MALI’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE main road network in Mali appears to be overengineered, which means that roads are paved although traffic levels are below 300 vehicles per day—the threshold level of traffic to justify paving.

At the same time, spatial analysis of the network suggests the physical extension of the rural network is inadequate. According to GIS analysis **,** only 17 percent of Mali’s rural population lives within two kilometers of an all-season road. This is below the 22 percent average for Africa’s low-income countries and the 60 percent average for Africa’s middle-income countries (table 2). These figures should be interpreted with care. Due to the challenge imposed by geography and demography, grating reasonable road access to 100 percent of the rural population is neither affordable nor economically logical. Expanding the road network so that 50 percent of the rural population live within two kilometers of an allseason road could require 40,298 kilometers of roads. By comparison, providing good road accessibility to the land that currently produces 80 percent of the Malian agricultural production value would require a rural road network of only 16,497 kilometers.

# Rail

## **Achievements**

Mali’s binational railway line—jointly owned with Senegal—has the potential to be a key conduit for international trade. The line between Dakar and Bamako is part of one of the main transport corridors in West Africa but currently captures only 12 percent of Mali’s international trade traffic.

Efforts have been made to improve Mali’s rail system and to bring fresh capital to an investmentstarved system. In October 2003, through a competitive international process, a 25-year concession was granted to the privately owned company Transrail SA. Prior to the concessioning, the 1,228 km Dakar– Bamako railway was operated by two parastatal companies: the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer du Senegal (SNCS) operated the Senegalese part (644 km), and the Régie Nationale du Chemin de Fer du Mali (RCFM) operated the Malian part (584 km ) (World Bank 2007b) .

Transrail’s productivity is on par with or better than some concessioned railways on the continent. However, it has still room for improvement as its performance is still significantly worse than other African railway concessions, such as Sitarail and Camrail (table 4). Transrail’s freight tariffs average $7 cents/ton-km, which is regionally competitive. Transrail has improved both the operational and financial performance of the railway, although it is not yet financially sustainable. Since its concessioning in 2003, Transrail’s annual turnover has increased 27 percent from $29.7 million to $37.8 million in 2009. Despite this improvement, however, the company accumulated net losses of $25 million between 2003 and 2009, leaving it without any margin for major investments in rolling stock or infrastructure rehabilitation.

## **Challenges**

Transrail has four main challenges going forward: (i) increase production beyond the breakeven point (or about 600 millions ton-km/year), which will require securing more than $200 million in new investment for track and rolling stock, (ii) reduce its existing and aging workforce while training hundreds of new employees to counteract the depletion of the personnel skills, (iii) secure a more balance intermodal competition (road/rail) environment from its host countries **,** and (iv) fund its short- and 15