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MALAWI: Better roads lead to more money
Sunday, November 09, 2008
What lies under a Malawi farmer's feet that could boost food security? Try better roads. Each year Wanangwa Munthali harvests at least 100 50kg bags of maize, plus sweet potatoes and beans. But he lives in the north of the country, 45km from the nearest town, Chitipa, and getting his produce to market is a real headache. "Vehicles hardly use the [bad] road that runs through our village. We have to use oxcarts to ferry our produce to markets, and it's not easy," he told IRIN. "The situation is the same when we want to buy farm inputs, such as seed and fertiliser." A Public Expenditure Review (PER) on roads spending, with technical assistance from the World Bank, showed that funding for maintenance was inadequate. "In practice, however, full maintenance has never been funded, and there continues to be a bias towards financing rehabilitation, upgrading and construction of new roads, at the expense of systematic underfunding of routine maintenance." The PER pointed out that a poverty alleviation focus was also lacking in expenditure on roads, with access to decent roads heavily skewed in favour of wealthier areas in the country. The poor struggled with limited transport options, constraining their access to markets and opportunities. Zeria Banda, communication manager at the World Bank country office, said the PER noted that while Malawi's main roads were in good condition, as much as 74 percent of the subsidiary road network was unpaved and mostly in poor shape. Malawi's National Roads Authority estimates that it would take about US$500 million over the next five years to bring 70 percent of the country's road network up to standard, as about 11,000km of roads required rehabilitation. |
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