find below the research question and initial outline, however, it is open to be adjusted by the writer in the effort to increase the research quality of the dissertation.
Research Question:
To what extent transport corridors projects (sometimes referred as economic or development corridors) contribute to (1) the bordering capabilities of the countries inter-connected by these projects and (2) regional trade integration process in the African subregions?
The dissertation will start with the introduction to the geo-economic and trade motives behind the African transport corridors projects and assess/measure their impact on regional trade integration process and bordering capabilities of the countries connected through trade corridors. While explaining the geo-economic motives behind the African transport corridors, the following aspects of trade corridors projects would be mentioned: development finance connections financing the infrastructure projects in Africa, political nature of trade infrastructure projects financed by international finance organisations or multilateral development banks in the African continent, and historical narrative explaining the development process of transport corridors approach in Africa.
The methodology and literature review will focus on border studies, trade integration, transport and logistics studies, and regional integration studies but also provides a thorough understanding of the complex nature of transport corridors through combining a set of complementary approaches (i.e. the network institutionalism, economic geography of international organizations, development finance geo-strategy).
In Analysis and Discussion parts, the transport corridors projects in West Africa, East Africa, and South Africa will be explained in details and compared (comparison parameters: infrastructure, the role of private sector in corridor development, potential anchor projects, policy and regulatory environment, political support, corridor authority, linkages, cross-border arrangements, technical capacity) through a historical perspective. And, their impact will be analyzed. In terms of impact analysis of trade corridors, there are different parameters depending on the concept that the research papers adopt. For instance, development corridors, resource corridors, transport corridors, and economic corridors refer to the same infrastructure projects but depending on the densification of the corridor, spatial linkage, and connection level with downstream investments and upstream infrastructure systems in the region, their impacts on regional trade integration have been assessed with different parameters. One of the main issues in this assignment is that it should be limited to at least 3 or 4 big multi-modal transport corridors projects from West Africa, East Africa and South Africa. There are currently quite a lot transport corridors projects linking only 2 countries. But in this assignment, we will focus on only multi-modal cross-border transport corridors projects and their impact on regional trade integration processes in the Sub-Saharan Africa.
Depending on the availability of primary and secondary sources, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods will be adopted while responding to the research question. Especially, when analyzing the impact of trade corridors on regional integration, quantitative analysis could be conducted.
