Índice de correlación espectral 1 Nulo en la dirección de 45.5º y 45.5º.

North Africa enjoys a reasonably good level of transport infrastructure when compared to the rest of Africa (excluding South Africa).Over the years, the region has benefited from increasing levels of international assistance, and notable improvements in institutional capacities, particularly in the areas of planning and implementation. In addition, high oil revenues have enabled both Algeria and Libya to invest heavily in transport infrastructure, most of which involve links to other regional countries. Mauritania, where infrastructure is generally weak, remains an exception. Nevertheless, promoting intra-regional trade will require investments to raise infrastructure standards closer to global norms. For example road links have to be of highways standards, and rail links need to be high speed, if these two modes of transport are to play their expected role in helping to tap the potential for regional trade.

Transport can play a unique role in facilitating regional integration.The North African countries recently began to invest more in their air transport facilities, namely airports. However, important multilateral agreements, including the Arab League Open-Skies Agreement, the Yamoussoukro Decision, and an open skies agreement with the European Union need to be finalized and implemented, while further progress is required to improve services and upgrade fleets and navigation systems. The North African countries enjoy a considerable advantage in sea transport, in that most of their main ports are on the Mediterranean, which is becoming an important route for trade between Europe and USA on one side and the Middle East and Far East on the other. Overall, the maritime transport facilities and related services have witnessed considerable improvements and expansions. Many of these were supported by the region’s trade patterns and agreements with Europe and the United States. Amongst the major development initiatives are the Tangier Mediterranean Port in Morocco, the planned Enfidha Deep Sea Port in Tunisia, and major improvements and expansion programs of other Mediterranean ports such as Alexandria and Damietta ports in Egypt. These ports serve extensive areas, including in other countries, due to improved road network coverage. For example, the hinterlands of Rades and Bizerte ports in Tunisia extend up to Annaba and Hassi Messaoud in Algeria.

However, the region has to invest considerably to improve logistics and transhipment capacities. The operational efficiency of the ports remains a challenge to be addressed, particularly reduces the cost of handling containers and port transit delays. Experience shows that the involvement of the private sector in the operation of ports through private-public partnership (PPP) concessions is one effective way of improving efficiency.

It is important to increase the autonomy of port regulators,particularly as competition increases between different ports on the one hand, and between maritime transport and

other modes of transport on the other hand. While the latter is not significant in the North Africa region, the former may become important in a short period of time as many of the North African countries are embarking on developing their ports, most of which share the same shipment routes.

In line with the above, several measures have been taken in the region, such as the anticipated adoption of PPP concessions (whether to develop, operate, or partially operate) in Tunisia’s Nfidha deep sea port, the Tangier-Med port in Morocco, and the Alexandria Sea Port. The establishment of the Alexandria Sea Port Authority as a semi-autonomous body is another successful measure that needs to be carefully assessed and replicated.

The road network in North Africa has expanded noticeably, particularly in terms of quality. Many of the countries have embarked on raising their regional axes to highway standards. North African countries are connected through road infrastructure, with the existence of some missing links. The main road axis linking the countries is the Maghreb Road (or Trans-African Highway No. 1), which stretches from Cairo in Egypt to Nouakchott in Mauritania and towards Dakar in Senegal. The Cairo-Mauritania Trans African Highway has a total length of 8075 km. It is paved, and many sections have been upgraded to highway standards.

Notable progress has been made to bridge the missing linksalong the Cairo – Mauritania Trans African Highway, where the link between Nouakchott and Nouadhibou in Mauritania was upgraded to bitumen standards in 2005. In Morocco, the Fez – Taza -Oujda road, now under construction, would provide a highway-standard link from Morocco towards Algeria. Similarly, Algeria and Tunisia are upgrading regional road connections to highway standards. Except in Mauritania, internal road connectivity of the North Africa countries is adequate, particularly between the main cities and both ports and regional road links.

Provision of railways infrastructure remains weak in the region, with Libya having almost no rail links. This has a significant impact on intra-regional trade facilitation. Nevertheless, ambitious programs are already underway in Algeria, Libya and Tunisia to build and improve railways. The Maghreb Heads of States agreed at the March 1991 summit held in Libya to develop the Maghreb High Speed Rail Link which would connect Casablanca in Morocco with Tripoli in Libya through Tunis and Algiers. The total journey time of the proposed service from Libya to Morocco would be 15 hours. The project is still at early stages of development.

Figure 1. Trans-African Highway no.1 from Cairo to Dakar

IV.

Regional Integration Dimensions and Potentials

Increasing regional integration could make a significant contribution to development in North Africa.Gravity model analysis suggests that a full-fledged free trade area among the North African countries (excluding Egypt) would almost double commercial relations within the region (DEPF, 2008). While trade agreements have substantially reduced formal trade barriers between the countries, effective integration will require improvements in trade facilitation and infrastructure. The fact that there is no institution or agency in North Africa that can deal with cross-border and regional issues results in bilateral cooperation in specific areas without an overall coordinated approach.

Increased regional integration would require improvements in: (i) logistic flows, (ii) regional technical cooperation, and (iii) transport infrastructure.