Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program

SSATP Meeting Proceedings

Documentation of the Annual Conference and Stakeholder's Meeting has now been issued in two volumes and disseminated to all participants including RMI member countries. The first summary volume has been published in both English and French, whereas the second volume, containing the proceedings of each of the component meetings has the documentation in the original language of presentation only. In view of the extensiveness of this documentation, limited hard copies have been produced and the general distribution has been effected as a CD-ROM. We would be happy to have feedback and suggestions you may have in this regard.

Contact mdesthuis@worldbank.org

RMI members are encouraged to review carefully the findings and recommendations to ensure that their own country programs and specific objectives for 2003 are calibrated to the emerging priorities. RMI at the center is in the process of reviewing the 2003 business plan - program logical framework, key activities and budget - which will be circulated for information and comments before the end of this year. This plan takes on board a number of recommendations from the component meeting as reflected in the minutes, notably - completion of the performance assessment surveys, more and better dissemination of Road Fund best practices; developing more capacity building opportunities especially for Francophone members.

Members are reminded that it was agreed at Maputo that the following countries - Tanzania, Cape Verde and Burundi - would serve on the Task Force to monitor follow up of the meeting recommendations and to work together with the center and with the representative of the host country to prepare the next meeting. We are pleased to add that our fellow program component - RTTP - has now also selected country representatives for the Task Force thus ensuring that there will be a closely coordinated preparation of the forthcoming meeting. Please look out in the very near future for a planned first meeting of the Task Force to discuss the Concept Note and start the preparatory activities.

Contact sbrushett@worldbank.org

RMI is very pleased to announce that the École nationale des Ponts et chaussées (ENPC) in Paris will include in its catalog of courses for 2003 a senior executive road management course to be delivered entirely in French. The first module, one week long, focusing on Road Financing and Road Fund Management, will run from June 30 to July 5. Attached is a pre-announcement (English and French) which explains in more details the intentions and objectives of the course as well as the catalog entry.

The RMI and the University of Birmingham - which has a good recent history in developing the anglophone Senior Executive Road Management Program - have been consulted in the development of the concept and both should be involved more in the preparation of materials and teaching of the course. Additional modules should be developed from 2004, depending on demand. A special agreement between Birmingham and ENPC set up the partnership to develop around these two sister courses.

RMI will ensure all member countries get a copy of the formal announcement and will appeal to the Bank and other donor partners with a view to ensuring that the participants from our Francophone members will be able to attend. We invite all to prepare to take advantage of this training which addresses a long standing need for more capacity building support in Road Fund management.

Cycle de formation à la gestion routière en 2003

L'IGR a le plaisir de vous informer que l'École nationale des Ponts et chaussées (ENPC) de Paris vient d'inscrire à son catalogue international, à partir de 2003, un cycle de formation à la gestion de la route destiné aux décideurs et responsables du secteur routier, cycle qui sera intégralement assuré en francais. Un premier module, d'une semaine et consacré au financement de l'entretien routier et à la gestion des fonds d'entretien routiers, se tiendra du 30 juin au 5 juillet. Vous en trouverez ci-joint la pré-annonce (en anglais et en français) qui donne plus de détails sur les objectifs pédagogiques, ainsi que la fiche correspondante du catalogue.

L'IGR et l'Université de Birmingham - dont le cycle anglophone consacré aux mêmes sujets jouit déjà d'une excellente renommée - sont associés à la conception de ce cours et participeront à la préparation du matériel pédagogique et à l'enseignement. D'autres modules spécialisés viendront s'ajouter à partir de 2004, en fonction de la demande. Un accord passé entre Birmingham et l'ENPC jette les bases du partenariat qui sera mis en oeuvre autour de ces deux programmes jumeaux.

L'IGR communiquera l'annonce officielle de ce cycle à chacun de ses pays membres et agira auprès de la Banque mondiale et des autres bailleurs partenaires pour faciliter la participation de représentants de ces pays. Vous êtes invités à saisir l'opportunité de ce cycle francophone qui entend répondre au besoin récurrent et largement exprimé de renforcement des capacités de gestion des fonds d'entretien routier.

