Three decades ago, many railway systems carried a large share of their country’s traffic because road transport was poor or faced restrictive regulations. At that time, rail customers were locked into rail service either through physical connections or, if they were parastatals, through policies requiring them to use another parastatal for transport.
Since then, most national economies and national railways have been liberalized. Coupled with the general improvement in road infrastructure, liberalization has led to strong competition between transport modes.
Today, few railways outside of South Africa, other than dedicated mineral lines, are essential to the functioning of the economy. Most railways in Sub-Saharan Africa are small, with the busier ones carrying no more than a million traffic units annually—a volume comparable to a moderately busy branch line on other railways. By comparison, the South African operator, Spoornet, carries that volume every three days. In some cases, the light traffic is due to lack of demand; in others, it is caused by shortages of rolling stock, particularly locomotives.