Studies in China and India have identified building road’s as “the single most effective public goods investment in terms of poverty reduction”. Evidence suggests that it has a similar impact on reducing hunger.

The developed world and its large institutions provide millions of dollars in financial support directed at infrastructure projects to developing countries. These range from road building programmes to railway, port and airport construction. However the support for programmes involving large developments are aimed at creating self contained and usually isolated communities, that rely on others to build the roads needed to connect them all together.

I would suggest that the mere fact of constructing a single road that will survive the environmental issues that will affect it, will act as a catalyst for construction and development. If you can provide the infrastructure that links everybody else’s developments together you have been the one to ensure the delivery or route to market for the public that these new ‘communities’ require to become profitable.

Various international studies have concluded that the building of a road enables both the movement of people and tradeable goods and the ability to improve the communication between different communities.

The building of a new route allows the flow of goods to be carried much faster than before as travel times between destinations become shorter and people are encouraged to set up businesses that create jobs. There is evidence to support the similiar impact a new road can have on reducing hunger. This is due to the fact that the distance involved from the food supplier to the end user is not usually the problem but how long the journey takes. With perishable goods the time from harvesting to consumption is usually very short.

Therefore the time required for transportation becomes more important than distance. On a dirt track, the truck may take ten hours to cover ten miles. However, on a tarmac road that ten hour journey can achieve several hundred miles either directly or through several shorter journeys. The daily workload for that delivery truck is dramatically increased and it is able to reach full profitability much sooner.

The high profile road construction projects in many developing countries are targeted at specific sections that require urgent work because they link key economic areas or assist the tourism industry by connecting airports to tourist activity areas.

A wider view needs to be considered in what constitutes a good road building programme. Is it because more tourists will be attracted but whose dollars never really help the local population. Or a road that allows economic development and job creation because it ties areas of potential growth together.

The award of road construction contracts is still widely open to corruption and after initial drawdown of funds, it is possible to see projects that have not even started and not on eperson or piece of machinery has ever been mobilised.

Tags | construction, Infrastructure