Managing SADC Roads Agencies in the New Millennium: The Role of Road Asset Management Systems
The management of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) road network is a complex task which is often influenced by a variety of factors – technical, financial, social and political – which all enter into the decision making process at various levels of their roads agencies. In such an environment, the determination of optimal strategies requires the use of a rational “systems” approach to road asset management. This paper outlines the road management strategy that is being pursued in a number of countries in the SADC region. It then illustrates how these systems are being used at various levels of application to achieve the desired objectives of the road agency.
Information systems for road management: draft guidelines on system design and data issues; technical paper
This is a draft portion of guidelines for international use on the development of information systems to serve all road management applications in the highway sector. It provides an objective reference to help agencies make appropriate choices about the information needed for decision making and how to collect and manage it. A generic modular framework is used to make the system flexible, relevant to the diverse needs of different levels of management, appropriate to the size, skills and resources of different agencies, and able to accommodate upgrading in response to future changes in technology or circumstances, Nine groups of information and four levels of information quality (IQL) from basic to comprehensive are defined. For each group and quality level, specific data items are identified in a consistent manner so that higher levels of detail can be condensed and transformed into the summary or basic level. Data collection methods for each information group are synthesized indicating the modes of measurement applicable, the methods and equipment available for each mode, and the approaches to frequency, sampling and coverage for the collection of each data item.
THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND COLONIALISM: REASONS FOR AFRICA’S UNDERDEVELOPMENT?
It is probably an understatement to assert that Africa, the world’s second largest continent, is underdeveloped compared with other continents. Two major exogenous factors often cited for Africa’s development crisis are the so called ‘dual historical injustices’ – the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. It is often pointed out that while the former almost completely arrested and retarded Africa’s demographical growth for more than three centuries, evoked a perennial state of acrimony and warfare and created a tense and unprecedented atmosphere of insecurity which hindered economic activities and stifled local entrepreneurship and technological drive and dislocated Africa’s socio-economic and political structures and institutions; the latter tied African countries to the apron strings of western imperial powers thereby rendering the pre-conditions necessary for socio-economic and political transformation unachievable. This paper contends that while the history of Africa’s underdevelopment may be traceable to the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism, African leaders had made enormous contributions to the continent’s underdevelopment and backwardness. The paper concludes that irresponsible and irresponsive leadership, vampirism and prodigality, corruption, lack of respect for democratic ideals, insecurity, endemic civil wars, nepotism, etc are the fundamental causes of Africa’s underdevelopment.