THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE

**Table 4. Benchmarking road indicators**

||**Unit**|**LIC**|**DRC**|**Fragile**<br>**states**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Paved road density|km/1,000 km<sup>2</sup><br>of land|16|1|21|
|Unpaved road density|km/1,000 km<sup>2</sup><br>of land|68|14|75|
|Geographic information system<br>(GIS) rural accessibility|% of rural population within 2 km of all-<br>season road|21.7|29.3|—|
|Paved road traffic|Average annual<br>daily traffic|1,027|257|843|
|Unpaved road traffic|Average annual<br>daily traffic|55|20|55|
|Paved network condition|% in good or fair condition|75|70|69|
|Unpaved network condition|% in good or fair condition|58|42|55|
|Perceived transport quality|% firms identifying as major business<br>constraint|23|30|—|

_Source:_ Gwillliam and others 2009, derived from AICD national database downloadable from http://www.infrastructureafrica.org/aicd/tools/data. — = data not available.

# **Challenges**

The DRC’s vast landmass (equivalent to the size of Western Europe), low population density, and extensive river network makes road development particularly challenging. A large share of the land area is covered by dense tropical forest and crisscrossed by rivers that complicate road construction and maintenance due to the numerous bridges needed. For all these reasons, it is not entirely surprising that the DRC should have such a low road network density compared with other LICs in Africa (table 4).

A key issue going forward will be not only to reconstruct the road network but to create a sustainable basis for funding road maintenance. The DRC’s immediate focus has been to reconstruct roads that had fallen into disrepair and disuse during the conflict period, with a view to reestablishing connectivity. Once this is accomplished, something must be done to ensure that the reconstructed roads are adequately maintained. _Given the vast geographical expanse of the network, the DRC needs to spend almost $400 million a year just to keep its transport infrastructure in usable condition_ . Not only does this represent more than 5 percent of GDP, but it is also several times higher than the entire public investment budget of the country over the past few years. Securing resources for maintenance clearly represents a huge challenge, as does spending those funds effectively. As of 2010, an important step toward the sustainability of the road network has been taken with the creation of a road fund.

Beyond road infrastructure itself, the cost of road freight transportation is very high by African standards. From a broader economic perspective, the key transport variable is the price of surface freight haulage. While a detailed study of road freight tariffs in the DRC has not yet been undertaken, the available anecdotal evidence indicates that these costs are very high (even by African standards) and can easily amount to 15 cents per tonne-kilometer (tonne-km), compared to 5 cents per tonne-km in southern Africa. In theory, improvements in road infrastructure should reduce road haulage costs and lead to lower tariffs, but in much of Central Africa the presence of trucking cartels and tour-de-role regulations (whereby government allocates freight to companies based on a queuing system) lead to major profit 11