57120




Findings reports on ongoing operational, economic and sector work carried out by the World
Bank and its member governments in the Africa Region. It is published periodically by the
Knowledge Networks, Information and Technology Center on behalf of the Region.



  Promoting Policy Reforms for Effective Transport Services in COMESA Countries

  Review of the Road Sector in Selected COMESA Countries (Eastern and Island
  Countries)

  Concerned by the poor state of the road network in most of its member countries, the Common
  Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has been promoting reforms to help
  regional integration for effective transport services. COMESA has taken an interest in the
  Road Maintenance Initiative (RMI), which is financed by donors and administered by the
  World Bank as one of the components of the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Program
  (SSATP). RMI has been working with 9 pilot countries, 5 of which are within the COMESA
  area, on ways to make road maintenance sustainable.

  Regional Diversity

  Twelve COMESA countries were reviewed-Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
  Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, and Uganda. Two issues were
  clear. First, the 12 countries geographical diversity directly affected transport. Four countries
  are land-locked; 4 are islands, and 4 have access to the sea, providing transit routes and access
  for the land-locked countries. Second, the country road networks are at different stages of
  development. Nine of the 12 enjoy reasonable to well developed road networks-their main
  difficulties come from poor maintenance. However, in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan- which
  hold over half the population of the study area-both main and rural access roads are
  inadequate, thereby denying a great part of the populations access to trafficable roads.

  The demand for better roads in the study area is easy to understand-road transport is the
  predominant mode, accounting for about 80 % in tonne-km. But without proper maintenance,
  road conditions have declined, and vehicle operating costs have gone up. A 10 % average
  reduction in vehicle operating costs would mean savings of about US$ 1.5 billion (1,500
million) per year for the entire area.

Land-locked countries depend on international throughways for imports and exports.
Transport costs add as much as 30-40 % to import and export costs, of which road transport
accounts for up to 70 %. Road transport costs for import and export alone account for 5-10 %
of total Gross National Product (GNP). Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda need to
reduce transport costs and make international transport more reliable by easing conditions in
through-countries while avoiding dependence on a particular route.




The graph compares the findings of this review with a study done in 1991 by the Economic
Commission for Africa on the status of policy reform implementation in the COMESA
countries. Countries were rated on a 1-9 scale,:

1) minimum or no action toward policy reform, condition not good

2) government expressing commitment to improve policies

3) authorities have agreed upon reform program

4) implementation process has begun, but not doing well

5) implementation process has begun, and is moving well

6) implementation partially complete, but not moving well
7) partially completed, moving well

8) substantial reforms implemented

9) showing policy established and effective, conditions good

Total scores for countries in 1991 and 1994 are shown.

Facing up

The study also indicated the need for better traffic management, in general, and, specifically,
to face up to the growing congestion problem in the capital cities. Roads in major cities have
been neglected, therefore each country must include maintenance and management of urban
roads in its transport strategy.

In many of the countries, improved access was a major issue. A high percentage of the study
area's population lacks modern road transport. Ethiopia, for example, has one of the lowest
road densities in the world. Only 20 % of its area is within 10 km of an all-weather road, and
about 30 % within the same distance of any kind of rural road. Nearly 90 % of the population
is rural and 85 % employed in agriculture, but nearly three-quarters of all farms are more than
a half-day's walk from an all-weather road. This dearth of roads is clearly a major economic
and social constraint.

Safety has been a concern. Rwanda has the highest recorded fatality rate -in 1994, 178 people
were killed in road accidents per 10,000 vehicles. Governments, as well as the public, have
become aware of the problem, and traffic safety campaigns are being implemented or planned.
In Kenya, a private organization, the Road Safety Network has dedicated itself to curbing the
accelerating death toll on Kenya's roads, initiating an ambitious program of traffic safety and
training drivers.

While infrastructure services are needed and called for, the study points out that the revenue
base for funding road maintenance is, in most countries, very weak. To correct this, two things
must happen: (i) the growing demand for road infrastructure must be linked to the market
through direct road user charges (fee for maintenance) and (ii) road networks have to be
prioritized on economic and social criteria.

The Road Network

The total road length in the countries studied is about 327, 211 km of roads, including 136,
106 km of main roads, 176,543 km or rural roads, and 14,582 km of urban roads. The
replacement value of the main roads network alone is about US$15 billion, and the required
annual expenditure on routine and periodic maintenance to keep them in a stable, long-term
condition is about US$ 400 million. From 1970 paved roads have steadily increased at about 3
percent annually-from 12,487 km in 1970 to about 29,845 km in 1994.

The chart below shows the amount spent in each country on road maintenance as compared to
the reviewers' estimate of how much spending was required for proper road maintenance.




Mauritius has the best-developed road network, and one of the highest density networks in the
world. Ethiopia has a very low density of paved roads-about 66 km per capita million.
Because Ethiopia has about one-third of the studied area's population and only 12 % of the
total length of paved roads, it lowers the area average considerably. Seychelles has the highest
density of paved roads, with 3, 300 km of paved roads per capita million as well as the highest
per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This tends to confirm the link between density of
paved roads and GDP per capita.

