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Road to Sustainable Development in SSA
Last Update: March 2023
APPLY for PhD scholarship
The goal of this research project is to determine the impact of road infrastructure on sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Road deficiencies are recognized as a major impediment to economic development, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the ecological footprint of road investment has also been a source of concern. . The proposed project seeks to better understand the complex consequences of road infrastructure in terms of sustainable development.
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This project will officially start in October 2023 under the leadership of Luisito Bertinelli (University of Luxembourg) and Jean-François Maystadt (UCLouvain). The project is jointly supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (Belgium, PDR T.0150.23) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).
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The above project description will be regularly updated with academic and outreach outputs. We will also organize an international workshop in 2025 to present research findings.
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Photo (right): Kindly shared by Nik Stoop
The proposed project seeks to better understand the complex consequences of road infrastructure in terms of sustainable development. First, we will quantify the impact of road infrastructure on food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, how road accessibility affects child malnutrition, a standard health indicator. In this way, our research project will contribute to the second UN Sustainable Development Goal to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition. From a methodological point of view, we will offer an innovative approach to deal with the endogenous location of road construction. Second, we will unpack that relationship by looking at the role of deforestation and shed light on potential trade-offs between economic and sustainable development. We will first test the hypothesis that road-induced renewed economic activities are accompanied by higher rates of deforestation and forest fragmentation. Such analysis will be carried out by relying on satellite-based data, through nightlight densities and vegetation and land cover indicators. We will then focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a case in point of the potential trade-off between economic development and environmental sustainability. After replicating the previous analysis for this specific country, we will explore how diet diversity and the sectoral composition of the local economy have changed when both road construction and deforestation co-exist.
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Photo (right): Kindly shared by Nik Stoop
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