A $32-billion investment towards the integration of Africa’s road infrastructure, could see trade on the continent increase by $250-billion over the next 15 years, said New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) transport infrastructure expert John Tambi on Wednesday.

Currently, trade on the continent amount to $200-billion a year, with only about 10 000 km of road connecting the different countries.

Speaking at the Africa Roads 2011 conference in Johannesburg, Tambi said that the continent would need at least 60 000 km to 100 000 km of road network to sufficiently integrate the region.

Africa as a region has had a number of initiatives to connect and open up its nine trading corridors with the first being launched in the 1970s, yet today the continent has fewer roads than it had 30 years ago.

Kenya Ministry of Roads secretary Michael Kamau said Africa, which has shown strong economic growth in recent times, needed to start implementing cohesive plans to take advantage of the strong growth.

“Why do we have to go outside our continent to get back into it, we need free movement of goods and services to supply this market of more than a billion people, and enhance economic growth.”

Meanwhile, Tambi attributed the failure to improve Africa’s road networks to a number of reasons including a lack of ownership and no coherent vision.

“We need to use the resources of this land, and the riches that it brings, to implement a regional road network. The money is there, we just need to apply it correctly,” said Tambi.

Africa Roads chairperson Snowden M’madi said that a stronger focus should be placed on public and private partnerships to upgrade and integrate the continent’s infrastructure, referring to some of the successes that South Africa has had in this regard with the South African National Roads Agency Limtid (Sanral).

Sanral is facing a lot of opposition in the country for wanting to pass on its R16,9-billion bill for upgrading 185 km of Gauteng’s highways to road users by charging a toll fee of 66c/km.

Sanral paid for the upgrade of the highways in the country’s busiest province, by borrowing from capital markets.

“Everyone needs the infrastructure, but we have to work out how do we pay for the infrastructure without choking the livelihoods of the country’s road users,” Transport Department director-general George Mahlalela said at the conference.

But, the agency said that slashing the toll fees would mean that revenue would not be sufficient to cover the loan, which could see debt swell further.