Transport and infrastructure in Madagascar
Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of Madagascar with the average of all countries in Africa. The traffic routes have noticeable defects in many places and are often not in particularly good condition.In terms of the length of its rail network, Madagascar ranks 120th in the world with 0.03 meters per inhabitant. In total, the rail network is 836 kilometers long. Freight traffic on the rails most recently totaled 122.34 million tons and kilometers traveled.
The waterways listed refer to inland traffic on rivers and canals. The number of ports includes those located on the 4,828 km of coastline. In 2019, about 199,712.50 freight containers were transported.
› Airports in Madagascar
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Road traffic
The network of roads and highways has a total length of 31,640 km. For each of the country's 28.92 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 1.09 meters. This puts Madagascar in 198th place in the global ranking. However, it is also important to note that the country's population density is very low at around 49 inhabitants per km². In this case, disproportionately long distances generally have to be covered to reach the more remote parts of the country.With an average of 7436 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in Madagascar is considered quite dangerous. This corresponds to 28.5 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.
In Madagascar, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, i.e. people drive in the right-hand lane and overtake on the left. Oncoming traffic comes toward you on the left side. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.
Madagascar | |||
| total | per 1 mio inhabitants | per km² | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roadways | 31,600 km | 1,094.22 km | 53.87 m |
| Railroads | 800 km | 28.91 km | 1.42 m |
| Waterways | 600 km | 20.75 km | 1.02 m |
| Commercial harbors | 27 | 0.93 | 0.000 |
| Airports | 37 | 1.28 | 0.063 |
Africa | |||
| total | per 1 mio inhabitants | per km² | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roadways | 2,997,800 km | 2,151.40 km | 98.86 m |
| Railroads | 88,600 km | 63.57 km | 2.92 m |
| Waterways | 68,400 km | 49.09 km | 2.26 m |
| Commercial harbors | 7,949 | 5.70 | 0.000 |
| Airports | 413 | 0.30 | 0.000 |
Data sources used
• Global Health Observatory Data Repository (World Health Organization)• UNCTAD
• Internation Union of Railways (UIC)
• CIA Factbook
• OECD Statistics
• Wikipedia (german)
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