Investigating Risks to the Implementation of the Great Equatorial Landbridge (GELB) Highway Project across Africa

Abstract

Transboundary Trade Corridors (TTC) are becoming increasingly important for achieving national, regional, and global development objectives. However, the cross-boundary nature of these projects involves dealing with diverse contexts that span across different countries and involve multiple stakeholders with varying interests. These circumstances exacerbate the risks and uncertainties that arise during their implementation, intensifying the challenges involved in making decisions about how to proceed with their execution. Insufficient evaluations of development projects have been identified as a contributing factor to unforeseen risks, which in turn can result in the underperformance and failure of transportation infrastructure projects. This ultimately acts as an impediment to achieving sustainable development goals. Further, rapid deployment of post risk-event corrective measures can exacerbate, for instance, macro-economic crisis and civil unrest. The Great Equatorial Land Bridge is a TTC planned to traverse five countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic, South-Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Despite the anticipated advantages for globalization, political cooperation, and regional integration, the risks that must be addressed to successfully implement this project are still uncertain. We, therefore, use a Multicriteria Decision-Making (MCDM) framework to investigate risks to its successful implementation. The analysis results highlight that effectively managing economic, political, and geographic risks is crucial for the successful implementation of the project. Policy-makers, contractors and multiple stakeholders will benefit from this study’s depiction of the risks and their relative importance. Results can also inform actions toward sustainable development of the project.