Review of Roads Agency Performance in Selected SSA Countries Mike Pinard

1. SSATP/Annual Meeting, Lilongwe, Malawi 19th – 22nd October 2009 Review of Roads Agency Performance in Selected SSA Countries Mike Pinard SSATP/World Bank Consultant (mipinard@global.bw)

2. Objective of Study • To identify key issues and constraints surrounding the operation and management of a selection of roads agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa • Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa • To put forward some basic guidelines for increasing their managerial efficiency and effectiveness

3. Idealised Organisational Arrangements

4. Key Findings •  Roads Boards are still predominantly public sector dominated and road user interests are often not adequately articulated • Generally a lack of genuine roads agency autonomy despite existence of Roads Boards • Board members often not adequately remunerated and generally not abreast of the fundamentals of commercialised management and financing of roads

5. Key Findings • Many roads agencies fulfil aspects of the “supplier” function and undertake varying amounts of non-core activities • Lack of Procedures Agreements between some Road Authorities and Road Funds tend to adversely affect the implementation of Road Network Management Plans • Performance measurement is seldom carried out in roads agencies

6. Key Findings • Most roads agencies are unable to operate their Road Asset Management Systems to produce reliable outputs • Market based salaries are still not paid in many roads agencies which find it difficult to attract and retain competent staff • There is significant over-staffing in Government roads agencies in terms of number of staff responsible for 100 km of roads compared with commercially oriented agencies

7. Key Findings • Some roads agencies tend to consider maintenance and rehabilitation/upgrading as separate interventions to the detriment of optimised network management Road Fund allocations to roads agencies are generally inadequate for maintenance needs with an over-reliance on the fuel levy. Road Fund monies are sometimes utilised for dealing with back-log maintenance and rehabilitation resulting in the long term in sub-optimal use of scarce resources

8. Key Findings • Procurement and tendering processes tend to be very time consuming in Government roads agencies but much less so in commercially oriented agencies • Board members often not adequately remunerated and generally not abreast of the fundamentals of commercialised management and financing of roads • The capacity of local consultants and contractors is still limited in a number of countries

9. Key Findings • Technical auditing of maintenance projects is generally carried out but the process is sometimes more superficial than rigorous.  Auditing of development projects is seldom carried out.

10. Main Conclusions • An increasing awareness of the benefits of commercialised road management practices  A reduction in the under-funding of road maintenance in a number of countries

11. Main Conclusions • The arrest of declines in road quality in a number of countries due to more predictable income for maintenance coupled with improved operational efficiency of roads agencies  Roads agencies are increasingly moving , at least on a pilot scale basis, to multi-year Output and Performance Based Road Contracts (OPRC) for maintenance

12. Summary • Progress on commercialisation of road management practices varies from just satisfactory to excellent and may best be described as “a road partially travelled”

13. Thank you