Rural connectivity in Africa: motorcycle track construction

Abstract

Motorcycle transportation has burgeoned in war-affected West Africa over the past decade. The penetration of motorcycle taxis deep into isolated rural communities has spread spontaneously and created direct and indirect employment opportunities for low-skilled youth, a category most susceptible to militia recruitment. Equally important, it has significantly contributed to lifting smallholder farmers out of poverty by reducing the costs of moving produce to markets, with motorcycles able to visit villages connected to feeder roads solely by footpaths. Nevertheless, state actors and international donors remain reluctant to allocate funds to rural track building/ upgrading, preferring to stick to more conventional, but expensive, construction/rehabilitation of rural roads accessible to four-wheeled vehicles. Through a case study of Liberia – still recovering from two civil wars and an Ebola health crisis – this paper argues that the impact of bringing community access through track construction/footpath upgrading is significant, particularly because track construction lends itself par excellence to the involvement of the rural communities themselves. This work is part of ‘At the end of the feeder road: assessing the impact of track construction for motorbike taxis on agrarian development in Liberia’ project supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Department for International Development