Beyond Bagamoyo: East Africa's Indian Ocean Gateway and the Governance of Afro-Asian Connectivity (Towards a GAFG Connectivity Doctrine)
Introduction Major shifts in global commerce have rarely been the work of a single port, railway or trade route. They have taken hold when whole systems of connectivity matured together, linking maritime gateways with inland markets, production centers with consumers, infrastructure with institutions, and regional ambition with international cooperation. T he ancient Mediterranean , the Silk Roads and the trading networks of the Indian Ocean all illustrate the same lesson: prosperity has depended less on individual corridors than on the systems that connect them. East Africa now appears to be approaching a similar moment. The expansion of the Port of Dar es Salaam, the proposed Bagamoyo Port and the revival of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) amount to more than a list of infrastructure projects. Taken together, they point to the gradual emergence of a regional connectivity architecture linking the Indian Ocean to the mineral-rich interior of Central Africa, and...