Trans-Sahara Highway

Description

The Trans-Sahara Highway or TAH 2, also known as the African Unity Road, is a transnational highway project nearing completion to pave, improve and ease border formalities on an existing trade route running north–south across the Sahara Desert. It runs between North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the north and West Africa bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the south, from Algiers in Algeria to Lagos in Nigeria, giving it the alternative names of the Algiers–Lagos Highway or Lagos–Algiers Highway.

The Trans-Sahara Highway is one of the oldest transnational highways in Africa and one of the most complete, having been proposed in 1962, with construction of sections in the Sahara starting in the 1970s. Its central section has become little-used, and is currently closed to tourists and requires military convoys due to restrictions in Algeria and migrant trafficking with associated insecurity in northern Niger.