Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program

Update on Program Staff

Louis FERNIQUE joined the RMI team in November 2001 as a Senior Transport Specialist, on a new position funded through the French trust fund to SSATP. He is home-based in Brussels, Belgium, and directly reports to the Washington headquarters. He has already been a RMI team member from mid-97 to late 99, as a seconded Road Policy Specialist based in Washington DC.

Louis' experience includes a number of assignments with the French government, largely with the Ministry of Public Works, Housing and Transport. His overseas experience includes sojourns in Algeria and Madagascar as well as numerous overseas missions under French Government and SSATP sponsorship.

His terms of reference include the following, to take place under the SSATP Business Plan: (i) Country program support (largely in Francophone African countries) for the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of reforms; (ii) Promotion of regional coordination networks to support country programs and to build the capacity of selected regional economic and sector organizations; (iii) Assistance to capacity building through the development of training programs on road policy matters to improve the capacity of key officials and stakeholders in supported countries and of the regional organizations; and (iv) Development and dissemination of monitoring tools to more fully capture the assessment of the general (including poverty reduction) impact of reforms and the implications for specific interest groups. You are invited to contact him at Lfernique@aol.com and at 32 (0)2 345 59 79.

RMI Membership rises to 17

The RMI partnership has been further strengthened by the formal requests to join the program from the governments of Guinea and Burundi. Letters issued respectively to Minister Diallo on October 11 and Minister Bigirimina on November 13 welcome these two countries as associates and encourage them to move expeditiously to full membership with the nomination of a steering committee and coordinator in each case. These countries are already active in RMI with Guinea providing one RMI coordinator representative on the Task Force planning the next Coordinating Committee Meeting.

Total membership of RMI is now 17 as opposed to 13 at the beginning of 2000. Membership may be expected to expand further as seven other countries who attended the Saly Coordinating Meeting as observers are currently considering their position.

A seminar on Maintenance Management by Contract hosted in N'djamena on October 1-3, 2001, was organized by ADAR (Association des directeurs africains des routes) and funded by the RMI. Mr. Rmili Abdennebi, former ADAR President and Mr. Hasane Saline, Director of Roads in Chad and current President of the Association helped to organize the event. The following African countries were represented: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Namibia and Niger as well as representatives from the African Development Bank, French and regional sector organizations (CNERTP, INP-HB), technical departments and laboratories and from the French and regional private sectors. In total, 57 participants attended the seminar. RMI provided grant resources of US$ 25,000 to defray the cost of this seminar.

Chad was presented as one of the first African Countries to embark in this new approach to road maintenance based on performance. This pilot experience is detailed in the Toolkit for Public Private Partnership in highways developed by the World Bank - as an example of maintenance management of unpaved roads. This toolkit will soon be available in a CD-ROM format. Some other experiences from Morocco and Mauritania in implementation of those types of contract were also presented.

Management and monitoring tools including SOURCE (Standard Overall Ultralight Road Care Estimate) were presented during the seminar and how it is being used in Burkina Faso. The HDM4 model was examined with a view of its better and wider exploitation in ADAR member countries. For more information, kindly contact Mr. Saline at hasaline@intnet.td.

Two successive RMI workshops were held in Guinea under the authority of the Minister of Public Works and Transport. Both were chaired by Dr. Gueye, Director General of Road Maintenance and RMI Country coordinator.

From December 5 to 7, the " SOURCE " workshop gathered a group of highway specialists, in order to (1) heighten awareness of road maintenance stakeholders about adequate network monitoring tools, especially SOURCE method; (2) build local capacity for mastering a full monitoring framework and manage outcontracted SOURCE campaigns; (3) create and train two in-house SOURCE measurement crews to provide quality control; operate measurement rounds, and (4) assist the stakeholders to define and program the first campaign to be launched in 2002.
Presentation and training were provided by Guy Poirier from ISTED (Institut des sciences et des techniques de l'équipement et de l'environnement) and Louis Fernique from RMI.

