ABSTRACT Transport investment has played an important role in the economic development of many countries. Starting from a low base, African countries have recently initiated several massive transportation infrastructure projects. However, surprisingly little is known about the current levels, past evolution, and correlates of transportation infrastructure in Africa. In this paper, we introduce a new data set on the evolution of the stocks of railroads (1862–2015) and multiple types of roads (1960–2015) for 43 sub-Saharan African countries. First, we compare our estimates with those from other available data sets, such as the World Development Indicators of the World Bank. Second, we document the aggregate evolution of transportation investments over the past century in Africa. We confirm that railroads were a ‘colonial’ transportation technology, whereas paved roads were a ‘post-colonial’ technology. We also highlight how investment patterns have followed economic patterns. Third, we report conditional correlations between five-year infrastructure growth and several geographic, economic and political factors during the period 1960–2015. We find strong correlations between transportation investments and economic development as well as more political factors including pre-colonial centralization, ethnic fractionalization, European settlement, natural resource dependence, and democracy.

中文翻译：

---

基础设施投资中的经济和政治因素：1960–2015年非洲铁路和公路的证据

摘要运输投资在许多国家的经济发展中发挥了重要作用。从低基数开始，非洲国家最近启动了几个大规模的交通基础设施项目。但是，令人惊讶的是，对于非洲的运输基础设施的当前水平，过去的演变以及相关性知之甚少。在本文中，我们介绍了有关43个撒哈拉以南非洲国家铁路库存（1862-2015年）和多种类型的公路（1960-2015年）演变的新数据集。首先，我们将我们的估计值与其他可用数据集（例如世界银行的世界发展指标）中的估计值进行比较。其次，我们记录了过去一个世纪非洲交通运输投资的总体演变。我们确认铁路是一种“殖民地”运输技术，而铺路是一种“后殖民”技术。我们还将重点介绍投资模式如何遵循经济模式。第三，我们报告了1960年至2015年期间五年基础设施增长与若干地理，经济和政治因素之间的条件相关性。我们发现运输投资与经济发展以及更多的政治因素之间有着很强的相关性，包括前殖民地集权，种族分割，欧洲殖民，自然资源依赖和民主。