Contact lfernique@worldbank.org or collot@mail.enpc.fr

RMI (Torben T Larsen) has been working with all the five countries who piloted the exercise for Maputo - Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia - to ensure that the PAM model is developed in accordance with the demands of the RMI/RTTP coordinators (see Update No.4). The objective is to keep the most recent version of the model up and running, and to set in place the processes under which these countries will run the assessments on at least an annual basis. A number of additional report screens have been added and user interfaces have been improved. To this end an applications guide is under preparation in the interests of ensuring a very user friendly interface and providing practical suggestions on trouble shooting. This is presently only in English, but a French and Portuguese version are to be produced too. The idea is to back this up with the installation of a peer-to-peer support process under which some RMI countries will agree to take on a technical support function.

It remains RMI's objective to complete at least one round of performance assessment for each RMI (and RTTP) country by mid-2003 and to write up the conclusions and recommendations in regard to progress on filling the maintenance funding gap. This is likely to appear as a Working Paper part of the stock taking exercise for the RMI as whole. The tool itself would then continue to be used by coordinators as part of an increased and more effective toolbox at their disposal to support stakeholders and convince decision makers. Since July, progress has been made in that the model has been tested and is now running in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Ghana. A French version has also been developed and is at present being test with Dr Gueye in Guinea and will be anchored with Silue Silie. A schedule for the completion of the visits will be determined before the end of the year. The Task Force will be asked to facilitate the exercise in view of the importance of presenting the preliminary aggregated results at the June 2003 SSATP Meeting.

Building capacity for light network monitoring in Mali. Building an African capacity for teaching the SOURCE method

A training session organized last October in Mali under the national Transport Sector Plan intended to respond to the expressed needs of the Ministry of Public Works to acquire rapidly a simple and convenient tool on performance follow-up and monitoring of some trunk road itineraries especially with a view to the future rehabilitation of the road Mopti-Gao.

The method elected is the SOURCE method (Standard Overall Ultralite Road Care Estimate) designed by the SSATP. SOURCE allows to measure in motion and by using a standard protocol, both the traffic levels and the average speeds of light vehicles (LVs) on the covered roads. Madagascar, Guinea and Burkina-Faso have already formed their own capacity and adopted SOURCE as a standard management tool.

The workshop objectives were, within the Ministry, to set up a contracting and quality control capacity for future national measurement campaigns within the Ministry on one hand, and to train a couple of occasional measurement crew to carry out special campaigns (quality control runs, "reference zero" campaigns, etc.) on the other hand.

This workshop was also an opportunity for the RMI to strengthen and empower a first African capacity for teaching the SOURCE method, by developing the practice and skills of two Cameroonese trainers, now able to intervene in a fully autonomous way and run similar workshops in other countries upon request. An ad hoc Facilitator Toolkit was especially developed.

Development of a new and improved version of Roads Economic Decision (RED) model

A new RED Model Version 3.0 Beta software and documentation is being developed by Rodrigo Archondo-Callao. The main improvements of this new version are a) a new structure for the Main Economic Evaluation Model that differentiates between the dry and wet seasons with regard to traffic, and b) a totally reformulated network module, which includes a budget constraint optimization, which is now named Program Evaluation Module.

This prototype version is located on the RMI publication/models page of this website and will be run in parallel with version 2.0 for a period of around six months. The Beta version indicates that this is the first version of RED Version 3.0, therefore, It could contain some bugs or need some minor enhancements and document clarifications before final release. During these six months the RMI intends to collect comments on this new version and obtain some experience using the model before releasing a final RED Version 3.0. An announcement will be made via e-mail to inform that the prototype is now available on line.

The new version will be showcased at a scheduled training for World Bank staff January 27, 2003, including the presentation of new case study material. RMI would like to release the updated applications guide and then to schedule further training in SSA with a strong focus on RMI countries during the course of 2003 - which could include a session to run concurrently with the new SSATP meeting in June 2003. We look forward to hearing your views on this so that the demand for such training can be effectively gauged.

Ismail Guennouni is joining the World Bank in Washington DC on a one year assignment from l'École des Mines de Paris. He is going to devote up to one third of his time to the RMI during this year. He will initially work on: production of an updated matrix of the status of road sector reforms and institutional change in all SSA countries, including but not limited to RMI members; support to the various Francophone countries who will be preparing performance assessments over the next year following the model development by RMI and showcased in Maputo in July.

	SSATP > RMI Update - No. 5