In a dramatic financial move, the World Bank Group has just approved a massive $200 million package to upgrade Togo’s transport infrastructure and revive its struggling railway network. Official statements trumpet this as a masterstroke, envisioning Togo transformed into an “unavoidable logistics hub” for the Sahel. But beneath the technocratic gloss and customary handshakes, a burning question remains: how can a serious financial institution entrust such a strategic portfolio to a regime whose economic governance is marked above all by its opacity? By pouring hundreds of millions into a state that struggles to demonstrate fiscal discipline, the World Bank risks funding yet another logistical illusion.
The railway mirage and the reality of mismanagement
At the heart of the project is an audacious promise: to rehabilitate the rail line linking 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, plagued for decades by chronic neglect and short-sighted political decisions. Entrusting such complex projects to Togo’s bureaucratic apparatus is a blind gamble. The country is regularly criticised for sluggish structural reforms and inefficient public investments. Handing over $200 million for rails without first ensuring the administration has the skills, transparency, and rigor to manage them is putting the cart before the horse. At best, it is amateurism; at worst, it rewards poor governance.
Logistics hub or financial sieve?
Togo likes to see itself as the gateway to the Sahel hinterland. But the reality of the Lomé-Ouagadougou-Niamey corridor tells a different story: administrative red tape, customs harassment, and above all, systemic corruption that discourages businesses. The Port of Lomé, despite its technical performance, remains at the centre of corruption scandals and preferential treatment, highlighting how porous financial circuits are. Injecting fresh money into infrastructure without cleaning up the business environment will solve nothing. As long as nepotism and the 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 funding on a relentless fight against embezzlement, the international community becomes complicit in the country’s economic stagnation.
The international institutions’ guilty blindness
This sudden generosity from the World Bank raises questions about its own assessment criteria. How can it justify such a blank cheque when the country faces glaring social emergencies—health, education, water access—completely neglected by the national budget? The regime of Faure Gnassingbé excels at designing “showcase” projects to attract development partners while keeping the country in a state of internal structural fragility. This $200 million program will only deepen the country’s moral and financial debt, with no guarantee of a 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. In the meantime, this financing looks very much like a blank cheque signed to a regime that has turned resource capture into a method of governance.
