Transport and infrastructure in Sao Tome and Principe

Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of Sao Tome and Principe 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.

› Airports in Sao Tome and Principe

Back to overview: Sao Tome and Principe

Road traffic

The network of roads and highways has a total length of 1,300 km. For each of the country's 223,107 inhabitants, this corresponds to 5.83 meters. This puts Sao Tome and Principe in 97th place in the global ranking. However, the country's size and population density of around 232 inhabitants per km² must also be taken into account. Countries with fewer inhabitants in the same or even larger area naturally achieve quite different values here and have to connect remote areas to the transport network despite a smaller population.

With an average of 56 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in Sao Tome and Principe is considered quite dangerous. This corresponds to 27.2 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.

In Sao Tome and Principe, 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.

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Sao Tome and Principe
Roadways	1,300 km	5,826.80 km	1,354.17 m
Railroads	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Waterways	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Commercial harbors	22	98.61	0.023
Airports	2	8.96	2.083

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Africa
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	7,905	5.67	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)

The 2 airports in Sao Tome and PrincipeThe 2 biggest airports in Sao Tome and Principe (São Tomé Int'l. and Principe)

Climate details in Sao Tome and PrincipeA climate analysis for Sao Tome and Principe incl. temperatures, humidity, rain days per month, hours of sunshine

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