network at scale.
South Africa’s 2025 national budget included R402 billion for transport and logistics sector improvement.
The Transnet rail reform process — opening access to private Train Operating Companies across 41 routes — represents Africa’s most significant experiment in private capital participation in freight rail, and its outcomes will be closely watched by AIRN planners as a model for attracting private rolling stock investment elsewhere on the continent.
The United States is also emerging as a more active financier of African railway projects, adding geopolitical competition for infrastructure influence alongside China — which financed the Kenya SGR, the Ethiopia-Djibouti line, and several elements of Tanzania’s network — and traditional European development partners.
Verdict: A Long Game, Not a Quick Shift
AIRN will not steal Africa’s freight market in the next five years. The investment required, the construction timelines involved, the electrification constraints, and the political coordination challenges across 54 AU member states make a rapid modal shift structurally impossible.
What AIRN will do — if the pilot projects advance — is create the conditions for a gradual, corridor-by-corridor rebalancing of freight.
The AfCFTA trade growth projected over the next decade is large enough that rail and road can both expand in absolute terms, even as rail’s percentage share increases on specific high-volume corridors.
Road hauliers, 3PLs, and port operators who understand where modal shift will first materialise — the Northern Corridor, the Central Corridor, the Lobito Corridor — and who position their operational footprints accordingly, will be better placed than those who treat AIRN as a distant abstraction.
The real disruption may come not from AIRN alone, but from the convergence of AIRN rail investment with AfCFTA trade liberalisation, private operator reforms on freight rail, and digital logistics platforms that make multimodal routing genuinely accessible to shippers at scale.
That convergence, building through the late 2020s and into the 2030s, is where the freight modal shift becomes real.
Rail is not about to steal Africa’s freight market. But it is, for the first time in a generation, making a credible case to compete for it.
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