AFCAP low cost road technology comes to Bagamoyo

For Asha Furaha, construction of a 24 km road from Bago on the Bagamoyo to Msata main road to her village at Ludiga, is bringing expectations, she said yesterday as Del Monte contractors raced against time to finish the project by next August.

The 29 year old mother of two is a food vendor who buys her commodities at Kiwangwa, a divisional town on the main road to Bagamoyo district headquarters, took four hours to travel between the places but now takes only an hour on a motorbike.

“This road has saved our time, before its upgrading I used to take three to four hours while now it’s only an hour by motorbike,” said Ms Furaha who operates a makeshift restaurant at Ludiga village situated between Bago and Tulawanda villages.

Furaha said fares have gone down from between 3-4,000/- between Ludiga village and Kiwangwa division town centre to 2,500/-. “It’s a big relief because now I have more time to do other things,” she noted standing next to a motor grader spreading gravel on part of the road close to her restaurant.

The unique technology being used here which utilizes mostly local resources including gravel, lime stone, rocks and imported bitumen, culverts is a model which experts designed under African Community Access Program.

The AFCAP is designed to address challenges of providing reliable access for poor communities. Funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and managed by Crown Agents, AFCAP provides advice and undertakes research to deliver safe and sustainable access to rural communities.

“This is a field demonstration of an AFCAP road implementation project in Tanzania,” said Stephen Conlon, Field Engineer of AFCAP 8 Tanzania Project. Mr. Conlon said the cheap technology being used will provide a solution to the problem of improving rural roads in the country.

But both villagers and local technicians working on the road don’t understand what is going on because the road is not being constructed according to regular standards. Different parts of the road are being constructed using different material based on nature of the soil and water level.

“I have been working at road projects construction sites for over 10 years but what is happening here is new to me,” said Khalid Sufiani, a 28 year old technician who worked on Chalinze to Segera road project and later Chalinze to Morogoro road between 1990 and 2006.

“If you look closely on the sides, we have erected sign boards stating what kind of material is used to construct a particular section of the road,” said Bagamoyo District Engineer, Samson Kilasi. Some parts will be constructed using rocks, concrete slabs, limestone, gravel, bitumen and asphalt which are readily available here, Mr. Kilasi said.

The low cost technology is reflected in the budget for the 22 km road which is only 1.29bn/-, enough to construct a kilometer of standard bitumen road according to Tanzania Road Agency (Tanroads) records.