At the end of the feeder road: assessing the impact of track construction for motorbike taxis on agrarian development in Liberia

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This research will answer questions which directly fall under the remit of 2 of the 3 research questions of the ESRC-DFID Poverty Alleviation Research call, focusing on 'factors shaping pathways into and out of poverty ...' and 'measures that can be taken to reduce the risks and impact of violence and instability on the poorest...'Some of the world's poorest people are found in isolated African villages. Lacking market access, rural producers typically earn little from whatever they produce, and this perpetuates subsistence production. Many of these farmers are women. Their poverty results from a combination of factors, some of which interlock in a vicious circle comprising lack of labor, finance and market access. Even though farmers may be willing to produce more for markets, better roads are a pre-condition for agricultural development, but are not forthcoming given the small volumes that are actually traded. Is it possible to break this trap and kick-start a virtuous cycle of market-led agricultural growth and poverty alleviation? We propose to answer this question in relation to a burgeoning locally-driven rural transport revolution based on the motorbike taxi. Even in the poorest regions of Africa, cheap Chinese-made motorbike taxis have now become part of the rural landscape, navigating roads too narrow or muddy for 4-wheel transport, and loaded with bags of rice, groundnuts and cocoa beans on it. In the war-affected forest region of Upper West Africa these bikes are a relatively new feature. Riders are often young men (occasionally young women), who a decade ago were handling a gun rather than a bike. In an effort to avoid exploitative traditional agrarian institutions, rural youths have embraced the transport sector as a means to earn a living. The penetration of bike taxis deep into isolated rural communities has spread spontaneously and created direct and indirect employment opportunities for low-skilled youth. There is little information on the consequences of the recent spread of bike taxis for poverty alleviation and market integration, let alone information on what interventions might further support and stimulate this development. Preliminary observations in Sierra Leone and Liberia suggest that farmers experience particular limitations where it concerns the transportation of agricultural produce from farmstead to village/roadside, with many farmstead tracks not even navigable for motorbikes. Upgrading these tracks so that they can be used by motorbikes is extremely cheap (as compared to more conventional rural road construction) and can largely be executed by the community. But without hard data on impact relevant state actors and international donors remain reluctant to allocate funds to rural track-building/upgrading, preferring to stick to more conventional (but expensive) 4-wheel vehicle accessible rural roads construction/rehabilitation.In Liberia, USAID's Farm to Market Rural Roads Rehabilitation Program recently commenced and will be identifying, ranking and designing 450km of roads for construction between 2014 and 2018. Most of these will be conventional rural roads, but a (as yet) small proportion will be allocated for track construction/upgrading. We propose to conduct a qualitative study of 16 villages over 4 Counties to collect socio-economic data to 1) understand the impact that motorbike navigable track building from farmstead to village/road/market has on lifting (semi-)subsistence farmers out of poverty by reducing costs to produce for markets, as compared to more conventional 4 wheel accessible feeder road construction; 2) study the socio-economic impact of improved access and mobility through the construction of conventional rural feeder roads versus 2 wheel accessible only tracks on villagers; 3) document the level, nature and issues arising of community involvement in the decision making process and actual building of conventional feeder roads and 2-wheel accessible tracks.