In a bold move that has raised eyebrows in Lomé, the World Bank Group has approved a massive $200 million package to overhaul Togo’s transport infrastructure and revive its long-defunct railway network. Official statements trumpet this as a visionary step, promising to transform the country into an “indispensable logistics hub” for the Sahel. But beneath the technocratic gloss and ceremonial handshakes, a pressing question emerges: how can a serious financial institution entrust such a strategic portfolio to a regime whose economic governance is noted more for opacity than transparency? By pouring hundreds of millions into a state that struggles to demonstrate fiscal discipline, the World Bank risks financing yet another logistical illusion.
The railway mirage and the reality of mismanagement
At the heart of the project lies an ambitious promise: rehabilitate the railway line connecting the Autonomous Port of Lomé to the Adétikopé Industrial Platform (PIA). On paper, shifting freight from road to rail to decongest the capital is appealing. In Togo’s reality, the railway sector is a graveyard of abandoned infrastructure, weighed down for decades by chronic underinvestment and short-sighted political choices. Entrusting such complex projects to Togo’s bureaucratic apparatus is a blind bet. The country is regularly criticised for slow structural reforms and ineffective public investments. Handing over $200 million for rails without first ensuring that the administration has the necessary skills, transparency, and rigour to manage them is putting the cart before the horse. At best, it’s amateurism; at worst, a reward for poor governance.
Logistics hub or financial sieve?
Togo likes to see itself as the gateway to the Sahelian hinterland. But the reality of the Lomé-Ouagadougou-Niamey corridor is quite different: bureaucratic red tape, customs hassles, and—most crucially—systemic corruption levels that discourage economic operators. The Port of Lomé, despite its technical performance, remains at the centre of corruption scandals and preferential treatment, highlighting how porous its financial circuits are. Injecting fresh cash into infrastructure without cleaning up the business environment solves nothing. As long as nepotism and a lack of political alternation freeze institutions, donor millions will first feed the power’s client networks before benefiting the real economy. By refusing to condition its subsidies on an uncompromising fight against public fund embezzlement, the international community becomes complicit in the country’s economic stagnation.
The willful blindness of international institutions
This sudden generosity from the World Bank raises questions about its own evaluation criteria. How can such a blank cheque be justified when the country faces glaring social emergencies—health, education, access to water—all neglected in the national budget? The regime of Faure Gnassingbé excels at designing “showcase” projects to charm development partners while keeping the country in a state of internal structural fragility. This $200 million programme will only deepen the country’s moral and financial debt, with no guarantee of return on investment for the population. If Togo wants to be taken seriously on the international stage, it must first prove it can manage its resources transparently. Meanwhile, this funding looks very much like a blank cheque signed to a regime that has turned resource capture into a method of government.
