Studies on global shipping network show mainly the very relative weight of Africa in the world and the growing impact of Asia in Africa’s connectivity, at the expense of Europe. However, this global view overlooks the role of the international transportation stakeholders, especially the one of ship-owners, in the insertion of Africa in global flows. The combination of recent and original data about containerships moves with quantitative methods through network analysis and a more qualitative work on stakeholders’ strategies, allows identifying differentiated logics for the ship-owners and the uniqueness of the situation of Africa and its regions in the global shipping network.
West Africa has set up institutions, mechanisms and laws in order to promote Community area. One of the main goals remains facilitating trade and mobility. Indeed, transport infrastructures, due to their role in territorial structuring, are identified and enshrined by regional institutions as tools of regional integration and territorial development. But these institutional speeches are so far from field actors’ practices, with many dysfunctions on the corridors, which are the decisive links in regional integration and the fluidity sought mostly by the global operators. However, the populations expectations about these mechanisms are shared development and sustainability, not reconcilable with globalisation needs right now. Thus, we formulate hypothesis that good regional integration is essential to fluidity and beyond the fertility of the territories. Abidjan-Cotonou coastal corridor offers us an interesting field of experimentation with Dangote cements transport and distribution as evidence of good regional integration but with high social and environmental nuisance.
Increasing competition in air transport has forced airlines to differ through fares and/or service quality. In both cases, existing publications mostly neglect developing countries. This paper aims to fill this gap thanks to an assessment of Congo Airways’ service quality. Both expectations and perception of service quality have been analysed trough a survey among its passengers carried out at Goma Airport, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Results show a favourable perception of quality, but for most criteria perception is nevertheless slightly lower than expectations. This suggests some dissatisfaction. Results also demonstrate the range of profiles in terms of both expectations and perceptions. From a management point of view, Congo Airways should thus try to improve all the criteria here considered. On the scientific side, our research should be repeated in the framework of developing countries before drawing general conclusions.
This article studies the concept of fluidity applied to transport and spatial planning in Morocco by contextualizing high speed network development and high speed station urban integration in Rabat. Mobilizing urban geography as well as planning and public policy analysis, the author put together the results of two data sets and two methodologies, namely public discourse interpretation and operational documentation study. Capitalizing from a first theoretical reflexion concerning the use of "fluidity" in transportation studies, the article differenciates three main political arguments justificating the high speed project in Morocco. Thereafter, Agdal's railway station project study in Rabat reveals how fluidity operates simultaneously on a spatial and on a strategical level, putting in the same time flexibility to passengers movement as well as to capitalistic urban processes.
In a context where fluidity is imperative, mobility is an important issue for African urban spaces. Weak motorization rates, spread out urban forms and lack of efficient and public collective transports systems make daily mobility a challenge. Alternative solutions have appeared to answer to mobility needs. They are based on individual initiatives. These transports are called “informals” or “artisanals”. They allow the daily mobility of several million people in the world. From the case study of Brazzaville, we are wondering about the place taken by the artisanal transports in Sub-Saharan cities. How does the artisanal transport offer structure itself and what dynamics allows it to answer to fast evolutions? Finally, to what extend artisanal transport tends to fluidify urban space? Our analysis of the intra-urban transport system in Brazzaville replaces specifically artisanal transports in a global urban environment, before simulating its structures and dynamics, with specific data. The simulation approach presented here is an agent based methodology.
African cities facing urban disorder have to deal with the exclusion of the poor from motorised movements, conflicts between all the kind of road users and an increased feeling of insecurity explained by pedestrians. This observation, in a context where there is a progressive inclusion of sustainable urban mobility planning, justifies the question of facilitating walking in the city of Yaoundé, the political capital of Cameroon. This paper aims to analyse factors which can lead to adopt walking, by using qualitative data obtained from a stratified random survey of 100 pedestrians, in the districts surrounding the city centre. Through a binary Logit model, we evaluate the quality level of those factors. The main results indicate that pedestrians are inclined to choose walking because of the travel time, the proximity of their destination, the level of security linked to their route, the presence of recreation areas along it and street lighting. On the contrary, higher is the frequency of trips, lower is the use of walking.
After 15 years of operation, it becomes possible to benefit from sound feedbacks related to the automated speed enforcement program in France. That program would be operated through roughly 5,000 radar devices by 2017. It has showed a rapid evolution since the first installed equipment. That contribution analyzes the different changes occurred since the implementation of the program. More accurately, it proposes a look upon the “shifting of evolution”, the inflexions the program has faced since its beginning, its adaptations to the environment. Then it deals more especially with the functional dimensions of the program and its outcomes. It is also shown that some changes raise new issues for the future.