Governance of Transport Corridors in OIC Member States:
Challenges, Cases and Policy Lessons
69
layers of the foundation had been realized and it was now time for improving the operational
performance of the corridor.
A variety of stakeholders joined MCLI:
 Representatives from the public sector in South Africa and Mozambique, which saw in this platform
an opportunity to coordinate and finance investments in infrastructure, coordinate procedures and
regulations (Customs, for instance), harmonize standards and exchange information;
 Representatives from the business sector like shippers, road transport companies, railways,
intermodal transport operators, freight forwarders, logistics service providers, shipping lines, port
agents, shipping brokers, financial institutions which considered MCLI as a useful source of
information as well as an excellent network for developing new business contacts.
The funding of MCLI is guaranteed via annual contributions from its members: around 75 percent from
its founding partners and 25 percent from 170 general members. The financial sustainability of MCLI
is a serious issue as the organization solely depends on membership fees. This puts a limit to the
activities that MCLI can undertake in the present situation. There are, of course, different ways to
increase the revenues of MCLI, for instance, by expanding the member base and introducing user-pay
models, as, for instance, the Northern Corridor in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and D.R. Congo is doing.
Some stakeholders seem still not to be at that stage that they will agree with this. One solution to
overcome this problem is that MCLI will expand its activities and set-up a transport corridor
observatory monitoring traffic, time and costs of certain transport operations along the corridor,
measuring border crossing performance, etc. Both government and private funding would subsidize
these new activities. This is, however, a very delicate issue as the private operators are often not be
willing to share this type of information, as they consider this confidential business information; even
on an anonymous base. The reason is that, as there are not that many operators, one could easily
deduce which operator it concerns. MCLI still believes it should create a research division to monitor
logistics costs along the corridor for every type of cargo and every type of transport. Another problem
is the perceived idea that MCLI is mainly driven by South African interests, despite efforts from MCLI
to establish permanent presence in Mozambique.
The management of MCLI confirms that there is a need for a multilateral legal instrument to establish
a sustainable corridor management institution that prescribes each of the parties’ responsibilities and
secure Government funding to sustain the functioning of MCLI: Based on this, MCLI has taken the
following initiatives:
 MCLI is currently working on a project funded by the World Bank’s Africa Transport Policy
Programme, which has two elements. The first is to revise the current Memorandum of
Understanding, which applies to South Africa and Mozambique to include the Kingdom of
Swaziland, and to propose a formal working partnership between the three countries and MCLI so
that the organisation can fully support the development of the Maputo Corridor in an institutional
framework, which will give its capacity to resource the organisation more effectively to carry outs
its work;
 MCLI is in the process of drafting a strategy for the organization to 2021, which provides the
structure, and impetus for improving the operational, research and analytical capacity of MCLI.
Both these elements will enable MCLI to improve its lobbying and advocacy activities.