Transportation plays a key role in creating mobility for both freight and people thus facilitating growth of various industrial sectors. Tanzania is a gateway to in-transit cargo destined for landlocked neighbouring countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. Cognizant of this advantage, it envisages becoming an industrial hub of the East African region by 2025. Amidst this vision, Tanzania experiences an increasing vehicle density rate and the highest fatality rate (Kircher & Andersson, 2013) that is partly attributed to an increase of affluent middle class and rapid urbanization on the one hand, and the increase of in-transit cargo through the port of Dar es Salaam on the other.

At the centre of dense traffic, truck drivers are an important segment taking charge of the transportation operations. They facilitate right time, quantity and location delivery (Koberg & Longoni, 2019; Speranza, 2018). However, Tanzania’s transportation sector is vulnerable to increased inefficiency as a result of overly restrictive regulation in multiple ways. For example, there are heightened vehicle weight controls and several speed bumps installed on road highways. We argue that such overly regulation makes it uncompetitive relative to comparator countries. Such measures demand high compliance levels by truck drivers who struggle to meet their tight turn–around–time (TAT) schedules imposed by cargo owners and their employers. Existing literature documents more on drivers as dominant players of the sector by focusing on their emotional exhaustion (Nakata et al., 2022), long working hours (Hege et al., 2019) and loss of life and freight due to poor infrastructure (Girotto, et al., 2019) and corruption (Garbarino et al., 2018) as risk factors that jeopardize their overall performance (Semeijn et al., 2019). Undoubtedly, competitiveness of the sector depends on a number of factors working together as a system for which the current literature falls short. To fill this gap, we address the following research question: what is the cumulative systemic effect of the various dimensions related to the sector? In response to this question, we present a holistic framework of the combined effect of truck drivers, vehicles, infrastructure and legal enforcement with a view to broadening our understanding of the matter.

Theoretically, due to inclusion of multiple perspectives affecting transportation sector efficiency, this study benefited from the use of an ecological model of health behaviour and the Principal-agent theory. We administered a questionnaire to 112 respondents from six Logistics companies, one Association of truck operators in Tanzania and the Traffic Police department. Some in-depth interviews were also held with a few informants from the Ministry of Transport. The data were analyzed through factor and multiple linear regression analyses.

Findings indicate that transportation inefficiencies can be addressed by enhancing the combined effect of drivers, infrastructure status, legal administration and vehicles’ road worthiness as opposed to individual factors even though driver-related factors are the most significant. These findings point towards harmonization of policies across ministries in order to make the sector competitive and resilient against the surge of transit cargo thus facilitating the industrialization process.

The increase in global logistics and supply chain and the integration of logistics information communication technology (LICT) have created a new business model for organisations as they compete to balance supply and demand to satisfy consumers. As the new business model evolves, it poses more threats and challenges within the business environment. These changes have spurred proliferation of sophisticated LICT for leveraging agility and visibility in supply, especially product distribution to enhance productivity and, most significantly, anytime, anywhere, anyhow, through any device delivery and receiving of products to the customers. The degree to which SMEs distribution strategies have been innovatively reconstructed through LICT to improve SMEs distribution relationship network and performance within the South African context has not been scientifically investigated. This study investigates how the adoption of LICTs helped SMEs reimagine their distribution chains to enhance network relationship. Hence, the proposed study timely and relevant. By this means, scientific recommendations will emerge based on the SMEs distribution relationship network for operational improvement and resilience, which could contribute significantly to the economy's GDP. The main objective of this research is to structurally model the impact of LICT on SMEs distribution relationship network and distribution service performance.

The study employs a quantitative survey method and a purpose-sampling technique to collect comprehensive data from SMEs in different sectors within the Northern Cape, South Africa. Data collected analysis techniques to be used include factor analyses and structural equation modelling. Analysis would be carried out using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) software, SMART-PLS version (4.0) and the R programming language. The findings of this study are expected to help SMEs practitioners and policy makers understand the benefit of the distribution relationship network through LICT compatibility and how investment in these areas can be prioritised to improve SMEs and economic growth. Furthermore, the finding would assist SMEs competition regulatory bodies in mediating or moderating the impact of technology-enabled distribution relationship network on distribution performance. Future research directions are also expected to emerge from this exploratory study.

Note: This research is funded by Sol Plaatje University's MIT Research Grant.