SIERRA LEONE‘S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE

**Table 5. Sierra Leone road indicators benchmarked against Africa’s low- and middle-income countries**

|Indicator|Unit|Low-income,<br>fragile<br>countries|Resource-<br>rich countries|**Sierra**<br>**Leone**|Middle-<br>income<br>countries|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Classified road network density|km/1000 km2 of land area|96|98|**119**|278|
|Total road network density [a]|km/1000 km2 of land area|145|128|**126**|318|
|GIS Rural accessibility|% of rural pop within 2 km from all-<br>season road|32|20|**21**|31|
|Main road network condition [b]|% in good or fair condition|55|68|**60**|86|
|Rural road network condition [c]|% in good or fair condition|56|61|**52**|65|
|Classified paved road traffic|Average Annual Daily Traffic|843|1,408|**1,150**|2,451|
|Classified unpaved road traffic|Average Annual Daily Traffic|55|54|**33**|107|
|Primary network over-engineering|% of primary network paved with<br>300 AADT or less|47|15|**69**|18|
|Perceived transport quality [d]|% firms identifying transport as<br>major business constraint|32|27|**30**|18|

_Source_ : AICD Road Sector Database on 40 Sub-Saharan African Countries accessed June 2010.

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

b. Main network for most countries is defined as 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 is World Bank–IFC Enterprise Surveys on 32 Sub-Saharan Africa countries.

Sierra Leone established a Road Fund in 1992 to ensure maintenance and rehabilitation of public roads throughout the country. Since 2009, the government has made progress improving the legislation governing the Road Fund, and separation of the Road Fund from the Sierra Leone Roads Authority is intended by 2013. The Road Fund spent about $15.3 million annually on road maintenance for the 2004– 09 period, with efforts increasing in recent years. The Road Fund‘s spending on new investment and rehabilitation averaged $0.5 million annually for the 2007–09 period. This capital spending, coupled with $8.5 million of road investments channeled through the government (during 2007–09), brings the total public capital flowing to the road network to an annual average of $9 million.

# **Challenges**

Setting the fuel levy at a high enough level to fund road maintenance has been difficult for Sierra Leone. According to a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report, the fuel-levy rate reached $0.10 per liter in 2010. Although this rate was approved in 1998, it took years to implement. The government‘s intention is to increase the rate to $0.16 per liter 2012 (UNDP 2010). This new rate will be in line with current Road Fund spending on road maintenance (figure 10), but will be as hard to attain as the previous levy increase.

But even this increase will not be enough to raise the fuel levy to the estimated optimal level of $0.24 per liter. The optimal levy may not be socially feasible due to already high costs of fuel. Prices already stood at $1.15 per liter for diesel and $1.12 per liter for gasoline in 2008, and the proposed levy is already quite high by regional standards. The effort should be made to get the fuel levy to $0.16 per liter, but budgetary top-up will still be needed, leaving the roads sector vulnerable to fiscal uncertainty. To lessen the adverse social and economic consequences caused by the proposed increase in fuel levy, Sierra Leone 22