The Transport Record
Transport Sector Analysis · April 2026 · mdbreform.com
$11.2 Billion Committed to Transport in Africa. 96% of Committed Resources Below Satisfactory.
The Foundation That Does Not Hold — The Connective Tissue of Every Sector. The Worst-Performing Portfolio on the Continent.
Parminder Brar · Former World Bank Country Manager and Lead Governance Specialist · mdbreform.com · April 2026
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| 4% S+ by commitment — 4 cents on the dollar |
$10.8bn 96% of resources below standard |
4 years FY2019–22: zero Satisfactory |
12 Countries with 2+ projects at 0% |
The World Bank is the largest provider of development financing for transport in the world. Its active global transport portfolio stands at $45 billion across 176 million beneficiaries. In FY2025 alone, the Bank approved 53 new transport operations for $11.2 billion. The institution describes transport as the connective tissue of economic development — the infrastructure that gets crops to market, patients to clinics, children to schools, and workers to jobs.
The IEG record for Transport in Sub-Saharan Africa between FY2015 and FY2026: 65 evaluated projects, $11.2 billion committed. By project count, 7 of 65 achieved Satisfactory outcomes — 10.8 percent. By commitment, only $458 million of $11.2 billion went to Satisfactory projects — 4.1 percent. The gap between the two metrics is the widest of any sector: the 7 successes averaged $65 million while the 58 failures averaged $185 million. Every large transport operation in Africa failed to reach Satisfactory. The global Transport rate is 32.3 percent. Africa underperforms by 22 percentage points. The portfolio is 100 percent IPF — no DPF, no PforR. This is the right instrument, deployed in the right sector, producing the wrong results.
The Four-Year Zero
Between FY2019 and FY2022 — four consecutive fiscal years — the Africa transport portfolio recorded zero Satisfactory outcomes across 17 projects and $5.1 billion. Not a single road, bridge, rail, or transit project achieved its development objectives. This is not a bad year. It is a structural delivery failure sustained across an entire IDA replenishment cycle. The projects include the Ethiopia Transport Systems Improvement ($300M, MU), the Nigeria Rural Access and Mobility Phase 2 ($230M, MU), the Southern Africa Trade and Transport Facilitation ($213M, MU), and the CEMAC Transport-Transit Facilitation ($201M, U). No other sector in Africa has recorded four consecutive years of zero Satisfactory outcomes.
Twelve Countries, Zero Satisfactory
Twelve countries with two or more transport projects returned zero percent Satisfactory on a combined $5.9 billion: Kenya ($1.4 billion, 4 projects), Ethiopia ($1.2 billion, 4 projects), Nigeria ($918 million, 5 projects), DRC ($494 million, 3 projects), Tanzania ($490 million, 2 projects), Ghana ($404 million, 3 projects), Senegal ($289 million, 2 projects), Côte d’Ivoire ($130 million), Burundi ($76 million), and Lesotho ($66 million). These are the Bank’s largest transport borrowers on the continent. The pattern is not a sampling artefact. It is the record.
The FCS Inversion
Non-FCS countries achieve only 8.2 percent Satisfactory by count — worse than FCS at 18.8 percent. The Bank builds roads worse in stable countries — where institutional capacity, procurement systems, and contractor markets should be stronger — than in conflict-affected states. The binding constraint is not fragility. It is the Bank’s delivery model.
Transport and Food Security
The Bank’s own May 2025 report — Transport for Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa — found that 37 percent of locally produced food is lost in transit, transport adds up to 30 percent to final food costs, and food travels an average 4,000 kilometres taking 23 days — four times longer than in Europe. Fifty-eight percent of Africans are food insecure, double the global average. The report identifies 10 ports, 20 border crossings, and 20 road segments as critical chokepoints. The Bank publishes the diagnosis while its transport portfolio delivers 4 cents on the dollar.
The Connective Tissue
Transport is the foundation of every other sector initiative the Bank is scaling. AgriConnect cannot get crops to market without roads — Senegal’s transport record is zero Satisfactory on $289 million, and 37 percent of food is lost in transit. Health Works cannot staff clinics without connectivity — Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya’s transport records are all zero Satisfactory. Mission 300 cannot maintain grids without logistics infrastructure — the four largest energy borrowers all have zero Satisfactory in transport. The sectoral records documented across this platform cover every major GP in Africa: transport at 4 percent, energy at 15 percent, water at 25 percent, health at 29 percent, education at 31 percent, FCI at 36 percent, agriculture at 38 percent. Transport is at the bottom — and it is the foundation on which everything else is supposed to stand. If the foundation delivers at 4 cents on the dollar, nothing built on it will hold.
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