February 2009 prem 4 Africa Region

Transport

Roads

15. 
    The road network in Cape Verde is state owned and managed. The Roads Institute - Instituto da Estrada (IE) has jurisdictional responsibility over the national roads network. Furthermore, IE is in charge of the maintenance, which is funded by a Road Maintenance fund. Roads maintenance is discussed in a section below.
    

Table 5.39: Roads Network (2005)

16. 
    Compared to other similar countries, Cape Verde has a dense road network. Road density (measured as percentage of arable land)⁷⁴ is 3.5 in Cape Verde, higher than the comparator countries (for instance, Maldives, 2.2; Mauritius, 2.0; Indonesia 1.6). The dense road network is justified by principles of equity and social justice to offer access to health, education, and other basic services to all the population. The other objective is to interconnect the domestic market.
    
17. 
    However, approximately 60 percent of the roads are in bad condition.⁷⁵ The quality of the network varies considerably across the country. For instance, while the network in Sal seems to be in good or fair condition, the entire network in Brava is in either fair or bad condition. The latter suggests that the Cape Verde’s policy of extending the network to low-density areas, in which economic returns are low, may have raised maintenance costs to an unsustainable level, or that maintenance was not been planned and accounted for (this will be discussed further below).