MOZAMBIQUE’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE

# Roads

Mozambique’s total road network length is 32,500 km as of 2008. The classified network, with about 22,500 km, consists of primary and secondary networks with less than 5,000 km each, and a tertiary network of about 12,700 km. The unclassified network is estimated to be around 6,700 km and the urban network 3,300 km. After failing attempts to rehabilitate the rapidly deteriorating parastatal vehicle fleet in the ’80s and following policy changes in the ’90s to shift from public to private provision of roadtransport services, the total vehicle fleet in 2007 is estimated to be 260,000 with a large share of older and poor-condition vehicles that generate high vehicle operating costs.

**Table 3. Mozambique’s road indicators benchmarked against Sub-Saharan African low- and middle-income countries**

|Indicator|Unit|Low-income,<br>nonfragile<br>countries|**Mozambique**|Middle-<br>income<br>countries|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Classified road network density|km/1,000 km<sup>2</sup>of land area|88|**29**|278|
|Total road network density [a]|km/1,000 km<sup>2</sup>of land area|132|**37**|318|
|GIS rural accessibility|% of rural population within 2 km of all-season road|25|**24**|31|
|Main road network condition [b]|% in good or fair condition|72|**83**|86|
|Rural road network condition [c]|% in good or fair condition|53|**56**|65|
|Classified paved road traffic|AADT|1,131|**1,033**|2,451|
|Classified unpaved road traffic|AADT|57|**60**|107|
|Primary network overengineering|% of primary network paved with 300 AADT or less|30|**34**|18|
|Primary network underengineering|% of primary network unpaved with 300 AADT or<br>more|13|**7**|20|
|Perceived transport quality [d]|% firms identifying transport as major business<br>constraint|28|**23**|18|

_Source:_ AICD Road Sector Database of 40 Sub-Saharan African countries.

a. Total network includes the classified and estimates of unclassified and urban networks.

b. Main network for most countries is defined as a result of adding the primary and secondary networks.

c. Rural network is generally defined as the tertiary network and does not include the unclassified roads. d. Source _:_ World Bank—IFC Enterprise Surveys on 32 Sub-Saharan African countries. GIS = geographic information system; AADT = average annual daily traffic.

## **Achievements**

During the ’90s the government initiated several institutional reforms and projects to rehabilitate and maintain road infrastructure in selected priority districts and corridors, easing transportation bottlenecks. After overcoming major hurdles—such as insufficient investment in rehabilitation and maintenance, and lack of local human resources sufficient to properly carry out road projects—and reforming the institutional and policy environments, Mozambique managed to establish a large road-infrastructure base.

Mozambique passed several institutional reforms in the early 2000s. The reforms included the implementation institutional and financial regulations, the creation of an interministerial road commission to coordinate government efforts, the establishment of an autonomous, dedicated ―road fund‖, the simplification of the organizational structure of the national road agency (Administracao National de Estradas, or ANE), and the development of a policy to commercialize road-network management.

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