Indicator 9.1.1 Proportion of the rural population who live within 2 km of an all-season road

Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Target 9.1: Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and trans border infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all

Indicator 9.1.1: Proportion of the rural population who live within 2 km of an all-season road

November, 2021

None

Uganda Bureau of Statistics

Simon Kyewalyanga

Department of Social Surveys and Censuses

Senior Statistician- Survey Operations

+256 772 511682

P.O Box 7186 Kampala

simon.kyewalyanga@ubos.org

The indicator (commonly known as the Rural Access Index or RAI) measures the share of a country’s rural population that lives within 2 km of an all-season road.

Concepts

The indicator is measured by combining three sets of geospatial data: where people live, the spatial distribution of the road network, and road passability. The use of spatial data has various advantages. It can help ensure consistency across countries. The level of spatial resolution is broadly the same regardless of the size of the country or subnational boundaries. Any given norm of connectivity (for example, 2 km distance from a road) is uniquely and unambiguously applied for all countries.

In Uganda, the establishment of urban areas is gazetted by the Ministry of Local Government. These include; A city, Municipality, town council and Town Boards.

The principle of the “all-season” road network remains central to the original concept of measuring the RAI. An “all season road” is defined as a road that is motorable all year round by the prevailing means of rural transport (often a pick-up or a truck which does not have four-wheel-drive). Predictable interruptions of short duration during inclement weather (e.g. heavy rainfall) are accepted, particularly on low volume roads. A road that it is likely to be impassable to the prevailing means of rural transport for a total of 7 days or more per year is not regarded as all-season. Note that some roads agencies use the term “all-weather” to describe their roads, however “all-weather” typically means “paved” and should not be confused with “all-season” which can include unpaved roads too.

It is important to determine whether access to facilities and services is available all year round, and hence the possibility of the road throughout the year is an essential factor in this aspect of contributing to poverty reduction. Information on the condition of the road network is frequently maintained by road agencies as part of their operational responsibilities.

The traditional road inventory survey can collect data on road condition, including the International Roughness Index (IRI), at a high level of information quality, to determine whether a road is “all-season”. For the purpose of the RAI, the road condition threshold is generally set at an IRI of less than 6 meters/km for paved roads, and an IRI of less than 13 meters/km for unpaved roads. When IRI is not available, other types of condition assessment may be used if comparable. The use of smartphones with GPS are being investigated in order to accurately map local transport services routes, and identify which rural roads are open all year and hence are all-season roads. These condition thresholds should only be used, however, where there is reliable road condition data available. The parameters should be calibrated to the local conditions, i.e. checks should be made to determine that paved roads in poor condition are largely not all-season, and that unpaved roads in fair or poor condition are largely not all-season. The parameters can be adjusted accordingly to the local conditions, based on a systematic and documented study.

Percent

Not Applicable 

Data is collected from National Service Delivery Surveys (NSDS)

National Service Delivery Survey (NSDS) Household Survey. A centralized approach to data collection is employed whereby mobile field teams are deployed from UBOS headquarters to the sampled Enumeration Areas (clusters) and data is collected using Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI).

After every 5 years

2025

Uganda Bureau of Statistics

Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and Ministry of Public Service.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) Act, 1998 provides for the development and maintenance of a National Statistical System (NSS) to ensure collection, analysis and publication of integrated, relevant, reliable and timely statistical information. It established the Bureau also as the coordinating, monitoring and supervisory body for the National Statistical System.

The Ministry of Public Service is the main implementing machinery for national development programs. The public service needs to institutionalize mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating the delivery of public services to the citizens in order to ensure that strategies are put in place to obtain feedback from clients regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery to inform formulation of mechanisms for continuous improvement.

The decentralization policy devolved substantial planning functions from the Central Government to the Local Governments (districts and lower level councils). This policy charges the districts and lower level councils to make and monitor their own development and service delivery plans. The government and the donors are spending a lot of funds in support of these plans to improve service delivery especially widening the road network. The progress and net impact of these plans on the society needs to be carefully monitored and matched against set standards to measure the levels of success.

The Indicator relies substantially on data collected by road agencies and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics for their operational work. As such, its update is dependent on the frequency of update of the National Service Delivery Survey.

The Indicator depends heavily on the quality and extent of the underlying spatial data. The extent of the road network data, and how well it reflects the reality on the ground, can be a particular issue. Verification against open source data and satellite data where possible is recommended. More data are always better. Efforts have been made to collect detailed road data, including on tertiary or feeder roads, which may not be covered in the existing spatial road network data regardless of whether government or open data sources are used. If condition data is not available, then use of accessibility factors can be considered.

The 2 km norm of access may not be as applicable in all areas. In extremely mountainous countries, there has been significant research into walking times and preparation of accessibility maps that take into account mountainous terrain, locations of rivers and footbridges. However, for global consistency purposes and comparability across countries, the 2 km distance threshold has been maintained (equivalent to a 20-30 minute walk in most regions).

The indicator is calculated by overlying three basic geospatial datasets: population distribution, road location, and road passability. The RAI is calculated as the rural population within a 2 km buffer of a good road divided by the total rural population of the country.

The data processing largely involved: the design of questionnaires in the Survey Solution’s designer interface as well as inclusion of consistency checks, skip patterns and validation rules.

The World Bank, as custodian agency, with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Research for Community Access Partnership (ReCAP), has developed and published a full methodological document for the RAI, including detailed descriptions of various data sources, variations on the standard methodology, and a step-by-step guide. In addition, a GIS tool has been developed to calculate the RAI from provided data sets. These resources and others are being collected into an online portal for the Rural Access Index.

Quality Management is addressed through a series of activities by the UBOS Top Management;

1. The survey implementation is overseen by a Technical Working Group which is constituted using a multi-sectorial approach.
2. The survey report is reviewed by an experienced team at Management level before dissemination.

The NSDS undergoes several stages of preparation before production and sharing of the final findings. During the Survey implementation;

1. Consultative user needs assessment meetings are held with all key stakeholders. The survey and sampling design is generated using scientific methods as recommended by the Census and Survey Rules and Regulations.
2. The survey has a qualitative module which addresses subjectivity issues in the questionnaire
3. The questionnaire development follows a multi-stakeholder approach and pretesting helps to establish the relevancy and adequacy of the questions to be used.
4. During the training, the field staff were familiarized with use of the application and field practice was undertaken for quality assurance purposes.
5. vi. In the field, data was captured by interviewers then transferred to field supervisors as well as to UBOS headquarters in appropriate time for further scrutiny and quality assurance.
6. Senior Supervision is conducted during data collection to ensure that quality data is collected

Data editing, cleaning and coding is undertaken before analysis and report writing.

Before dissemination, the report is reviewed and quality assured by the Department of Outreach and Quality Assurance at the Bureau.

Due to its nature as a geospatially derived indicator, the RAI can be calculated at subnational levels down to the level of granularity of the underlying datasets.

The nearest road to the households or communities is regarded as passable or useable all year round basing on the perception of respondents.

It is not based on roads with a quality meeting the threshold of the RAI (not providing “all-season” access) should be excluded.

The guiding methodology for the RAI can be found at:

World Bank. 2016. Measuring rural access: using new technologies (English).

More information on the RAI, including Supplemental Guidelines on the use of accessibility factors prepared in collaboration with ReCAP, correlations with poverty and other development indicators, and the latest data sets can be accessed on the World Bank’s RAI data catalogue entry:

The Sustainable Mobility for All initiative provides input and leverages the RAI in its global tracking framework. More information here