TRANSPORT-CONGO: Poor Roads Cause Food to Rot on Farms

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alain Shungu Ngongo

GAMBOMA, Congo, Oct 6 1998 (IPS) - With its abundance of good soil and rain, this Central African nation would not have to import food if its roads were in better shape, merchants and transporters here say.

Most of the roads in the Republic of Congo are made of earth. Only about 10 percent are paved, according to the World Bank’s World Development Report for 1998/1999. As a result, farmers in some parts of the country produce large quantities of food but cannot get it to the main towns.

A case in point is the Plateaux region in the centre of the country, where farmers grow large quantities of yams and potatoes.

It is estimated that half the yams produced in and around Gamboma, The Plateaux’s second largest town, rot on farms each year because the area’s feeder roads are impassable.

The region’s administrative centre, Djambala, is in the centre of Congo’s main potato-growing area but much of its crop does not get to the capital, Brazzaville, because of the state of the highway linking the two towns.

“Fewer and fewer transporters are sending their trucks to places where the state of the roads is liable to wear them out faster,” says Antoinette Inye, who takes second-hand garments from Brazzaville to Djambala, where she exchanges them for potatoes.

The roads leading to the rural areas are so bad that “the only means of transport farmers have left are their legs and bicycles”, according to Antoinette Laye, a trader in Gamboma. “These poor farmers travel with 20 to 30 kilogrammes on their heads as our parents used to do nearly 100 years ago. That’s unimaginable on the eve of the 21st century.”

According to Inye, if it were easier for farmers to get their produce to the urban markets, Congo would import less potatoes from South Africa and less cassava from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Cassava has long been the main staple for the nearly three million Congolese, but in more recent times, yams and potatoes have proved suitable substitutes, especially when there is a shortage of bread and cassava, which happens from time to time.

Because of the condition of the feeder roads, transporters prefer to stick to the main highways. “Rarely do any of them agree to go into the hinterland of our regions,” laments Edgar Ossebi, water and forestry official in Djambala. “As long as the feeder roads are not maintained, people in the interior will keep living the way our ancestors lived before the white man came.”

The transporters, most of whom come from the affected areas, feel the government should pay some attention to the road problem. “We would like to make an effort to end the isolation of our relatives in the hinterland but what is the state promising us in return?” says transporter Henri Osset.

“It’s all well and good to condemn the transporters and the traders for increases in food prices, but is anyone aware of the conditions we are working under?” asks Osset.

The prices of yams and potatoes, which are among the few products that the Plateaux’s farmers sell outside their region, are three to four times higher in Brazzaville than in Djambala or Gamboma, which are about 350 kms north of the capital.

“It’s not the traders’ fault,” says Inye. “They get their supplies from farmers who travel 20 to 25 kms on foot or on bicycle, or from the few transporters who brave the bad roads and go deep into the Plateaux to get yams from the farmers.”

The region’s farmers are not the only ones who suffer from the state of Congo’s roads. At the road transport terminus in the south Brazzaville neighbourhood of Bacongo, sources tell IPS such problems occur elsewhere in the country.

It takes hours, for example, to get to Boko, a small town about 150 kms south of Brazzaville and located along the National Highway No.1 that links the capital to the south of the country.

That 150-km stretch “is impassable,” says trucker Medard Nkombo. “With my big truck I take between six and seven hours to get there.” Nkombo, who says he has been driving between Brazzaville and Boko for about 10 years, charges that the highway has not been repaired since the 1960s.

“It’s in such a state that you can’t travel from Brazzaville to Boko and back in the same day,” he says. “In the 1970s, you used to be able to do your shopping or visit the doctor and then go back to your village in the same day …”

Other highway users confirm this. They also say poor transport has caused imported goods – which have to be trucked in from the capital – to become scarce and more expensive than before. Similarly, it is harder now to send local products such as game meat, vegetables and palm oil to the capital.

Some truckers still try to ply the route but not all make it to their destinations.

“Between Brazzaville and Boko, you pass large vehicles full of passengers and goods that have broken down or are stuck in the sand,” says Claude Massamba. “In the rainy season, the road cannot be used. Those who take the risk of driving along it take three to four days to get to Boko or, at the worst, their vehicles do not reach their destination.”

Congo used to be one of the biggest producers of both cocoa and coffee in Central Africa but some growers switched to other crops when the state of the roads caused buyers to stay away.

The government says work on resurfacing National Highway No. 1 is to start soon with funding from the European Union, but there has been no indication of plans to repair feeder roads.

“We have not yet received any funds for this from our bilateral or multilateral donors,” says a Public Works Ministry official. “Government wants to help the farmers in the interior, but we have a big cash-flow problem. The state has no money.”