This tendency was derived from some key principles of new public management with the “agencification” of public sector delivery. Based on the experience in New Zealand and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, it was felt that public service delivery would improve if delivered by semi-autonomous agencies, since public service would be managed using an approach closer to the private sector. Therefore, it led to the creation of hundreds of agencies in a country like New Zealand for instance.

Zambia adopted this system in the 1990s and early 2000s with the creation of a road fund in 1994 followed by the creation of the Road Development Agency (RDA) and then the Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) in 2002. Zambia can therefore be used as an interesting case study to assess the impact of such institutional change. Three agencies falling under three different governmental bodies regulate the sector. According to the relevant legal acts, the mandates of the three agencies are as follows:

1. **_The National Road Fund Agency (NRFA)_** , under custody of the Ministry of Finance, is responsible for funding of capital works and road upgrades and maintenance. Budgets are prepared and administered by NRFA and allocated to RDA and RTSA.

2. **_The Road Development Agency_** , falling under the Ministry of Public Works, is responsible for the planning, execution, operation and management of road construction and weighbridges.

3. **_The Road Transport and Safety Agency_** , falling under the Ministry of Transport and Communications, is responsible for vehicle testing, collection of road license fees, issuing of cross-border permits, collection of road user fees, and enforcement/fines.

Using various data sources and based on interviews with various RDA staff, the paper presents findings of a thorough analysis of RDA contracts that had been awarded between 2008 and 2011. Findings are organized according to four separate themes: staffing dynamics, governance arrangements and context, project selection trends and procurement practices. Under each theme, trends are identified and discussed using a political interference lens.

As main findings of this work, and after some years of implementation of these reforms, we could question if the model of semi-autonomous agency enables road management isolation from political interference. Zambia may be an extreme case but so far, this model does not seem to have been able to deter/fight political interference in projects selection or projects supervision and there seems to have been the increased lack of accountability of civil servants working in this sector<sup>3</sup> . Therefore, value for money for projects may not have improved tremendously since old practices seem to have been perpetuated in the current system.

3 This finding on the importance of political interference in infrastructure and how improvements are limited is developed in Benitez et al. (2012). The paper explains the difference between _market failure_ (which legitimizes regulatory interference) and governance failure (on why optimal solutions for sector governance have not been implemented). The most common incentive problems in politics will tend to influence sector decisions in infrastructure.

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