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Chapter 5 - Infrastructure
5-4 Roads
There is dangerous assymetry in government and governance. Bad governance will always result in bad performance, but good governance on its own does not assure good performance. Many other elements are needed in order to have an effective enabling environment.
Roads
Arterial roads
The main roads are a major factor in national productivity. The road network is very important for trade. The roads should not constrain trade, but serve to help it. Roads are important for all sorts of product shipment including livestock shipments
Community roads
Every community I have visited has always made reference to the need for easier transport in the rainy season. All weather roads are valuable, but they need not be to European or US standards. They just need to be usable when it is raining, instead of totally stalling traffic.
Construction and maintenance
There are some major contractors with the capacity for major construction and major maintenance of roads. There needs to be a strategy to upgrade and maintain the whole system and not just a privileged little bit of the system.
It would be best to make many small interventions rather than a few large interventions. The country needs to have balanced development all over the country, not just in a single area or corridor. The country needs employment opportunity everywhere, not only on a single axis of the country. Furthermore, the country’s internal capacity is better suited to doing small works successfully than single large projects.
Employment
The road sector has the potential to be a major employment source for the next several years. This can be done not only by using “labor intensive work methods” but merely by doing the work using local capacity to the maximum extent possible. Employment is needed not only at the laborer level but also among trained engineers and local contractors, some of whom have had important international experience.
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