Low-income countries (LICs) in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are investing in new railway lines to replace deteriorated infrastructure from the 19th and 20th century. These actions, despite financial and economic constraints, have been justified in common visions of continent-wide efficient networks to cope with the demands of growing populations. However, most of the recent rail infrastructure projects are driven by international suppliers’ preferences and financing rather than creating railways that match the requirements of interoperable regional networks. This paper therefore explores the current status of rail infrastructure in these LICs and the operational performance achieved to understand specific capability gaps in each regional network. Drawing from the experience of European countries in transforming regional future visions into applied research, a technical strategy for rail infrastructure in LICs is proposed. The strategy captures the key capabilities to be addressed in order to achieve future performance goals, while emphasizing the need for emerging technologies to be used in fit-for-purpose solutions. It is envisioned that the strategy will provide the basis for the development of continental technical strategy programs with specific technology roadmaps towards a common goal.

Deregulation and/or privatization of railway systems has been adapted in many developed countries, aimed at improving economic performance. literature on railway performance mainly focuses on the effects of reforms and on liberalization itself as well as measuring performance indicators for the management of assets in the railway industry. although these management reforms on the maintenance and operations of rail infrastructures are generally found to have contributed to improving trends of rail safety and safety performance, there is not much evidence from research to support this. There is also little work on how the lessons from restructuring can apply in developing countries.Identifying approaches that can revitalize railways in developing and emerging economies while raising standards of safety and operational performance is the objective of this article. Presented are some of the specific lessons from developed countries and how they can be applied in developing economies' railways, noting that it is not generally feasible to adopt best practices because of social and/or economic constraints. Only where there is a significant foreign investor is there the potential to replicate best in class technology and operational practices, so the presentation will identify areas where less well-funded railways can adopt lessons from developed countries -using both historical and current international benchmarks.The originality of this approach lies in establishing the relationship between performance and safety in the era of reforms and liberalization of the rail industry. The article analyses publicly available data to suggest how rail safety considerations have impacted in a more general way upon railway performance, and by extension, derive lessons for emerging and developing economies.

Models have the ability to represent a specific viewpoint of situations or circumstances in the real world. This paper facilitates the understanding of the relationship between railway safety and operational performance by providing an overview of performance models and presenting a model framework that incorporates both elements of safety and operational performance in the rail industry. This framework, if further developed into a working model with complex equations will facilitate decision making by governments and stakeholders in the daily operations and investments of railways.