African Roads

The map (from http://na.unep.net/globalpop/africa/images/roads.png) depicts the African road network on a 1:4,000,000 scale. The information was collected by the United Nation's Environmental Program.

Motorways, all weather roads, and earth roads are represented on the map in three different colors. Based on the map's information, most of the northern half of Africa has the least developed road system. At first glance the lack of roads could be for a couple of reasons. The first is simply based on economics: lesser developed countries would have fewer roads to facilitate trade. Therefore, a rational assumption would be that northern Africa is less developed than the rest of Africa. Another reason may be due to physical geography, or simply that some natural landform makes road building in this area unattractive. An overlay of physical landforms onto the African road map makes it apparent that the Sahara Desert is responsible for the few roads in northern Africa.