ENABLING CIVIL SOCIETY TO SUPPORT TRANSPORTATION POLICIES AND PROGRAMS WHICH FAVOR LOW-INCOME PEOPLE IN UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES

The international concern in relation to the increase in poverty, together with the increased amount of money
invested in transportation and the donations provided to improve roads and other means of terrestrial
transportation in underdeveloped nations, which have not yielded a clear response that would indicate that the
poorest sectors have been assisted by these changes. Due to this lack of improvement among the poorest sectors
of various countries, the Civil Society Challenge Found CSCF, a program from the International Development
Department of the British Government DDBG, has decided to conduct a follow up of the transportation policies
and it has also decided to provide its support to the strategies needed to reduce poverty in such countries.
To achieve such an objective a series of studies were conducted of various cases in fourteen different
underdeveloped countries; Senegal, DRC Congo, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya in
Africa; Bolivia, Nicaragua and Peru in Latin America; Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Cambodia in Asia.
The research that was done of cases in Latin America by members of National Forums in each country, in
Nicaragua it was carried out by FUNPROTECA, in Peru it was CICLORED and in Bolivia this task was done by
CIFEMA. The Secretariat for Latin America of the International Forum for Rural Transportation and Development,
IFRTD AL, acted as a coordinator and it helped with the monitoring of the investigation and research activities.
The investigation and systematization phases were completed between the months of June and December, 2003,
but in certain cases there were certain delays caused by further revision of the final documents.