World Bank’s $200 million Togo injection: investment or black hole?

The railway mirage and the reality of mismanagement

The World Bank Group has just approved a staggering $200 million package to modernise Togo’s transport infrastructure and revive its moribund railway network. Official statements trumpet this as a masterstroke, envisioning Togo transformed into an ‘indispensable logistics hub’ for the Sahel. But behind the technocratic gloss and the customary handshakes, a burning question emerges: how can a serious financial institution entrust such a strategic portfolio to a regime whose economic governance is notably opaque?

By handing hundreds of millions to a state that struggles to demonstrate fiscal discipline, the World Bank risks funding yet another logistical illusion. The core of the project lies in a bold promise: rehabilitating 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 Togo’s reality, the railway sector is a graveyard of abandoned infrastructure, plagued for decades by chronic underinvestment and short-sighted political decisions.

Entrusting such complex projects to the Togolese bureaucratic apparatus is a blind gamble. The country is frequently criticised for the slowness of its structural reforms and the inefficiency of its public investments. Handing over $200 million for rails without first ensuring the administration has the skills, transparency and rigour to manage them is putting the cart before the horse. At best, it is amateurish; at worst, it rewards poor governance.

Logistics hub or financial sieve?

Togo likes to see itself as the gateway to the Sahel hinterland. But the reality of the Lomé–Ouagadougou–Niamey corridor is quite different: bureaucratic red tape, customs harassment and, above all, systemic corruption that deters businesses. The Port of Lomé, despite its technical performance, remains at the centre of corruption scandals and favouritism that highlight how porous financial circuits are.

Injecting fresh money into infrastructure without cleaning up the business environment will solve nothing. As long as nepotism and lack of political alternation keep institutions frozen, donor millions will first feed the regime’s client networks before benefiting the real economy. By refusing to condition its funding on an uncompromising fight against embezzlement, the international community becomes complicit in the country’s economic stagnation.

The guilty blindness of international institutions

This sudden generosity from the World Bank raises questions about its own evaluation criteria. How can such a blank cheque be justified when the country faces glaring social emergencies—health, education, access to water—all 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 moral and financial debt, with no guarantee of a return on investment for the population. If Togo wants to be taken seriously on the international stage, it must first prove it can manage its resources transparently. In the meantime, this financing looks very much like a blank cheque handed to a regime that has made resource capture a method of governance.