This Road to the Airport Destroyed a Country: How a single road reveals who development is really for

 

“This Road to the Airport Destroyed a Country”

(Or: How a single road reveals who development is really for)

You’re in a developing country.
You see a new road—smooth, fresh asphalt. Maybe even four lanes. It connects the capital city to the airport.
It’s gleaming. Fast. Efficient.

It looks like progress.
But what if it’s not?

What if that road isn’t about helping the country at all?

Let’s take a drive.

🛣 The Idea of the Road

Roads are the most basic form of development.
They promise mobility. Trade. Jobs. Schools. Clinics. A way out.

World Bank reports love roads.
They’re cost-effective. Visible. Easy to measure.

You can put a road on a spreadsheet.
It’s much harder to quantify democracy.

🌍 A Pattern Emerges

In dozens of developing countries—from the Congo to Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea to Colombia—you’ll find the same thing:

Brand-new roads built with international funding…
leading straight from natural resource zones
to export terminals.
To airports.
To mining ports.
To palm oil plantations.

But not to the villages nearby.
Not to schools.
Not to clinics.
Not to where people live.

Because the road wasn’t for them.

It was for getting stuff out.

💰 Who Pays for This?

Sometimes it’s the World Bank.
Sometimes it’s China, through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Sometimes it’s private capital, backed by national governments desperate for foreign investment.

In theory, it’s all win-win.

But here’s what often happens:

  • Land is expropriated.

  • Locals are displaced.

  • Forests are cleared.

  • And the road becomes a high-speed extraction funnel, moving goods out and profits up.

Meanwhile, surrounding communities are left with dust, runoff, and no service stops.

🇨🇩 Case Study: The Congo

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chinese firms built hundreds of kilometers of roads through remote provinces.
Not for people.
For cobalt.
For copper.
For rare earth minerals.

Materials for your phone, your electric car, your solar panel.

Locals get low-paid jobs and degraded water.
Multinational companies get a pipeline straight to the global market.

🏗 What Counts as Development?

This is the paradox.

A road looks like development.
But development for whom?

Because a road is neutral only on paper.
In reality, it always serves someone.
And if you follow it long enough, you’ll often find it leads not to prosperity—but to a shipping container.

🧭 The Geography of Direction

Here’s the key:
Where a road goes tells you who holds power.

Does it connect rural communities?
Or does it bypass them?

Does it help farmers reach markets?
Or help timber leave the forest?

Does it spread opportunity?
Or does it concentrate extraction?

That shiny highway to the airport?

It’s not a sign of development.
It’s a directional map of inequality.

Because sometimes, a country doesn’t need a road.
It needs to decide who the road is really for.

Comments

  1. David Tyler Rand-McKayJuly 9, 2025 at 4:42 PM

    JUST ONE MINUTE:
    You’re in a developing country.
    There’s a brand-new highway—smooth, fast, straight to the airport.
    It looks like progress.

    But what if it isn’t?

    In dozens of countries, roads are built with foreign aid or investment.
    But they don’t go to schools.
    Or clinics.
    Or villages.

    They go from a mine…
    to a port.

    From a plantation…
    to an export hub.

    Why?

    Because the road isn’t for the people who live there.

    It’s for getting stuff out.

    In the Congo, roads cut through rainforest—not to connect communities, but to move cobalt and copper to the coast.

    Paid for by foreign companies.
    Profits shipped out.
    Locals left behind.

    And here’s the trick:
    It still counts as development.
    It’s still in the reports.
    Still in the headlines.

    But who is it actually serving?

    So yeah.

    That road to the airport?
    It’s not just a road.

    It’s a line drawn between power and everything else.

    Because when you build a road…
    you’re not just deciding where people go.
    You’re deciding who gets left behind.

    ReplyDelete

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