Abstract—It cannot go unnoticed that the majority of poor
people in the world live in rural areas where the level of public
infrastructure especially roads is significantly low. One author
referred rural transport as the step-child of infrastructure
provision in developing countries and points out that nobody
really feels responsible, but everybody claims it being of
utmost importance. The inadequate roads and poor road
access put the high cost of transportation; reduce ability to use
access high quality inputs; limit the uses of local markets to the
sales of their produces, the purchase of consumer goods and
opportunities for off-farm employment. Poor road access has
put nevertheless constraints for rural poor in terms of access
to other social infrastructures such as education and health
facilities [1]. Many researches have been done, and most if not
all, consider the government and agencies’ facet rather than
the main users whom for this case are the rural community.
This paper considers the down-up approach using PEST
analysis to obtain the real picture from the rural community
public point of view in terms of the different aspects of rural
road development and their influence. The underlying
objective is to determine the effect of road development in
terms of politics, economics, social, and technological factors of
the rural community.
A case study was carried in one of the regions in Tanzania,
namely Kilimanjaro region and questionnaires were randomly
distributed to the selected population. Data was analyzed using
the Lindlof’s framework and thereafter information and the
obtained data were interpreted using the quasi-judicial
method. It is observed that lack of transparency and political
interest are the cause of an imbalance with the road project
implementation thus widening the disparity in rural and
urban income. Lack of education on government policies for
infrastructure development and poor communication
technology are other factors that result to the limping of a
given rural society into the desired benefits of mobility and
accessibility. Social attitude for such development is observed
to be positive though, politics again plays part into this. Finally
recommendations are given and areas for further research
suggested.
Index Terms—Accessibility, mobility, PEST analysis, public
infrastructure, rural road development, rural transport.
A. A. Saburi is with School of Management, Wuhan University of
Technology, Wuhan 430070, P.R. China (e-mail: alsaburi@hotmail.com).
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Cite:Ally A. Saburi, "Determining the Consistency in Implementing Rural Road Transport Development using PEST Analysis: The Case of Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania," International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance vol.3, no.4, pp. 262-266, 2012.