Editorial of Magazine No. 3

Infrastructure and transport are an essential element for the socio-economic development of a country. The various road, rail, maritime, river and air networks allow the movement of people and goods.

They ensure the mobility of goods and are very often at the heart of commercial exchanges. They make it possible for economic operators to travel in search of imported or exported products.

These transport networks revitalize the lives of households. This activity gives day and life to markets, supermarkets, warehouses, factories, mines, banks, stations, ports and airports. These places, sometimes far away, need means of rapprochement that only the train with its wagons intended for the transport of various goods, can make possible.

This is how a seaport is necessarily connected to the outside, to factories, to regions and to its hinterland through a railway network that relieves congestion on the roads. The hauled wagon trains will crisscross the territory more easily and quickly with fewer customs, gendarmerie and police checkpoints or roadblocks.

This means that the check at the start is carried out properly and that manipulation is no longer possible thanks to the security, the door-to-door loading technique preventing openings and breakage of seals for thefts.

The importance of the train as a mode of transport is discovered and appreciated when large factories have special branches allowing its arrival within the company premises in order to load or unload products, materials, raw materials or containers.

This is the case, for example, for the zircon mines of Diogo, the phosphates of Taïba, sulfur for the Chemical Industries of Senegal. The creation of branches in the food distribution platforms would help large areas, supermarkets.

These structures could create their own storage and distribution platforms as recommended by logistics, the supply chain. Real hubs will then be built on vast areas in this new industrial zone around the future port of Ndayane, the Blaise Diagne airport (AIBD) to supply the country, its borders and its neighbors.

With the railway network, the concerns of Regulation 14 of UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) will be considerably reduced with regard to the control of gauge, weight, and axle load.

The road will no longer be the only one to support the enormous volume of goods for the local market and those in international transit destined for Mali, a country making up the hinterland with enormous economic stakes for Senegal.

The train will give the road a longer life thanks to the diversity of the choice of the mode of transport. The absence of rail encourages the abusive use of the road with all its consequences on the infrastructure.

Mali, a country making up the hinterland with enormous economic stakes for Senegal. The train will give the road a longer lifespan thanks to the diversity of the choice of the mode of transport.

The absence of rail leads to the abusive use of the road with all its consequences on the infrastructure. A good railway network connected to the main port, to the secondary ones located in the regions as well as to the airports, with lines placed not far from the roads and rivers where agriculture and agribusiness would be developed, would guarantee a certain economic boom.

Delivery times are ensured without any break in load, without any risk of theft. The train, well operated, contributes to the competitiveness of a port, to the creation of wealth in the stations and jobs, not to mention all these stations resurrected, dotted with shops, wholesale stores, retailers, stalls of small traders and street vendors.

Amadou DIA: Consultant in Port Operations & Transport-Logistics