Sustaining Africa’s Rural Road Networks: The Asset Management Approach

Abstract

Many roads in Africa are becoming unusable because of inadequate maintenance. This situation has not been improved much by development loans, which encourage new road construction and repair of existing infrastructure rather than better continuing maintenance. Much of the problem results from decision makers not understanding the technical arguments. This paper presents the argument in a way that non-technical people can understand. Since 1989, Africa's Road Maintenance Initiative, sponsored by the World Bank and United Nations Economic Commission, has made progress in defining a framework for reform which mainly emphasises the commercial management and financing of road systems; it is based on four interdependent groups of reforms. The paper illustrates the financial realities of sustaining road networks by some simple calculations and examples. Politicians have not heeded this constraint, and the length of road systems has expanded substantially during recent decades. Recent surveys in Ethiopia, Lesotho, Tanzania, and Uganda indicate that finance is the greatest constraint on rural road network sustainability, but that there may be as much problem with the misallocation of funds as with their absence. The author indicates possible solutions, including the management of rural road networks using the asset value approach.