Africa’s longest road spreads across 10 different countries and spans a whopping 6,000 miles all the way from the north to the south of the vast continent.
The Cairo-Cape Town Highway, also known as Trans-African Highway 4, is a part of the transcontinental road network being developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the African Union.
Spanning a distance of 6,355 miles, it connects Cairo in Egypt to Cape Town in South Africa.
Historically, the British Empire had proposed a road through the Cape to Cairo Red Line of British colonies. This route was variously referred to as the Cape to Cairo Road, Pan-African Highway, or, in sub-Saharan Africa, the Great North Road.
However, much like the Cape to Cairo Railway, the road was not completed before the end of British colonial rule.
In the 1980s, a revised version of the plan was revived as part of the Trans-African Highway, a transcontinental road network developed by the UNECA, the ADB, and the African Union, and named the Cairo-Cape Town Highway.
While it largely follows the same roads as the original Cape to Cairo Road, it deviates in a few places.
The road travels through 10 different countries along its route from north to south: Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa.
Starting in the north, the road begins at the port of Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea before going through Cairo and then further south down the 5,000-mile-long continent.
The Trans-African Highway Network as a whole covers 35,221 miles of Africa consisting of nine connecting highways that aim to alleviate poverty by promoting trade.
The highway infrastructure will contain road-based trade corridors in the wake of colonial powers that did not encourage road links between various regions of the continent.
The highways will hopefully increase interstate and domestic trade, revitalise small and medium-sized businesses, reduce the price of goods, and improve living conditions.