Why Does Being Landlocked Matter? Forty-Four Countries Without a Coast

The penalty is not simply distance. Studies by the World Bank and others have found landlocked developing countries facing transport and insurance costs on imports substantially higher than their coastal neighbours, with estimates commonly in the range of forty to sixty percent more, and delays of many additional days. The costs come from several sources at once: the inland leg by road or rail, which is expensive per kilometre; border crossings, each adding paperwork, inspections, queues and opportunities for informal payments; the need to transfer goods between transport modes, which is where damage and theft occur; and the higher inventory a firm must hold to buffer against unpredictable delivery times. Research by Jeffrey Sachs and others found being landlocked associated with a meaningful reduction in growth rate, and the effect compounds, since high trade costs discourage exactly the manufacturing and export activity that would justify better infrastructure.

The structural problem is that the solution lies outside the country's jurisdiction. A landlocked state can build a first-class road to its border and find the road on the other side unpaved, or invest in a rail line whose gauge changes at the frontier, and it has no direct remedy. The dependence becomes acute when relations sour:

• •Nepal's trade runs almost entirely through India, and an unofficial blockade at the border in 2015 produced severe fuel and medicine shortages within weeks
• •Bolivia lost its coastline to Chile in the War of the Pacific in 1884, has pursued the issue for well over a century, maintains a navy on Lake Titicaca, and lost a case at the International Court of Justice in 2018 seeking to compel negotiations
• •Ethiopia became landlocked when Eritrea gained independence in 1993 and now routes the great majority of its trade through Djibouti
• •Central Asian states must cross Russia, China or Iran to reach any sea, which shapes their foreign policy directly
• •Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe all depend on corridors through coastal neighbours whose infrastructure and stability they do not control

International law grants a right of access in principle. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea gives landlocked states a right of access to and from the sea and freedom of transit through the territory of transit states, along with the right to fly their own flag on ships, and a 1965 convention addresses transit trade specifically. The qualification is that the terms of transit are to be agreed between the states concerned, which means the right exists and its exercise is negotiated, and a transit state retains the ability to take measures to protect its own interests. In practice the arrangements work through bilateral and regional agreements, transit corridors, dry ports and customs unions, and where regional integration is strong the disadvantage shrinks considerably, which is the main reason being landlocked in Europe is an inconvenience and being landlocked in central Africa is not.

Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are among the wealthiest countries in the world and all are landlocked, which shows that geography is a constraint rather than a sentence. The features that let them escape it are instructive. They are surrounded by rich, stable, open neighbours within a single regulatory and customs area, so borders are close to frictionless; they sit on excellent transport infrastructure including navigable rivers, in the Rhine's case connecting directly to a major port; and they specialise in exports where transport cost is trivial relative to value, including finance, pharmaceuticals, precision instruments and software, rather than in bulk commodities where freight dominates the price. Botswana and Kazakhstan have done comparatively well on mineral exports with high value per tonne. The generalisable lesson is that the penalty falls hardest on countries exporting heavy, low-value goods across poor infrastructure and unstable borders, which describes most of the sixteen landlocked developing countries in Africa.

The remedies are mostly about reducing friction rather than reaching water. Regional trade agreements and customs unions eliminate repeated inspections. Corridor programmes coordinate investment along a whole route rather than within one country, with one-stop border posts where both countries' officials work in the same building, a change that has cut crossing times at some African borders from days to hours. Dry ports, inland terminals where containers are cleared and consolidated, move customs formalities away from the congested seaport. Digital customs systems remove paperwork. Larger projects aim at new routes altogether, including Chinese-financed rail from Central Asia, the Ethiopia to Djibouti railway completed in 2018, and various corridors in southern Africa. The United Nations maintains a dedicated programme of action for landlocked developing countries, which has focused on precisely these measures, on the reasoning that the map cannot be changed and the border formalities can.

Forty-four countries have no coast, and because sea freight is far cheaper than any land alternative, their imports and exports cost substantially more and take many days longer, with the penalty coming from inland transport, border crossings, mode changes and the buffer stock needed against unreliable delivery. The remedy lies in a neighbour's territory, which creates dependence that has turned into blockade or dispute in several cases. Wealthy landlocked states escape through open borders, excellent infrastructure and high-value exports, and the practical fixes are corridor programmes, one-stop borders and dry ports.