Two states reunified a broken railway under one concession; SITARAIL doubled freight

The 1,260 km line from the port of Abidjan to Ouagadougou was viable under the bi-national public operator RAN until the mid-1970s, then declined through overstaffing, over-investment, loss-making passenger emphasis, and road competition. In 1989 the two governments split it into two state companies for political reasons — which made things worse, accelerating the shift of long-distance traffic to road. By the early 1990s both companies were deteriorating fast.

In July 1992 the governments decided to reunify operations under a concession, with the World Bank and other donors shaping the design. Following a bid process, the concession went to SITARAIL, a joint-stock company controlled by SOFIB — itself controlled by SAGA and SDV, the region's two dominant freight forwarders — with Maersk and engineering consultants among the other private shareholders. The two states took 15 percent each and staff 3 percent; the operator took over in late 1994 and ran its first full year from October 1995.

The contract separates commercial service from public obligation: SITARAIL configures services and tariffs freely, and any imposed service would run under a Public Service Obligation contract with specified compensation — none was in fact needed. Loss-making national passenger services were abandoned; only the long-distance Abidjan-Ouagadougou international service was kept. Of 3,470 railway workers, 1,815 were rehired under private-sector labor law, with unions present in the negotiations easing the reduction and donors funding severance.

In that first full year freight traffic almost doubled against 1994-95, the last year under the state companies: 428 million tonne-kilometres against about 230 million, with service quality to freight customers improving substantially. First-year losses came in below forecast.

One corridor, one operator, tariffs set by traffic

Reunifying the corridor undid the 1989 split that had pushed traffic onto competing roads.

Shippers themselves became the controlling shareholders, so the operator's owners were its largest customers.

Free tariff-setting let management price for volume and abandon services nobody would pay for.

A usage fee rising with revenue made the states share in growth instead of capping it.

Having the operator service rehabilitation debt gave it a commercial reason to invest well.

Where a business is a corridor, unify the operator first. Commercial freedom plus a revenue-linked fee aligns operator and traffic growth; landlord-corporation middle layers invite boundary fights.

The World Bank's assessment after year one was favorable but explicitly provisional, and it recorded failures too: misunderstandings and conflicts between the new railway landlord corporations (SIPF and SOPAFERB) and the operator over their respective roles seriously delayed the rehabilitation investment program, and the Bank began advising other countries against inserting such landlord entities into concession schemes. It also concluded that widening the search for potential operators would have strengthened competition at the bid stage.