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Accessibility Planning
An appropriate tool to address access problems
To improve rural access effectively, an appropriate (simple and relatively
cheap) planning tool has been evolved, with ILO technical assistance, through
pilot projects in Asia and Africa. It involves communities and local
organisations to identify their access problems and propose solutions for
improvement of their access to services and facilities. The local capacity in
target countries has been strengthened to use this planning tool in order to
address rural access problems more effectively and efficiently.
Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning (IRAP) focuses on the household, and
measures its access needs in terms of the time spent to get access. Because of
poor access, rural households spend a lot of time to transport themselves and
their goods in order to meet their needs.
The underlying principle of accessibility planning is to reduce the time
spent on achieving access, and, hence have more time available for other social
and economic activities.
Features of the Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning Tool
Accessibility Planning covers several sectors. In particular, it provides
detailed data on the access that rural households have to services and
facilities. These include water, energy, health, education, markets,
agricultural inputs, agricultural outputs, crop marketing and post-harvest
facilities.
Accessibility Planning is gender sensitive and involves both men and women in
the local level planning process, and takes account of the clear distinction
between the sexes in terms of transport needs and patterns. In doing so, the
women's perspective and needs will be incorporated into the planned
interventions, and the burden of transport may be reduced for both sexes.
Accessibility Planning has been designed to assist local-level planners to
make appropriate investments of the limited funds available to them. The focus
on the local level also provides a basis for developing the capacity of
local-level planners.
Two points are necessary to raise here. The Accessibility Planning procedure
is not a planning system. It provides a basis for establishing priorities for
access improvement in the sectors that it deals with. It is a tool for physical
planning that captures access problems and identifies a set of prioritised
interventions that address these problems in rural communities. It can be
integrated into the local level planning structure process for implementation.
Accessibility Planning is important not just because it provides an effective
local planning tool. Its real importance lies in its potential to bring together
the two aspects of accessibility - mobility and proximity - in a sensible
manner. It suggests that access, rather than transport, should be looked at as
the facilitator of development.
How the rural transport burden is distributed between men and women
Studies carried out by the ILO and the World Bank over the last decade in
Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe) have
provided detailed insights into both access problems and the corresponding
magnitude and distribution of the transport workload among rural households. In
general, the transport responsibilities of women and men are quite separate,
being influenced by culture, custom and overall household responsibilities.
Transport consumes a major part of the household's time and involves a major
physical burden.
In Africa in particular, women's traditional role as the bearers of loads
often means that they have to carry the weight of the transport burden. This is
particularly evident in female-headed households, which tend to be the poorest.
It is also suggested as one of the reasons for young girls dropping out of
school in higher numbers than boys. Studies carried out in the above mentioned
countries show that the female contribution to household transport in rural
areas ranges from 75 to 85% of the total transport burden.
You may read more about the steps taken when applying the Integrated
Accessibility Planning Tool (IRAP Tool) on this space
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