ABSTRACT
Infrastructural development is of crucial importance to the creation of modern economies in Africa and in particular to the evolution of intra-African trade which is the best means of freeing Africa from its neo-colonial bondage. The route from Bagamoyo to Lake Tanganyika was not hacked out by Burton and Speke, but was an old-established Arab trade route, in a sense colonial as it had been developed and was primarily used to exploit ivory and slaves. When the Europeans did venture inland it was usually to pre-existing African towns, often for military purposes. In another role, in the 1980s it provided white South Africa with the means of exerting economic and political hegemony over neighbouring states despite important post-independence railways built specially to help break that dominance. It reflects the continuing pattern of African trade, which is mainly with industrialized countries of Europe and America rather than intra-African.
