The Economic and Social Impacts of New Infrastructural Development in Rural Areas

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Road construction offers new economic and social opportunities for people, and opens, or improves, access to new places. In the U.S. and around the world, rural people often aggressively lobby local and federal governments for new or improved roads, especially in rural areas with high poverty due to limited economic opportunities, poor access to education and other social services, and where infrastructure improvements are rare. In advocating for road construction and improvement, local people imagine first and foremost, improved economic opportunities, whether due to ease of transportation to jobs, transporting goods out for sale, the arrival of new jobs, or through opportunities for new entrepreneurial activity in conjunction with the new road. People living near a new road may also anticipate easier communication and visiting with extended family and distant friends or colleagues, and improved access to health care, schools and other social services. However, people do not always anticipate some of the problems that new roads can bring, such as increased crime and drug activity due to easier access and fast escape from communities, or increases in outsider purchase of land and property that may drive up taxes for local people. In some cases, new roads can lead to shared local resources that people value (such as ocean, lake, forest or pasture access) becoming privatized, which consequently negatively impacts local people's ability to make a living. Through an intensive study of communities living near a new road built in 2016 in an impoverished rural community, Dr. Cliggett, an anthropologist at the University of Kentucky, will investigate how new roads can best benefit local people and identify ways to avoid the negative aspects of this kind of infrastructure development. Project findings will also be presented to non-academic audiences, improving efforts to communicate science to the public. The project would train graduate students in methods of scientifically-grounded and empirical data collection.The research will be conducted in rural Zambia where a recent World Bank funded project facilitated the construction of a new road along the Kariba Lake shoreline (part of the Zambezi River valley), in a remote region, difficult to access and known for its poverty. Dr. Cliggett and her research team, which includes US students, will investigate the variety of impacts from the road in two communities at opposite ends this new transportation corridor. It is selected because it is an ideal site for examining long-term change through infrastructural development. These two communities were previously part of one large village with dense family ties and interdependent rural livelihoods, but were separated in 1958 when the Kariba Dam was built on the Zambezi river. Despite the physical distance of the two villages (approximately 130 miles), the communities remain socially connected through kinship and local political organizations. The new road allows direct transportation routes (approximately 4 hours) between these two communities for the first time since 1958. Consequently, the new road is likely to facilitate a resurgence of social networks, family reintegration and political activity, in addition to new economic opportunities. The research team will survey women, men and local political leaders in the two communities about how their economic activities have changed since the road was built, changes in their social connections with relatives and friends living at opposite ends of the road, and the impacts of outsiders gaining access to lakeshore and other lands near the road. In addition to survey interviews, the research team will use digital mapping tools to identify places of economic activity and places where land is being purchased by outsiders. The research team will use baseline information from a long-term research project (Gwembe Tonga Research Project, started in 1958) in these communities to assess how local economies, social networks, and privatization of land have changed since the road was built. This research will allow Dr. Cliggett and her research team to make policy recommendations that can enhance the benefits of this kind of new infrastructure, while minimizing the negative impacts associated with new roads or other similar infrastructure.