By IPS Correspondents
HARARE, Feb 9 1996 (IPS)

If you see a pair of eyes shining in the middle of the road while driving at night in Zambia, you’d better brake hard because they could belong to a giraffe trapped in a pothole.

Although extremely exaggerated, this standard joke about Zambia reflects the disastrous state of roads in the southern African country. It could also be applied to other sub-Saharan African nations.

Road transport is the dominant form of transport in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 80 to 90 percent of the region’s passenger and freight movements.

By 1990, Africa had nearly two million kilometres of roads, after a surge of construction during the 1960s and 1970s by its governments, sometimes with loans provided by bilateral and multilateral lenders.

But little was done to maintain these roads during the 1980s and early 1990s, and the years of neglect have left them badly damaged. Many are now rutted dirt paths churned up by lorry traffic and impassible during the rainy season.

So appalling are the roads in Zaire that merchants have been forced to use air transport even though it is expensive.

Kenya’s roads were once the pride of Africa. Now, many of them have been reduced to narrow lanes pockmarked by holes. However, there is hope for Kenya: the World Bank has pledged a 165-million- dollar loan to rehabilitate roads in the East African country.

Fifty million dollars will go towards improving its urban network, while the rest will be used to repair the road leading from Nairobi to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa.

That road is East Africa’s economic artery, serving not only Kenya, but also landlocked Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi as well as southern Sudan. However, it is more popularly known as a motorists’ graveyard.

Sudan, too is in bad shape. According to a Sudanese journalist only some roads in the north of the country are tarred. Others are gravelled and most of the rest, especially those in the south, can be used only in the dry season.

“As a result, relief assistance to war-torn southern Sudan is delivered by air and road from Kenya and Uganda, and by river, rail and air from northern Sudan. Poor and dangerous roads in the south mean that, for the most part, relief agencies must resort to costly air transport,” the journalist told IPS.

Poor roads mean not only slower travel but also higher expenditure on vehicle maintenance, which increases the cost of transport and, ultimately, that of goods.

According to Alao Adewuyi, chairman of Nigeria’s National Union of Road, Transport Workers (NURTW) the state of roads in the West African nation has forced transport operators to charge high fares so as to offset maintenance costs.

“Most of the drivers plying the roads are extra careful, if not their vehicles will break down or have a major fault which would require a lumpsum of money to repair,” Adewuyi told IPS.

A study carried out by road haulers in Zambia in 1992 estimated that potholed roads increased vehicle operating costs by at least 17 percent a year.

In 1993, the World Bank estimated that Kenya’s 40 million U.S. dollar shortfall in road maintenance expenditure increased vehicle operating costs by about 120 million U.S. dollars per year.

“When roads are poorly maintained, a one-dollar increase in road maintenance reduces road transport costs by up to three dollars,” says the latest quarterly ‘Finance and Development’ report of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The report, issued in December, adds: “Poor road maintenance also results in increased long-term costs of maintaining the road network. Over a 15-year period, these costs are about one third higher when roads are rehabilitated infrequently than they would be with regular road maintenance.

“In Africa, where congestion is rarely a problem, even in cities, these costs are more likely to be related to the damage suffered by vehicles and delays resulting from the need to drive slowly because of potholes and other road-related problems,” noted the study.

Roads in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia are generally far better than elsewhere in Africa. Still, in Zimbabwe, some of them are “past retirement”, quips Arthur Sandwith of that country’s Transport Operators Association.

“Although not as bad as the seemingly exaggerated Zambia stage, Zimbabwe has its fair share of bad roads,” says Sandwith.

In most African countries, the funds the state allocates for road maintenance are less than half of the amounts needed.

There are two main reasons for this: “First, road users pay very little for use of the road network. Second, funds are allocated as part of the annual budget process – maintenance is at a disadvantage here since it can always be postponed,” notes the IMF/World Bank publication.

Moreover, responsibility for roads is often divided among half a dozen ministries and a host of local government agencies. The result is that all parties tend to neglect their duties.

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