An African Speaks on Maintenance from Telecom to Roads

My uncle travels widely in Africa, having been involved in the planning of many mobile telecoms installations on the continent, and he always has a story about how governments fail to maintain what they have.

His favourite story is of an airport he once landed at in East Africa. His take on the tale is that rather than maintaining the old airport, a new one was simply built next to the old one, leaving the old one to become a ruin of some-or-other previous era. Similarly, my uncle tells me of tarred roads, which – almost organically – became gravel roads before retuning to thick forests. How true any of this is I can’t say, but what I can say, knowing that I drive specific lines to miss potholes on my way to work everyday, is that public servants maybe aren’t as enthusiastic about maintenance as they should be.

I remember when I was in New York last year. The Mayor got quite upset that a pothole he drove through yesterday wasn’t fixed today. Perhaps then the enthusiasm needs to come from ‘the top’.Zambia’s massive road rebuilding plan was nipped in the bud by a European Union donor community, which said that Zambia should look at a programme of road maintenance rather than building new roads unnecessarily.


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