The Impact of Roads on Poverty Reduction : A Case Study of Cameroon

Many investments in infrastructure are
built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to
poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed
massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing
countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a
comprehensive theoretical framework could raise questions
about current strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the
second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquete
Camerounaise Aupres des Menages II, 2001) and the Cameroon
case study, this paper demonstrates that investing uniformly
in tarred roads in Africa is likely to have a much lower
impact on poverty than expected. Isolation from a tarred
road is found to have no direct impact on consumption
expenditures in Cameroon. The only impact is an indirect one
in the access to labor activities. This paper reasserts the
fact that access to roads is only one factor contributing to
poverty reduction (and not necessarily the most important in
many cases). Considering that increase in non-farming
activities is the main driver for poverty reduction in rural
Africa, the results contribute to the idea that emphasis on
road investments should be given to locations where
non-farming activities could be developed, which does mean
that the last mile in rural areas probably should not be a road.