It is the latest financial twist in Lomé: the World Bank Group has just approved a massive $200 million package to upgrade transport infrastructure and revive a moribund railway network. Official statements hail the move as visionary, painting a picture of Togo transformed into an “unmissable logistics hub” for the Sahel. But beneath the technocratic veneer and customary handshakes, a burning question emerges: how can a serious financial institution entrust such a strategic portfolio to a regime whose economic governance is most notable for its opacity?
By handing hundreds of millions to a state that struggles to demonstrate fiscal discipline, the World Bank risks financing yet another logistical illusion.
The railway mirage and the reality of waste
At the heart of the project lies an ambitious promise: to rehabilitate the railway 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 Togolese reality, the railway sector is a graveyard of abandoned infrastructure, plagued for decades by chronic underinvestment and short‑sighted political decisions.
Entrusting the management of such complex projects to Togo’s bureaucratic apparatus is a blind gamble. The country is regularly criticised for the slowness of its structural reforms and the inefficiency of public investments. Granting $200 million for rails without first ensuring that the administration has the skills, transparency and rigour to manage them is putting the cart before the horse. At best, it is amateurism; at worst, a reward for poor governance.
Logistics hub or financial sieve?
Togo likes to dream of 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, above all, a systemic level of corruption that discourages economic operators. The Port of Lomé, despite its technical performance, remains at the centre of corruption scandals and favouritism that remind us how porous the financial circuits are there.
Injecting fresh money into infrastructure without cleaning up the business environment will solve nothing. As long as nepotism and the absence of political alternation paralyse institutions, donor millions will first feed the regime’s patronage networks before benefiting the real economy. By refusing to condition its subsidies on a relentless fight against embezzlement of public funds, the international community becomes complicit in the country’s economic stagnation.
The culpable blindness of international institutions
This sudden generosity from the World Bank raises questions about its own evaluation criteria. How can it justify such a blank cheque when the country faces glaring social emergencies—health, education, access to water—that are completely neglected by the national budget? The regime of Faure Gnassingbé excels at designing “showcase” projects to seduce development partners while keeping the country in a state of internal structural fragility.
This $200 million programme will only increase the country’s moral and financial debt, with no guarantee of a return on investment for the population. If Togo wishes to be taken seriously on the international stage, it must first prove that it can manage its resources transparently. In the meantime, this funding looks very much like a blank cheque signed to a regime that has turned resource capture into a method of governance.
