RWANDA Estimating the Impact of Rural Feeder Roads in Rwanda What is the impact of rural road upgrading program on market integration and household welfare in Rwanda? Rwanda Feeder Roads Development Program TARGET AREA: 21 districts across all 4 provinces. OBJECTIVE: To bring a motorable road within 2km of all farms in Rwanda by 2027. UPGRADING COMPONENTS: Widening to the new 6-meter standard (2 lanes); Adding a base layer and resurfacing with Upgraded rural road lateritic soil; Constructing drainage structures. Context More information about the Rwanda Feeder Rwanda’s rural road network is estimated at 15,000 km, which consists Roads Development Program can be found predominantly of very poor condition dirt roads with no current online at http://projects.worldbank.org/ maintenance program. In 2016, only 55% of the population were within P126498/rwanda-feeder-roads-development- 2km of an all-season road in good condition. The poor quality of the road project?lang=en&tab=overview network hinders trade and rural development. As most roads are not passable by motor vehicle, farmers rely on human and intermediate means of transport to bring their products to market, produce tends to be self-consumed instead of marketed. Poor connectivity also results in high inputs prices, further constraining smallholder productivity. PRELIMINARY RESULTS In this context, the Government of Rwanda (GoR) is engaged in an Households in the most remote ambitious rural road improvement program (Rwanda Feeder Roads (poorest on average) areas Development program, RFRDP), financed by four donor agencies experienced the largest benefits (USAID, EU, the Netherlands and the World Bank). The development from road rehabilitation, some saw objectives of this program are to enhance market access and reduce a nearly 20% increase in transport costs for people as well as goods. Over the next four years, income. the program will upgrade a share of Rwanda’s current feeder road network into an all-season, maintained dirt road system. Impact Evaluation Research Input Feeder road upgrades The key research questions of this research are: i) How are market Output prices of village imports and exports affected by improvements in Reduced transportation costs rural roads? ii) How do households adapt to these price changes in terms of goods produced and purchased? iii) What is the market Access Access to # traders on to market post-harvest local market valuation of improved road access as measured by aggregate facilities Outcomes land value changes? and iv) To what extent do roads help a region Farmers’ Consumption Price of develop as measured by total population? sale price choice consumption goods Private sector Sales revenues This Impact Evaluation (IE) uses an event study design, taking growth advantage of the quasi-random timing of the rollout of rural road Impact upgrading across Rwandan districts. The key outcome variables are Jobs In migration Land values Higher household welfare market prices, land prices, household consumption and production, Theory of Change and the key explanatory variable is road roughness before and after the road upgrading. Identification requires that the exact timing of the intervention is as good as random. In this context, idiosyncratic to substantial construction costs, which limits statistical power. factors such as donor disbursement calendars, construction This IE presents a unique opportunity for research and policy- delays, permits and weather all suggest that is indeed the case making, as the total number of kilometers of roads in RFRDP is for construction completion date for each road segment. This far greater than has been afforded by previous, single-donor road provides plausibly exogenous temporal variations in road quality. improvement efforts in Africa. The research team will have data on the exact timing of both the road improvement initiation and completion dates. Causal changes This IE partners with multiple international donors and the in outcomes of interest (i.e. prices, quantities traded) can therefore Government of Rwanda to analyze the impact of the RFRDP be estimated around the timing of the event (rehabilitation). program. It is anticipated that the proposed study will influence both policy and institutional capacity at the national level and Preliminary results from the subset of districts with completed international levels. As roads are set to be constructed all across segments are promising. Households in the most remote areas Rwanda during the next four years, this study can affect the amount are significantly poorer on average. However, they experience of funds committed in the future. the largest benefits from road rehabilitation. Incomes in the most remote villages increase nearly 20%, allowing them to fully catch The spirit of this IE is to leverage the current government’s up on the initial income gap. Future surveys will show if these investment in administrative data collection, complemented income gains persist over time. with dedicated household survey data, to document the national impact of a large infrastructure program. This methodology can be transferrable to other road infrastructure development in the rest Policy Relevance of Africa. Evaluating the impact of large-scale road upgrading on market conditions in remote rural areas presents a complex methodological For more information email dimetransport@worldbank.org or visit challenge. Typically, a small number of roads are rehabilitated due 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) group in the Development Research Group and the Transport Global Practice (TR GP). This program is part of the Impact Evaluation to Development Impact (i2i) multi-donor trust fund and is funded with UK aid from the UK government (DFID) and by the European Union (EU).