After several years of civil war, Cambodia’s road network had severely deteriorated by the early 1990s. Government rehabilitation works, which started in 1992. with assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other development partners, brought the paved national and provincial roads to about 2,700 kilometers (km) by 2010, or around 23.7% of the entire national and provincial road network. Meanwhile, rural roads, which comprised about 71% of the country’s total 39,400 km roads, had remained largely unattended.
To help address the situation, ADB approved in September 2011 a $35 million loan for the Rural Roads Improvement Project. The project aimed to improve the rural road network in 7 provinces mainly around the Tonle Sap basin, one of the poorest regions in the country. Its expected impact was enhanced access to markets, jobs, and social services. Its intended outcome was provision of safe, cost effective, and all-year road access to remote agricultural areas in the seven provinces. It had five planned outputs, key of which were the rehabilitation of 505.5 km of rural roads, improved road asset management, increased road safety and awareness of potential social problems, and reduced vulnerability of roads to climate change.
At completion, the project delivered all its planned outputs, in many cases, exceeding targets.
545.3 km of rural roads were rehabilitated and enhanced to an international roughness index of 2−3. Safety facilities, including school safety zones, were established. 158,000 labor days of unskilled work were provided, 31.5% of which went to women. Overloading was cut by half. The annual budget for project roads operation and maintenance was increased from $275 per km in 2010 to $320 per km in 2015.
An HIV/AIDS and human trafficking prevention program was undertaken. A sex-disaggregated socioeconomic database was established to support gender mainstreaming activities. A climate change vulnerability assessment was conducted. Trees were planted on roadsides, and water retention and evacuation ponds were built to make the roads more resilient to climate change-related flood impacts. An emergency rural roads management system was piloted, and an emergency operation center and disaster shelters were built in the most vulnerable project area.
Successful delivery of all the planned outputs enabled the project to achieve its intended outcome. Consequently, road accidents decreased by 23.1% between 2009 and 2013; average travel times declined by 60% and average trip length increased by 70%, between 2011 and 2015; all the project roads have been accessible for 365 days a year since after completion.
While triggering greater economic activity, the vastly improved rural roads also provided the rural poor with easier and more reliable access to social services, workplaces, schools, and markets. This contributed to better socioeconomic conditions and job opportunities and higher incomes in the project provinces, with the greatest impact on women who were given special attention in this pioneering effective gender mainstreaming initiative in the transport sector of Cambodia.
A 2017 rapid assessment of the project gender equality results confirmed that women’s incomes had almost doubled after the roads were improved. The increase in women’s incomes facilitated changes in perceptions about women’s capacities and stereotypical gender roles. Gender-related project impacts also included an increase in rural girls’ lower secondary net enrolment rate from 30.8% at project start to 48% in 2018, and a decline in maternal mortality rate from 461 per 100,000 live births to 161, during the same period.
The Ministry of Rural Development, which established a project management unit to implement the project, was the executing agency.