Conditions of the main paved roads have been stable since 1989. But this has been more the
result of massive donor-funded rehabilitation rather than regular maintenance. For the study
area's main unpaved roads, the trend has been downward. The percentage of "good" roads fell
from 50 %in 1989 to 12 % in 1994, while the number of "poor" roads rose from 30 % to 68 %.
Poor maintenance is the main reason, but more and heavier traffic on gravel roads has added
to the decline. Recent traffic surveys in Kenya show that some unpaved roads now carry
traffic which would normally use paved surfaces.

Urban roads are in alarming shape. Even busy and essential byways are neglected- streets are
badly maintained, and traffic is often appalling. In many places, these conditions are in direct
contrast to the better through-roads maintained by the main road agency.

Road Management

In 10 of the 12 countries in the area, government departments as road agencies manage the
main roads. And because they belong to the civil service, they face the same constraints as
other government agencies- poor salaries and impaired working conditions. Only Sudan and
Ethiopia have main road agencies separated from the parent ministry- but even here, the
agencies operate in similar ways to government agencies. Rural roads are managed by district
administrations, but a lack of resources prevents them from maintaining or working on roads.
In most countries, a section of the ministry of local government or a main road agency
coordinates rural road development and maintenance.

In all 12 countries, salaries for road agency staff fall well below the private sector. It's no
surprise then that road agency managers would welcome the idea of a road authority that
operates with salaries more in line with the private sector. In Sudan, the salary of a civil
service engineer is only about one-tenth of an engineer in the private sector. Unskilled and
demoralized staff, as well as high turnover rates, have hindered any lasting improvement in
public road organizations.

Planning and Execution

Most area countries need to improve works planning, execution, and monitoring of road
maintenance -especially routine maintenance. Routine maintenance works have generally been
executed by force account (in-house labor) , and the main road agencies in all 12 countries
rely on a public plant pool for supplying equipment for force account operations. The study
found that, almost without exception, public plant pools have failed in providing service to
road agencies. This, in spite of a great deal of past effort to improve equipment management
through technical assistance and by training mechanics and warehouse personnel. Departments
responsible for the public plant pools now must decide what to do with the large fleet of
equipment which is gradually becoming unserviceable and redundant as more private
contractors are used. The option seems to be turning public plant pools over to private
business, possibly through a period of "commercialization."

Financing

In all 12 countries, spending for maintenance has been far below the levels needed to ensure a
stable, long-term network. Funds have rarely been released on time to road agencies, and
budgets have been cut without warning. Recurrent maintenance allocations have declined in
real terms between 1989 and 1994. In 1994, the 12 countries spent about US$ 127 million for
maintaining main roads-about 30 % of the estimated US$ 414 million needed to keep roads
stable. With more traffic and more wear and tear on roads, funds have gradually been spent
less effectively. Higher proportions of maintenance spending has had to cover fixed overhead
costs.

Member countries collect revenues from road users, partly as a government tax and partly
through road user charges. The total road user fee collected in 1994 was about US$ 70
million- less than one-fifth of the amount need to maintain main roads. Only Mauritius
collected enough road user fees to cover recurrent maintenance. The report estimates that fuel
levies might raise about 60% of the area's requirement for maintaining main roads.

Issues

Commercial responses to road management, such as the "fee-for-service" concept will be
critical for maintaining main roads in the study area-but other social factors need attention.
Poor or non-existent roads have denied large parts of the populations modern road transport.
While spending for main roads will take precedence, governments must improve access to
rural areas and find realistic approaches to funding and maintaining rural roads. Government
should encourage local communities to take ownership of non-classified roads, and seek
mechanisms for cost sharing.

The Road Maintenance Initiative (RMI) was launched in 1988 by the United Nations
Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the World Bank under the auspices of the
Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP). The countries taking part in the RMI
are Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Others receiving assistance from the program include Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho,
Malawi, Mozambique, and Togo. RMI is administered by the World Bank and is financed by
the Governments of Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden Switzerland,
and the European Union. France, Japan, and Norway provide senior staff members to work on
the program.

Road management is changing in the area-a key element is increasing involvement of road
users. Their participation may bring pressure for more revenues as well as more
accountability. Seven of the area countries have established Roads Boards, with varying
functions and success. But none have gained a status and success comparable to the National
Roads Board in Zambia which has taken a strong lead in improving management and creating
a sense of ownership favorable to increasing funding and improving performance.

Many donors represented in the selected countries, have expressed support for the RMI and
the need for change. They now base their assistance on the principle that investments in
transport infrastructure must be user responsive and sustainable. Some countries require a
dismantling of state monopolies and new regulations to develop a commercial and user
oriented road management.

This article reproduces the text in African Transport Technical Note No. 1, April 1996, which
is based on a Review of the Road Sector in Selected COMESA Countries (Eastern and Island
Countries), February 1996.

For more information about these notes, please contact Leita Jones, Infrastructure, Africa Region, World Bank.
Internet: Ljones@worldbank.org