Secondary Roads, Phases I and II

Evaluation Team

This report was prepared by Mrs. Z. Khorsi, Evaluation Expert at OPEV, following her mission to Niger in April 1998.

Objective

The secondary roads project falls within the framework of a sectoral policy for providing an optimum and secure road network, and aims at facilitating local, sub-regional and international commercial trade. Its objective is to open up four rural areas in Tillaberi and Maradi provinces in order to: (i) ease the supply of essential items to them; (ii) develop local markets, therefore agro-pastoral production in the project’s impact area; (iii) reduce transport cost in the said areas. These objectives were in phase with the national priorities and regional

Main Lessons

Main Recommendations

Recommendations to the Beneficiary and the Executing Agency:

• Ensure the actual implementation of reforms agreed to by the MEI and the World Bank as contained in the TRIP, especially with regard to: a) An effective road maintenance planning, programming and management system (routine and scheduled) for the network as a whole, and including a reliable road data bank fed from a road network reconnaissance and follow-up system; b) A sustainable road financing system; c) The restructuring of the MEI and the DTP; d) Use of the private sector in routine scheduled maintenance work to substitute work on force account

• Ensure actual implementation of AUDT recommendations concerning the recuperation of project archives from the UNDP

Recommendations to the Bank:

• Ensure that future operations are consistent with those of other donors (UE, AFD) and their inclusion within the restructuring and reform framework undertaken with the support of the World Bank within the TIRP context

• Ensure that new sectoral projects proposed for financing fall within the context of a concerted sectoral development plan and that the institutional development components and conditions are integrated thereto

• Ensure the systematic establishment of project management units and centralization of accounting and financial management within the project management unit

• Define, codify and put in place an effective information and archiving system within the Bank, and during project appraisal, ensure at the Borrower’s level the existence or initiation of provisions for document and project account filing and archiving

• Strengthen supervision and follow-up of implementation of loan conditions and the Borrower’s commitments, and if necessary, propose the application of relevant sanctions