- The hardship faced by people living in remote and inaccessible parts of Burkina Faso would "soon be contained and even reversed" with a new government project to improve the national road network. Almost 1000 kilometres of roads are to be upgraded all over the Burkinabe countryside.
Burkina Faso's "Feeder Roads Project" today was assured funding from the African Development Fund (ADF), assuring its implementation. The Tunis-based Fund today announced it had approved of a loan of US$ 23 million to finance the "Feeder Roads Project", which is to "open up" new areas of Burkina Faso's countryside.
According to the project's official description, it is to involve the improvement of 975 kilometres of feeder roads in 13 provinces of the country. This is to include 865 kilometres of cotton-farm tracks in the west and south-west and 110 kilometres of tracks serving the market-garden areas in the provinces of Houet and Kadiogo.
The project further was to involve works control and supervision as well as technical assistance to the Ouagadougou General Directorate of feeder roads.
The improved feeder roads are to support Burkina Faso's rural sector at large. This sector ensures the subsistence of about 80 percent of the national population, accounts for more than 30 percent of the gross national product and provides at least 50 percent of Burkina Faso's export earnings.
The objectives of the ADF-funded government project mainly are "to foster trade by reducing the domestic transport cost and improve the welfare of the rural populations through better access to the production areas and basic social services."
Further, the large-scale project is to "contribute to the development of production by opening up many cotton production and market gardening areas in the targeted 13 provinces." It is also aimed at improving the income level of the populations of the project area "by enhancing the value of the surplus production resulting from improvement of the project roads."
Finally, the "Feeder Roads Project" is said to facilitate the transportation of rural products to the storage and selling areas by "strengthening the intermediate means of transport." Burkina Faso has a relatively dense network of rural roads, but their initially poor quality has successively been deteriorating during the last decades.
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