The challenges of implementing gravel road management system in Sub-Sahara Africa: Tanzania case study

Abstract

The study examined the working environment of road organizations in Tanzania mainland implementing gravel road management system. These road organizations falls into two categories, namely those managing district roads networks and those managing national and regional road networks. The former are managed by building and civil works departments under local government and headed by district council or municipal council engineers under the Prime Minister Office of Regional and Local Government (PRO-RALG). National and regional road networks are managed by road agency known as TANROADS under the umbrella of the Ministry of Works. TANROADS have offices in each regional headquarter and headed by regional manager. A qualitative survey design was used to study the working environment of these organs in managing the gravel roads networks under their judiciary. Data were collected through questionnaire. Randomly selected TANROADS regional offices and district/municipal/city councils engineers’ offices were recipient of these questionnaires. All together 30 out of 70, that is 42.86% of the randomly selected road organization offices responded. The study found out these road organizations are shortage of human resources, lack formalized in-service training system, and facilities for effective implementation of gravel road management system (GRMS). Recommendations are thus mainly focused on ways of mitigating these challenges so as to enable these road organizations to run the GRMS effectively.