The Ministry of Public Works will include in its 2002 program a self-funded national SOURCE campaign (to be outcontracted to a local firm). This will provide to the Road Fund the standard "zero reference" macro-data about the network situation.

On a request from the Ministry, a second Tariff & Traffic workshop was held on Dec.11-13, the target being the members of the future Road Fund Board (the first Guinean workshop, held on 1998, was a matter of consensus-buiding between partners to prepare the framework for the Road Fund to be created).
Hence, this new workshop has focused on operational issues and appropriate routines and procedures to apply between the Board and its various partners.

Another key target was to help the dialog between the Ministry of Public Works and Transport and the Ministry of Finance about the initial conversion of part of the fuel taxes into user fees. Both the ministries were represented at high level at the workshop. The prospects for an agreement are now much improved which may in turn unlock more donor funding for Guinea's transport sector development.

Presentation and training were provided by David Sullivan, Interface, and Francis Happi (a Cameroonese consultant, trained in 2000 to become a local specialized Tariff & Traffic facilitator together with a Malagasy and a Burkinabe colleague).

The RMI video "From Principles to Practice - The Experience of Ethiopia and Ghana" is now available in both English and French. This tools is ideal to demonstrate to stakeholders and opinion leaders in member countries the advantages that accrue to the implementation of an RMI inspired program of management and financing reforms. All RMI coordinators as well as representatives of those countries who sent observers to the Saly Meeting have been sent their own copies. If you wish to obtain a copy, kindly address your request to the RMI Component Manager at: Sbrushett@worldbank.org.

A special attention is drawn to the publication of SSATP Working Paper No. 62 in December 2001 entitled Implementation and Impact of RMI - English (599KB) French (534KB).The paper authored by consultants M.I. Pinard and S.M.A Kaombwe reflects the outcome and recommendations emanating from a detailed survey of RMI stakeholders in seven countries - Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These recommendations and the views of the RMI Component Manager on how these should be addressed, also contained in the paper, are generally applicable and thus of interest to all member countries. This paper can also be downloaded from the RMI publication page at: http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ssatp/rmipubs.htm or available upon request in hard copy addressed to: ssatp@worldbank.org.

Senior Road Executives Program

The University of Birmingham has now issued its brochure laying out the broad objectives and the course format for this year's program. Four modules of one week each will be offered - Innovations in Road Management, Road Financing & Road Fund Management, Road Asset Management & Innovations in Procurement of Highway Maintenance. This course will take place between May 27 and June 21. RMI encourages countries to identify and nominate suitable candidates who can benefit from this excellent training opportunity. Although not in a position to fund any candidates this year, RMI intends to work closely with World Bank Team Leaders and our donor partners in the different countries to ensure that any candidate funding needs can be addressed.

The preparation for implementation of the 2002 RMI business plan started with four missions in Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania.

Cameroon. The main challenges for RMI are its fuller integration with the transport sector program (TSP) and demonstration of the impact of adoption of its principles on sector performance and network improvement. To this end, RMI terms of reference and program priorities for 2002 are being revisited.

Kenya.The importance of the East African RMI Workshop was agreed. Mr. Peter Wakori, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Roads and Public Works mentioned that a major issue for the workshop could be the future role of the Roads Department after the recent establishment of the Kenya Roads Board (KRB). Additionally, Mr. Wakori recommended the RMI organization at the country level as an issue for the discussions and agreed that an immediate priority for the RMI would be to increase the awareness of the newly appointed members of the KRB to the RMI principles.

The dissemination of the principles for modern road management to the KRB members will be the country program priority. Preparation of an East Africa RMI workshop will be another activity. The RMI coordinator, Dr. Nyangaga, KRB Director of Planning and Operation, offered the services of the Board for the preparation of the workshop, the drafting of Terms of Reference for a policy study as well as the linkage with the RMI country coordinators in Tanzania and Uganda.

