Africa’s rail infrastructure
South Africa has 20 000 km of installed rail infrastructure and, given its relatively small size compared to other regional groupings, this translates to a high rail per land area. In absolute terms, the Maghreb region has 8 933 km of installed rail, however, if the underproductive land area were excluded from its total land area, the region would rank much higher.
The East Africa region is expected to add an additional 3 234 km of rail infrastructure in the next three years, which would rank it third in absolute terms behind South Africa and Southern Africa excluding SA. Indonesia has similar installed rail infrastructure per square kilometre as the rest of the Africa countries, with the exception of South Africa. This can be explained as the country is an aggregation of islands. South Africa has a similar amount of rail infrastructure as Turkey but more than Mexico.
