Traffic congestions are an indication of a few things, one of them being the attestation of bustling economic activities in any given region.
People tend to flock in droves where numerous economic opportunities exist; as a result, overpopulation becomes a major issue.
One of the effects of overpopulation, particularly when a significant amount of the population is raking in a generous sum monthly, is traffic congestion. When a substantial amount of the population can afford cars and are simultaneously weary of public transportation, there tend to be way too many cars on the road at any given time, and this creates bad traffic congestion.
Numbeo, a Serbian crowd-sourced global database, dubbed this effect the Inefficiency Index. According to Numbeo, the Inefficiency Index is an estimation of inefficiencies in traffic. High inefficiencies are usually caused by people driving a car instead of using public transport or long commute times. It can be used as a traffic component measurement in economies of scale.
To come up with its Traffic Index, which Numbeo describes as time consumed in traffic due to job commute, the global database also takes into account other factors such as Time Index, an average one-way time needed to transport, in minutes, Time Exp. Index, an estimation of dissatisfaction due to long commute times, and CO2 Emission Index, an estimation of CO2 consumption due to traffic time.
Of course, other factors contribute to traffic problems like poor road networks, sub-par infrastructure, bad driving habits, the presence of construction activities, and more.
However, here are the five African countries with the highest level of traffic congestion, according to Numbeo’s selected indices. The database platform uses a well-laid-out algorithm to compute these indices.
