Hans-Sachs-Straße - Emirates.com

The Roads
Between Us
Frank Bures goes on an eye-opening – and hair-raising
road trip across Western Africa
Engine off!” yelled a policeman
standing in
front of our car, pointing
his machine gun at
the driver. “Get out!”
It was still dark, long before
the sun would come up, and
we had just started out from a
city in southern Nigeria called
Osogbo. The taxi was packed
with people heading north, when
our driver tried to run through a
checkpoint. Before he could make
it, one of the policemen jumped in
front of us.
The policeman, machine gun
now cradled in his arms, came towards
the car.
“Let me see your particulars,” he
yelled at the driver.
The driver turned off the engine
and got out. Together, they disappeared
behind the car, while the
rest of us waited. Waiting was something
I was used to by then, and time
was something I knew I would be
spending a lot of on this trip. I was
on my way to Abuja, where I would
take another car north to Niger.
There, I would get to the Trans-
Sahelian Highway, which is one of
the few — if not the only — completed
legs of the Trans-African
Highway network, a system which,
in theory, will someday join all parts
of the continent, revolutionise travel
and trade, and usher in a new era of
road-fueled prosperity so great, it is
hoped, that human right champion
Nicholas Kristof will be out of a job.
It is one of many such schemes
for improving Africa’s notorious
roads, which take countless lives in
accidents every year. The carnage
costs countries around 2 per cent