Billed as the transportation of the future, the aim of Hyperloop is to permanently disrupt how we travel long distances but certainly Africa is billed to be late to the party.
Several Hyperloop routes are currently in development in countries such as China, UAE, Spain and France.
The first full-size Hyperloop capsule designed to carry passengers at 1,000 kilometers per hour (620 mph) was unveiled Tuesday, offering a glimpse at what could be the future of travel.
Hyperloop is the mega-fast, cutting edge transport technology first proposed by SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. It’s designed to transport people through low-pressure steel tubes at speeds to match a typical passenger aircraft.
In spite of this potential leap in the way people travel, Ghana and in fact the rest of Africa with the exception of a few countries are still grappling with the basics when it comes to transportation and energy.
According to a 2016 report by the Ghana Institute of Engineers (GhIE), “The overall grading of roads and bridges, electric power, and potable water infrastructure had a score of D3 representing poor”.
On road infrastructure, the report stated that the sector had a score of 2.79 out of 5 points. This showed that the country’s road infrastructure have a shorter lifespan compared to international standards.
Our poor road infrastructure means that the most basic of transportation has not been mastered and now that the world is making this leap in transportation, we have to ask ourselves the tough questions about the pace of our development and the need to speed things up or at least change the way we have approached it over the years.
African roads are the most dangerous
Africa has an average of 204 kilometres of roads per 1,000 square kilometres and out of this only one quarter are paved. The density of national roads lags far behind the world average of 944 kilometres per 1,000 square kilometres, of which more than half are paved.
According to the World Bank, between 60,000 and 100,000 kilometres of roads are required to provide intracontinental connectivity in Africa. Low road density also means that Africa’s fast-growing cities are affected by increasing congestion, which has an impact not only on economic development but is also a significant source of pollution and accidents. With a road traffic injury fatality rate of 32.2 per 100,000 inhabitants – the corresponding rate in countries such as Sweden, the UK and France is between four and eight deaths per 100,000 population – African roads are the most dangerous in the world.
With these appalling statistics, it is hard to imagine how Africa will be able to join the rest of the world to make the leap to ultra-fast Hyperloops.
It is even harder to think that we will be super-seeing ultra-fast capsules traveling in steel tubes.
