Publication: Rural Transport : Improving its Contribution to Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa
Date
2012-11
ISSN
Published
2012-11
Author(s)
Banjo, George
Gordon, Henry
Riverson, John
Abstract
Poverty reduction is a long-standing
development objective of many developing countries and their
aid donors, including the World Bank. To achieve this goal,
these countries and organizations have sought to improve
smallholder agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA) as part of a broader rural development agenda aimed at
providing a minimal basket of goods and services in rural
areas to satisfy basic human needs. These goods and services
include not only food, health care, and education, but also
infrastructure. As a result, rural transport remains a
constraint to increasing agricultural productivity,
achieving rural growth, and thus alleviating rural poverty.
The first major finding of the review of rural transport
theory and practice is that many of the approaches needed to
improve the impact of rural transport interventions on
poverty reduction are known, particularly from the work of
the Rural Travel and Transport Program (RTTP) of Sub-Saharan
Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP). Unfortunately, many
of the recommended approaches remain untested within
Sub-Saharan Africa beyond the pilot scale, notwithstanding
their influence on rural transport policy and project design
in other operational regions of the Bank. For SSA, these are
missed opportunities. Even where SSA countries have applied
these approaches, institutional and financial sustainability
and scaling up local successes remain significant challenges
for both their agriculture and transport sectors. The second
key finding is that rural households are rarely the point of
focus in the design of rural transport interventions in SSA,
even though a methodology to allow this focus has been
developed and successfully tested in several pilot projects
since the 1980s, the result is that the transport needs of
rural households continue to be analyzed and understood by
means of an indirect assessment of those needs, which means
that most projects have a less than desirable impact on
improving the rural access and mobility situation of such households.
Citation
“Banjo, George; Gordon, Henry; Riverson, John. 2012. Rural Transport : Improving its Contribution to Growth and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program
(SSATP) working paper;no. 93. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17807 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”