MOZAMBIQUE Estimating the Impact of Road Network Improvements What is the impact of transport infrastructure improvements on agricultural intensification in rural Mozambique? Integrated Feeder Road Development Project TARGET AREA: 10 priority districts in the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia. IMPLEMENTING AGENCY: Road Fund National Roads Administration (Administração Nacional de Estradas, ANE) Credit: Tillmann von Carnap-Bornheim, PROJECT COMPONENTS: Basemap: World Imagery from ESRI. Rehabilitation and Maintenance of Feeder Roads; Rehabilitation of Primary Road Network; Pilot Rural Context Transport Services; Capacity Building Despite strong, sustained economic growth between 2005 and and Project Administration; and 2015 rural poverty in Mozambique persisted due to low agricultural Contingent Emergency Response productivity, particularly in the agricultural zones of the Northern and Central provinces. Poor physical connectivity is a contributing factor, including limited access to agricultural extension services, credit More information about the Integrated markets, and market information. Limited transport infrastructure Feeder Road Development Project can be in Mozambique also means that economic activity is effectively found online at http://projects.worldbank.org/ segmented into three geographical regions (North, South, and P158231/?lang=en&tab=overview Central), creating conditions for regional price swings that are not smoothed by integrated trade (Suit and Choudhary, 2015). Much of the Mozambique’s National Road Administration’s efforts have focused on construction of new roads and maintenance of primary infrastructure. An Integrated Feeder Roads Project, financed by the World Bank, will focus on rehabilitation and maintenance of tertiary roads, with a large percentage of the investments targeting construction and repair of bridges and culverts that improve accessibility, particularly during periods of heavy rain or flooding. Short- and intermediate Inputs Activities Outputs Long-term Outcomes outcomes Modernized, intensified agricultural Reconstruction or rehabilitation practices that are associated with Lower cost and more reliable cultivation of high value crops and of bridges and culverts Identification of districts or Improved road surfaces, access leads to easier access to profitable cultivation strategies including: other sub-provincial zones drainage and flood markets that offer higher prices • expansion of irrigation Graveling for agricultural products and • expansion of cultivated land with high potential for protection leads to decreased agriculture, high poverty rates, inaccessibility of roads, easier/cheaper access to inputs • consolidation of fragmented plots into and low connectivity to road Surface treatment increased route options larger plots Reliable and efficient road networks that are suitable for and travel times, and lower • cultivation outside of the rainy season access increases accessibility of road investments. Routine/periodic user costs • shifts to cultivation of new crops. rural areas for public and private maintenance extension agents Higher incomes and poverty reduction Figure 1: Theory of Change Impact Evaluation Research to be extended to other contexts where administrative data is lacking, and data collection is costly. This impact evaluation (IE) aims to evaluate the impact of improving rural transport infrastructure on agricultural development in northern Policy Relevance Mozambique. Maintenance of roads and upgrading of bridges and culverts is expected to improve agricultural productivity by reducing The cost of infrastructure projects in rural areas with high agricultural the vulnerability of market access to weather-related disruptions, potential and low agricultural productivity are often justified on the assumption that improved road access will stimulate agricultural and by increasing access to extension information, credit and investment. Sub-Saharan Africa, and Mozambique in particular, input markets (Figure 1: Theory of Change). Researchers will have much lower agricultural productivity, higher potential gains in use data derived from satellite imagery to examine whether the yields, and much less binding constraints on availability of land for repair and maintenance of rural roads and river crossings leads to cultivation, so it is expected that the effects of road improvements agricultural intensification. would be very different. However, the effect has not been tested or The evaluation will focus on the first component of the World Bank demonstrated in practice for these areas, in part because of a lack financed Integrated Feeder Road Development Project, which supports of data. This IE will contribute to demonstrating the use of remote the construction and maintenance of rural ‘feeder’ roads in 10 priority sensing data and machine learning to measure these linkages in districts in the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia in Mozambique. sub-Saharan Africa that can be applied across countries. The research team will distinguish the causal effects of the intervention Given that road density in Mozambique is low relative to the rest of from other activities that may also influence agricultural intensification the region and that national investment in roads has experienced by exploiting sharp changes in travel times generated by repairs and recent shortfalls (World Bank, 2018), the international donor upgrades to river crossings, which constitute the largest component community is likely to play an increased role in transport investments. of the program. Researchers will leverage remote sensing data as well Therefore, this research on the returns to transport infrastructure as advances in machine learning to measure changes in land use that relative to other investments can be directly incorporated into the would indicate agricultural intensification. Outcomes of interest include design and implementation of future programs. predicted presence of irrigation, dry season Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), plot size and forest cover. The approaches For more information email dimetransport@worldbank.org or visit this IE uses to measure agricultural intensification have the potential www.worldbank.org/en/research/dime/brief/transport The ieConnect for Impact program links project teams with researchers to develop rigorous and innovative impact evaluations that both substantially improve the evidence-base for policy making and induce global shifts in transport policy. The ieConnect program is a collaboration between the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) unit in the Development Research Group and the Transport & Digital Development Global Practice (TDD). This program is part of the Impact Evaluation to Development Impact (i2i) multi-donor trust fund and is supported by the UKAID’s Department of International Development (DFID) and the European Union (EU).