The bright side of the road.

I have become obsessed with roads over the last few days. Liberia is building roads, hundreds of kilometres of them. In the last two years it has rebuilt over 300 km and there are a further 500 km planned for the next three. That is a lot of of road in a very short space of time. The expansion of the road network is a reflection of the progress Liberia is making and is one of the key building blocks of sustainable prosperity.


We take roads for granted in Britain. We are very well served on this front. Yes sometimes there are problems fixing potholes or gritting but basically we can rely on them, so much so that almost every road building project provokes challenge and opposition. But here in Liberia there simply aren't enough. Getting from one end of the country by land is difficult and takes a really long time, especially in the rainy season. Some parts of the country are completely inaccessible by road. Until recently this included Vahun, a small town near the border with Sierra Leone. During the war, the road out of Vahun to the neighbouring town of Kolahun which connected it to  county capital and Monrovia stopped being maintained, so just disappeared, cutting Vahun off from the rest of the country. The townsfolk of Vahun had to go across the border to Sierre Leone by canoe to do anything. But in the last few months the road from Kolahun has been restored and finally the children of Vahun can go to school without having to paddle across an international border.

Roads, particularly in rural areas, are bringing communities together, helping farmers get their food to market, increasing employment opportunities, allowing children to go to school and giving villagers access healthcare. And major roads attract foreign investors who can see how they can move their goods, people and services around the country quickly and safely.


In Monrovia itself, the main thoroughfares have been in pretty good state of repair for a while now. They are now tackling the side streets. And the other night driving back into town, I noticed something pretty amazing - catseyes along a long and particularly busy stretch of Tubman Boulevard (the street which bisects Monrovia). It is a major innovation and I for one am pretty excited about it (and that is something I never thought I would say). So now Liberia can look forward to a future with more and safer roads. The way ahead looks bright.

(Yes I know the photo isn't of catseyes but the one I took was even worse than the pic of the cheesecake.)