Roads and Highways will help lift Africa out of Poverty

The Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa plan is to expand the existing, 10,000 kilometre-long network of major roads to between 60,000 and 100,000 km – either by upgrading existing poor roads or building new ones. The result would be nine arteries, some hugging Africa's entire coastline, while others strategically criss-cross the continent. Some 250,000 km of smaller roads will be built or upgraded to connect smaller cities to the main arteries, plus another 70,000 km to plug in rural areas.

A recent study in Sub-Saharan Africa by the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic near Johannesburg, South Africa, shows how roads can do this. If farmers lived four hours travel time from a city with a population of 100,000, their crop output reached 45 per cent of what was possible because they could easily access tools and supplies such as fertilisers. For farmers eight hours away, the yields collapsed to just 5 per cent. "It's almost incontestable that roads will get them out of that poverty," says Sayer. People certainly want them. "Pretty much all rural communities in Africa will put improved roads at the top of their wish lists," he adds.

There are also likely to be benefits to education. Villages of the Congo basin best served by roads scored highest on a scale grading the effectiveness of education

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