Poverty and Urban Transport in East Africa: Review of Research and Dutch Donor Experience

1. This report reviews Dutch-funded development assistance to the urban transport sector in East Africa. It aims to enhance understanding of the direct and indirect ways by which the well-being of poor households is shaped by the availability and nature of transport infrastructure and services. Two metropolitan cities (Dar es Salaam and Nairobi), and two secondary cities (Eldoret and Morogoro), one each in Kenya and Tanzania, provided the focus for the study.2. The review pivots on the studies of urban mobility and non-motorized transport among low-income households conducted between 1993 and 1999 as part of the World Bank and UNECA Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Program in the above mentioned cities. These were complemented by studies of transport infrastructure improvement and infrastructureupgrading projects using employment-intensive, community-based methods. The latter took place in a low-income informal settlement (Hanna Nassif) in Dar es Salaam. Another study cited in this report used innovative accessibility concepts to reveal the mobility patterns connected with the health-seeking behavior of Dar es Salaam's poor.3. In the light of recent conceptual overviews and literature surveys on urban transport provision and poverty [Kranton 1991, Gannon and Liu 1997, Hanmer et al. 2000], this summary focuses on the East African case study findings, drawing out the implications for the current debate on the relationship between urban transport and poverty