Transport

Its geography lends Qatar to being a trading nation. The peninsula is located near one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, the Straits of Hormuz. In the lead up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, boosting capacity of the transport sector has been a major priority, as demonstrated by the government’s recent budget allocations.

The importance of the sea cannot be overstated for Qatar. In ages past, the curved sails of dhow trading vessels dotted Gulf waters as merchants helped supply the historical trade routes that developed between the Middle East and Asia. Although Qatar Gas Transport Company’s (Nakilat) gigantic liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers have since...

Located at the intersection of the Asian, African and European continents, trade has been a lifeline of Qatar’s economy throughout its history. To facilitate continued trade growth, the government has drawn up plans for substantial investments in transport infrastructure. In the past decade, work has been under way for a new airport, new port and...

Aerial passenger traffic has risen dramatically since 2007, when 8.5m people took to the Nigerian skies. In 2011 the figure was 14.6m — a 72% increase in four years. Of those, 12m flew on domestic flights, underscoring the key role of the country’s carriers.

As the economy expanded rapidly over the past decade, Nigeria’s national transport system became increasingly strained. The country’s road network, which moves 90% of goods and people, according to the Ministry of Transport (MoT), is largely in a state of disrepair and heavily congested. The rail network, meanwhile, is only partially operable due to...

Four years after the last deadly crash, Nigeria’s aviation is still reeling from twin disasters in June 2012 that have served as a wake-up call for the industry. Although Africa was the continent with the highest number of crashes (yet the lowest level of traffic) in 2010, the absence of fatal air crashes in Nigeria since 2008 seemed to indicate...