A significant proportion of Rwanda rural population whose livelihoods depend on agriculture lacks access to rural transport facilities, including feeder roads that strongly hampers the agricultural development and prevent them to increasing access to markets, enhancing their competitiveness and improve their incomes and livelihoods. To overcome the above, the Government of Rwanda has adopted this Policy. The policy vision of the Feeder Roads Sub-sector is to contribute towards that all agricultural potential production areas be connected to markets with a basic access, resilient and a motorable road. The policy is developed in the context of Vision 2020 which aim among others to promote productive high value and market oriented agriculture (Pillar 5 of Vision 2020) and to reduce the agricultural population from 90% in 2000 to 50% in 2020. The National Feeder Roads Policy has identified three main strategic and enabling pillars upon which core policy principles have been based: 1. Enabling and Stimulating Rural Socioeconomic Development; 2. Institutional framework in feeder roads operations; 3. Means and resources use efficiency in feeder roads and the details are herein presented. The policy mission of the feeder roads is to make farmers’ transport – by – vehicle to be reliable, timely, lower cost with more safety; which will maximize the incentives to farmers to change their behavior, produce surpluses and increase their marketed agricultural products. Some of the specific objectives of the Policy are to: maximize incentives for farmers to change their behaviour and knowledge and use of resources, so as to maximize productivity and the marketable food surpluses; optimize, within budgets and capacity constraints, the improved access of farmers and rural families to cost effective infrastructure and transport services; execute the provision of roads by intelligent prioritizing, design, implementation and quality assurance, to optimize cost – effectiveness; plan, consult and facilitate cost-effective investments and operations to reduce and control transport costs (relative to other prices) and supply of transporters and traders; maximize the safety, efficiency and capacity (safe loading) of the transport fleet; clarify the institutional framework and operations at all levels; rapidly and massively build the capacity of local agencies and enterprises and transport institutions and stakeholders in the planning and management of the subsector with equitable and informed participation and accountability; improve the methods for long-term sustainable financing of FR maintenance; closely supervise and apply the ‘faults period’ in contracts for works and materials to strengthen resilience of assets; and enable opportunities for social capital (organizations in cooperation) and human capital (learning and practicing) to build, maintain, protect and make safe use of FRs.
Rwanda · 2017-04-01