Tanzania. The meetings were held with senior managers of Ministry of Works, major road sector donors as well as representatives of the Road Fund Board, Tanroads, the Vice-President Office and the Ministry of Finance.

The idea of holding an East Africa RMI workshop was welcomed and it was proposed that it should focus on major issues in the reform process such as the role of the residual ministry, how to integrate poverty concerns and the establishment of efficient relations between the different institutions in the road sector.

All partners regretted that given the present financial situation, the RMI would not have the means to support the intensive RMI country program. However, the donor community in Tanzania is willing to support activities identified in the program, and it was proposed to open the basket-funding mechanism established for Tanroads implementation for support to the RMI country program.

At the debriefing, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Works appreciated the proposed donor support and the inputs from the Ministry of Finance and the Vice President's Office in relation to poverty reduction and regional development strategies. The Permanent Secretary suggested that an internal unit of the Ministry be formed to work with the RMI coordinator, Mr. Willey Lyatuu on these matters.

Malawi. The RMI country coordinator, Mr. D. Makako, CEO of the National Roads Authority (NRA) explained that the RMI country program and the promotion of the NRA are interrelated and interwoven. Malawi has experienced the same issues emerging in other countries in relation to residual Ministries after the establishment of the NRA. Solutions have been identified as the staff seconded by the Ministry of Local Government will return to Local Government. This staff will probably be a solution to the problem of district level road management capacity. Other emerging RMI issues have also solutions identified in Malawi: the poverty reduction strategy funds for development of rural roads are channeled through the NRA until the district level capacity has been developed sufficiently. An outstanding need has been identified in relation to development of international transport corridors. This support, however, has been proposed for inclusion in the present World Bank support program for Malawi.

The RMI country program for 2002 will focus on a public awareness campaign with the purpose inter alia of making the road users aware of the importance of the fuel levy for the maintenance of the road network. A draft program will be prepared in the beginning of 2002.

As part of the SSATP Business Plan for 2002-2003 the objectives and proposed outputs and activities have been set out and discussed at the most recent SSATP Annual General Meeting in November 2001. The preparation of the plan benefited greatly from the input of the RMI coordinators who met in Lusaka in September 2001 and where significant progress were being made on RMI coordinators' terms of reference, reporting arrangements and standard indicators of performance as well as criteria for RMI membership. Further information about the Lusaka meeting can be obtained from the national coordinators for Zambia at nrb@zamnet.zm or for Guinea at ahgueye@afribone.net.gn.

In view of the insufficiency of funds to implement the full Business Plan, the SSATP management has opted to work to an Interim Work Plan for 2002 calibrated to the level and certainty of resources available. Under the 2002 plan, the budget for RMI amounts to near US$601,000 of which US$363,000 is secured from tied, bilateral donor sources and the balance to be funded by untied resources. This would represented 50% increase on the 2001 expenditure level but comes out at less than 60% of the Business Plan amount. Even with this reduced amount, the RMI program will be able to deliver a range of knowledge accumulation and dissemination activities, foster partnerships and hold conferences and workshops to further support RMI implementation. By contrast, country support activities have been mostly suspended, with the provision that alternative funding sources will be actively sought.

A major activity to be undertaken in 2002 will be the updating of the RMI road sector base and the publication of two working papers, the first based on the updated situation of the SSA road sector on the ground, the second updating the work done in 1997/1998 on RMI Concepts implementation. Completion of these task will be an invaluable help to road sector managers not only for RMI members but for all SSA countries and will address the often spoken need for recent and relevant information to demonstrate the impact of RMI inspired reforms on sector performance, including network improvement. There will be a more detailed reporting on this activity in the next update, as substantial assistance from all segments of the RMI partnership will be needed for the exercise to succeed.

For further information on the interim work plan or the RMI Business Plan for 2002-2003, kindly write to the RMI Component Manager at sbrushett@worldbank.org

	SSATP > RMI Update - No. 3